US-based meaning 3 letter agencies can get your data without a court order and that you aren't protected by the GDPR if you don't live in the EU

Anything US based should be avoided.

They track their users, even though not tracking users is supposed to be their thing.

DDG is basically Bing

I'm wondering the same. ddg has been great for me.

I’m not sure this is really a solvable problem but at the end of the day, DuckDuckGo is a for profit corporation. Privacy is more of a marketing angle than something they actually care about. Last year they allowed Microsoft to track mobile users of their “privacy focused” browser which is obviously against their stated purpose for existing. They backtracked after facing backlash but it’s done lasting damage to their reputation. They also got caught by a security researcher, they weren’t at all upfront about it. I think that’s enough to shatter any hope that they are genuine or trustworthy.

Because it's just a proxy for Bing, with all the pitfalls of that.

I'm here because I'm trying to figure out why dog is giving me curated location based results instead of the actual results, even though I have my region set to all regions.

So I'm not recommending them because their product has gotten worse.e