Tor Browser is planning to remove Google from the search engine options a user can choose: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41835

There some say brave onion + no JS is good: https://search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion/

Mullvad team seems to be considering 4 possible options:

• Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/
• Mojeek: https://www.mojeek.com/
• Brave Search: https://search.brave.com/
• Metager: https://metager.org/

PS: Not disgussing ddg / ddg onion too much, basically because ddg is the long-time default search engine of TB. Most TB users assume ddg is a decent, standard, generic option, esp. its non-JS version.

about time 😊 that’s not the goal; one of the first basic steps!

EDIT Sorry I should not have said it like this. Even though that was my honest feelings, said as free speech without any meany connotations, this should have been treated as good news, like someone finally ditched Windows.

One of the next steps might be to figure out how not to load GA.js GTM.js Google Fonts etc.

There is a long way to go to de-Google oneself, and unfortunately it’s not easy nor trivial. One subtle example: Google is a broker of Tor Snowflake, which could cause a difficult dilemma.

See also:

Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records

• https://lemmy.world/post/8536384
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/9605238
• https://monero.town/post/1165443 etc.

The French National Police is unlawfully using an Israeli facial recognition software [installed massively and secretly. The Minister ordered an investigation]

• https://monero.town/post/1200440

Some of possible solutions include:

• always use Tor 24/7, Tails or not, when possible, even when browsing normal websites, or using IRC etc.
• use bridges

Just fyi: recently EFF is creating Privacy Badger browser add-on and GNU also has LibreJS. They’re technically not ad-blockers, though; apparently a tracker-blocker and a non-free-script-blocker, respectively.

That is correct. Tor Browser on Tails comes with uBlock Origin. It might be that DDG (or some other financial supporters) are not happy if the Tor Project ships TB with uBlock. There are many things to be blocked by uB even on DDG, Brave, MetaGer, etc. (although obviously they are much less invasive than you-know-what search engines). Purely privacy-wise they’re annoying of course. But understandably they do need to monetize something to provide search engines, and I think some of them are financially supporting the Tor Project too, or they’re helping each other, so… I don’t know. Just a guess.

Isn’t it like Mozilla has to be nice to Google? Ultimately, doesn’t this mean that end users are not making enough donations? People say privacy and freedom are important, but normal people really don’t like to pay for these important things, like assuming libre is like free beer!

I’ve been a long time Mozilla-supporter, since forever—since much before Firefox was even born. Every browser I use now is also Firefox-based [EDIT: one of them is SeaMonkey, not firefox-bsed but from Mozilla too]. As such, I wouldn’t like to say bad things about Mozilla. While I could clarify what I was trying to say, let’s just say several other people prefer LibreWolf to Firefox (I’m not a LibreWolf user, though).

In the big picture, we don’t want to be abused by big tech companies like Google, and relatively speaking, Firefox is a much better choice. Also, you’re absolutely right about how free software is supposed to work (at least in principle). Like I said, I really hope I’m totally wrong here.

The original (initial) post is a question about Brave, and we’re getting so off-topic now. Besides it seems that most Lemmy users don’t even read anything older than a week anyway, too busy to have a slow, deep conversations. So let’s call it a day. What I was trying to say in passing might become painfully clearer soon enough, or perhaps—hopefully—I’m just overly worrying about nothing. Although maybe Mozilla as an organization can’t exist anymore without Google’s financial supports (and so not in a position to keep saying “No!” to Google for a long time), as you pointed out, let’s hope that the philosophy of free (libre) software will prevail in the end.

Thanks for taking time to dig deeper and share the results. It’s ironic if big search engines are practically assisting those scams.

The main thing behind my previous comment is the SREN bill and Mozilla’s blog post about it.

I hope I am wrong, but I feel that Mozilla, while being against browser-side censorship, is strongly supporting Google-side restrictions. The situation becomes clearer if you actually read SREN, Art. 6, which is based on the premise that browser providers can and will monitor each user’s activity (my post about this on Lemmy). Conceptually similar to WEI.

