Strypey
@zeh @alcinnz
>have been seeing the worse results from duckduckgo
We're not the only ones who have been complaining about this recently. I was very happy with DDG for years and I still really like the fact that I can search the Free Software Directory by adding !fsd to my keywords. But their general search results have gone massively downhill in the last year or two, and I blame Bing.
Strypey
@michaellewis
> What are the alternatives to Cloudflare?
Deflect.ca is one.
> Cloudflare is best at blocking good bots and isn't very effective at blocking the large networks of compromised machines the SEO spammers hijack
I suspect that CloudFlake is a protection racket, and that this is intentional.
Michael Lewis
@alcinnz @digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh What are the alternatives to Cloudflare? I put searchmysite.net behind Cloudflare after getting several hundred thousand searches a day from SEO spammer bot networks. Other search engines like Marginalia have had the same issues and moved behind Cloudflare too. Happy to consider alternatives, especially given Cloudflare is best at blocking good bots and isn't very effective at blocking the large networks of compromised machines the SEO spammers hijack.
alcinnz
@digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh I am aware of CloudFlare's flaws (though customers can now use CloudFlare whilst avoiding those flaws), I am by no means a fan.
I just prefer advocating that 1) you probably don't actually need their services & 2) if you have faced a DDOS attack use one of their competitors. Like so much else in my industry I put CloudFlare's popularity largely down to miseducation...
digitalRightsNinja
@alcinnz
Are you aware that Cloudflare sees all your searches on that site? Any privacy seeker/enthusiast would naturally be revolted at the idea of a tech giant having a view of all their searches.
Are you aware that Cloudflare is an exclusive walled garden that blocks various groups/demographics from access to ~20%+ of the web?
alcinnz
@digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh I quite like SearchMySite.Net, I guess I'm not as put off by CloudFlare as you.
digitalRightsNinja
Indeed mojeek.com is not the only non-tech-giant #searchEngine (+crawler). From strypey’s mentions + some of my notes:
* #Mojeek ← does their own crawling
* #Metager.org ← does their own crawling
* #SearchMySite.net ← avoid (Cloudflare)
* #Searx ← just proxy software, many instances
* #4get ← another proxy software, about a dozen instances: https://4get.ca/instances
* #Gigablast ← does their own crawling, but what happened?.. they were dissolved last year & seem to now be www.alltheinternet.com
* #Ombrelo ← a proxy but more advanced than the others (filters/downranks Cloudflare sites)
#YaCy is notable because it’s a crawler that you can install and operate yourself. YaCy instances can be public-facing and they can also share indexes with each other fedi style apparently. Some Searx instances tap YaCy instances.
I would love to find a searx or 4get instance that rejects the tech giants, but aggregates from YaCy, mojeek, gigablast, metager, maginalia.nu, frogfind.com, & wiby.me.
And I would love it even more if it would make replacements:
* #StackExchange → #AnonymousOverflow
* #YouTube → #Invideous
* #Medium.com → scribe.rip
* #BBC → BBC’s onion site
* #NYTimes → New York Times’s onion site
* etc.
search.fabiomanganiello.com makes some of those replacements.
Strypey
@zeh @alcinnz I've been experimenting with a few search engines recently, including Mojeek, Metager.org, SearchMySite.net and the Searx instances at Monocles.de.
I've also figured out to how to configure my Firefox-based mobile browser to search for videos directly on YewTube (Invidio.us instance), and for green tech info on Appropedia.org, and I plan to add more sites to this (eg search.joinpeertube.org).
#Search #SearchEngines #Mojeek #Metager #SearchMySite #Searx #Monocles
Strypey
@digitalRightsNinja
TechRights have a tendency to overstate their case and this hit piece is a good example.
"DDG's founder (Gabriel Weinberg) has a history of privacy abuse, starting with his founding of Names DB, a surveillance capitalist service designed to coerce naive users to submit sensitive information about their friends."
Translation; Weinberg was part of a startup that set up a bog standard, early noughties social networking site.
I stopped reading at this point.
digitalRightsNinja
#DuckDuckGo (#DDG) can directly be blamed for plenty of shit:
Michael Lewis
@daxtens @alcinnz @digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh Thanks for the suggestions for alternatives to Cloudflare. I've made a note in my issue tracker with details for further investigation. Although having a quick look they all seem to be paid for (I'm using the free Cloudflare) and I'm not sure any of them will be any better at identifying these botnets (since the whole point of the botnets is to evade detection).
Daniel Axtens
@michaellewis @alcinnz @digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh may depend on your budget, and I’m biased because I work there but I think Fastly is very good
Daniel Axtens
@michaellewis happy to put you in touch with some people if that's something you want to explore.
Daniel Axtens
@michaellewis @alcinnz @digitalRightsNinja @strypey @zeh Fastly takes a lot of pride in its bot detection, but it’s not the team that I work on so I can’t say all that much about it. As open source you might also be a candidate for our Fast Forward program.
Strypey
@digitalRightsNinja
> The moment he pivoted to appear to embrace privacy (DDG formation), it was actually just privacy /theatre/, not privacy, that appealed to him
That's a judgement, not a fact. Jumping to that sort of conclusion, as if his motivations were known and obvious, is precisely why I think that TechRights hit piece is best taken with a grain of salt. Or just ignored.
digitalRightsNinja
@strypey Apparently you’re trying not to judge Weinberg’s action in 2003 by today’s standards.
Your perception is perhaps a bit like the controversial question of whether the British gov should apologize for chemically castrating Alan Turing. Of course by today’s social standards, people are rattled to the core by how Turing was treated in that despicable shit-show history. But some take the stance that it’s unfair to judge historic actions by today’s social standards because today’s social wisdom simply did not exist then, and you cannot expect historic actions to have a vision of future social norms.
However, Weinberg was a scumbag in 2003 /even by the social standards of that time/. I remember 2003. I remember as social networks emerged many were instantly known to be exploitive & abusive even by the wisdom of that time. Myself and others with a sense of privacy appreciation were already fighting privacy abuses.
So Weinberg is not off the hook. But more importantly, apart from the money-driven craze to exploit and extract, Weinberg inherently had no shred of respect for privacy at a time when many did. When privacy movements were underway, Weinberg did not give a shit about privacy.
The moment he pivoted to appear to embrace privacy (DDG formation), it was actually just privacy /theatre/, not privacy, that appealed to him. So many people remain fooled by Weinberg’s mastery of privacy theatre for marketing purposes. He is no champion of privacy and obviously did not have a dramatic change in values in a short span of time. And the bits of the article you skipped prove that.
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