The technology that restricts what a user can do can be useful, if unquestionably bad things are blocked. The fundamental problem is, in order for this to work, someone has to decide what is “bad” for you, and has to monitor your activities directly or indirectly so that you may not visit “bad” websites. Protecting users from malware may be important, but I don’t want forceful “protection” by for-profit big tech companies, especially when their OSes/services are not really privacy-respecting, if not themselves spyware. While “protection” might not involve real-time monitoring or anything privacy-invasive, the current situation feels preposterous. We should be free to customize programs, free to block what we don’t need; it’s not like they have freedom to block us from accessing info, to force us to use/view what they want us to.

The current use cases are for Brazilian banking sites. Although free (libre) software users don’t like to be remotely monitored their browsing real-time, the technology itself can be helpful if used right.

The context is, even though Firefox is getting more and more annoying with telemetry, phoning home, etc. (imho the last good version was v52 ESR), it is still much better than Google. So use Firefox, if you don’t like other options.

Mozilla is financially supported by Google, and perhaps they can’t continue their projects without Google, so it’s kind of inevitable that sometimes they have to support that giant. Nevertheless, they still try not to be evil, explicitly against WEI.

Please do support Firefox and/or its forks (LibreWolf, Tor Browser, …). Stop cooperating with Google. They can do evil things because of their monopoly power. We can make Google less powerful, if we refuse to use their products, if we escape from their privacy-invading services.

It’s a free country, you can use whatever you like. Respect yourself and your own intuition :)

The current situation (summer July–Sept 2023) is, you better switch to any browser that is not Chromium-based. The reason is “Web Environment Integrity” (WEI), which seems to mean, basically, Google is trying to DRM-lock the whole Internet to make sure you see their ads and they can track everyone. Freedom-loving users obviously don’t like that.

At the same time Firefox is getting more and more annoying, yet it’s better than Google. A safe bet for a general user might be LibreWolf. Another new option is Mullvad Browser.

So you are lolcat and spamming the link to 4get.ca? If so, that makes you look a bit uncool.

https://monero.town/u/[email protected]

Good things: unlike DDG or MetaGer, zero tracking. zero ads. Clean. Unlike SearXNG, you’re not using Github (a good move). This might become huge. The fact that it’s not perfect now, doesn’t matter.

Bad things: Obviously it’ll be hard to be better than SearXNG. A donation link is especially bad; ko-fi.com itself can be there, but… In the donation campaign, SearXNG accepted crypto, while you’re only using a Paypal-like thing. That’s not really cool.

deleted by creator

I just did some tests on DDG (sorry OP, not related to SearXNG). If you use it normally, they put a lot of images from URL like improving.duckduckgo.com/t/we?monitor=you&spying=secretly&id=etc (supposedly for improving DDG by gathering statistical blah blah). Their no-JavaScript version is much less invasive.

Solution(s): 1) uBlock is highly recommended, 2) if possible disable JS, 3) try Tor Browser, which is just an anonymity version of Firefox

Sorry, this question was SearXNG specific, so MetaGer was irrelevant. I’ve never self-hosted it, but I’d say Brave. It’s supposed to have its own index (correct me if I’m wrong), so one can expect some diversity.

As for DDG, there shouldn’t be any problems if used via SearXNG. In general, there are a few comments about DDG here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1164105.html and I quote:

Negative:

~1-2 years back they collected data on which search results their users clicked on by default with their own link-forwarder. After some outcry they removed that. Their “privacy browser” allowed third party cookies by Microsoft to track their users because DDG made a deal with them without telling anyone. When it came out Gabriel Weinberg released some BS statements.

Positive:

DDG doesn’t even have a Linux browser, but I love their Android browser. The DDG search engine provides results that are quite fine

uBlock + (MetaGer or Searx or DDG/html[no JS]), via Tor 24/7. Onion available. Individually, hit and miss. In total, good enough for me. While DDG is okay (the default search engine for Tor Browser, Tails), intuitively I don’t fully trust it. Its no-JS version is acceptable.

It used to be much more decentralized, peaceful, not-for-profit. No systematic tracking (No GA.js). No affiliate/Google Ad infestation.

Individual users had their own small, cozy, hobby websites, not for monetizing - purely writing about whatever they were personally interested in, not trying to increase page views. A lot of good, pure, text-based websites, which perfectly worked without JavaScript nor cookies. Early webmasters were able to type clean HTML directly and fluently using a plain text editor, not depending on centralized platforms, so page load was super-fast, not bloated.

Individual users themselves owned the Internet, so to speak; were not owned by centralized platforms.