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Just figured this might be some welcome news to shout out from the crow's nest. Haven't tried it yet myself, so would love some feedback, me hearties!

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[-] BootlegHermit@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago

Eh, DDG is just as shady as most others. Starting with their contract with MS.

Basing their browser off of chromium (or Edge and "underlying OS technology" or however they phrased it) just helps to further the Google monopoly.

"DuckDuckGo uses clear gifs from the domain improving.duckduckgo.com. This is a tracking technique and can be used to collect analytics about your web browser. Whenever you use DuckDuckGo, several requests will be sent to this domain.[4] This is of course not the kind of behavior that you would expect from a privacy concerned website, but there it is. Do you trust DuckDuckGo to collect "anonymous" analytics about you?"
-- From: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/duckduckgo

Not that I view that quote as fact of any sort, but something to look into before jumping on the bandwagon so to speak.

Then of course there's also DDG's CEO, Gabriel Weinberg.

"Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, used to run the Names Database.[1] This was a website that aimed to connect people who had lost contact by gathering lots and lots of e-mail addresses. Getting access could be done by either paying money, or submitting lots of e-mail addresses of other people. Since the service revolved around gathering personal information, it is very suspicious for Gabriel Weinberg to start a business that is privacy-oriented."
From: https://archive.is/20150624075735/https://8ch.net/tech/ddg.html and https://archive.is/N2qe8

So the real advice as to what browser to use? Use whatever one you want that has the features you like and enjoy. Anything else is a gamble in terms of support, security, compatibility, and usability.

[-] Sp00ky94@lemmy.fmhy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

DDG was also caught downranking search results or censoring them. Regardless of what is being censored I don't think it should be up to the company to decide for individuals. It should be the individual who does their own due diligence and decides for themselves what they want to believe.

Here is the article.

[-] Bulldozer0781@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Yep, I've had issues searching for some things on Google before where I could tell Google was adding a political leaning bias, censoring things, or just deranking certain content heavily. So I thought DDG would be a good one to try out with the same searches but I still found it had similar issues. I brought out Yandex and was easily able to find the results I was looking for on the top results.

Now I am sure Yandex also censors stuff too, but its definitely my go to if I'm trying to find things on certain political topics from views Google disagrees with, or for finding things related to piracy.

Honestly getting a bit sad how not even something as generic as a search engine can be free from political censorship.

[-] Sp00ky94@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I haven't used Google in a while. I have been using Brave Search and it has been good. They don't rely on any of the big search engines anymore either. They have been building their own index. Right now they only rely on Google and Bing search for image search.

[-] Bulldozer0781@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for that info, totally forgot Brave had a search. Maybe I'll start making use of them then!

[-] Distributed@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Try out searxng! It aggregates from multiple sesrch engines.

I find that, with companies that roll their own search algorithm that the results are often... lacking. I also don't trust brave as they try to push their crypto on you.

For what its worth, on the browser side of tbings, I run firefox w/ arkenfox

[-] Distributed@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm glad that I recently migrated to SearXNG!

[-] aranym@lemmy.name 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

improving.duckduckgo.com is not something they try to hide, you can easily disable it in your search engine settings. DDG was launched in 2008 and has a pretty solid track record - I think we can forgive the Names DB thing at this point.

[-] jordank1977@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I love when fellow seafarers go through this kind of effort. 🙏

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[-] GhostMagician@beehaw.org 22 points 1 year ago

Wish they had built off Firefox.

[-] FoxBJK@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago

Does anyone build off Gecko/Firefox these days? Even Brave, the browser run by their old CTO/CEO, switched away to Chromium several years ago.

[-] chamim@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago
[-] 9867890@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 year ago

Tor Browser, Librewolf, Waterfox, Mull, Iceraven

[-] blobcat@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I really like Floorp, its devs and website are japanese but it supports english and is trying to be more than just another "hardened-privacy firefox fork" with it's features

[-] CoderKat@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly, it's hard to do that. Chrome's dominance means much of the internet has been designed for chrome. If you don't support the same features, people will complain that your browser is broken or sucks.

Myself, I used Firefox for the longest time before I eventually just got too annoyed with the umpteenth site not working correctly and switched to Chrome.

[-] dleewee@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

It's been ages since I ran into a site issue, using both desktop and mobile Firefox. Not saying it doesn't happen, but seems that issues are very few and far between these days.

[-] FoxBJK@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago

Half the time when I see a thread about a site that doesn’t work in FF there’s a comment saying you can just spoof a chromium user agent and the page will work fine.

Which…. Honestly as a web dev makes me embarrassed because you should never build a site around the UA. It’s such an unreliable bit of information!

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Is it yet another chrome engine client?

[-] Sergigig@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago
[-] jordank1977@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

hahaha top-tier meme 🙏

[-] unconsciousvoidling@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

thanks... now i'm craving some sugary cereal.

[-] Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

It's even funnier when I need to use webcord to use Discord inside chromium to get screen sharing working on Wayland on Linux -.-

[-] minimar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Does webcord support screenshare with audio? I tried it myself and it didn't work, I've been using discord-screenaudio.

[-] Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Mmm actually thanks for this comment.

Can confirm wasn't sharing audio.

I did setup OBS with YouTube and can stream at 1440p60 with AV1 on my 7900xtx at least. 😔

[-] FoxBJK@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They're using whatever's built into the OS, because they don't want to be just another Chromium fork

EDIT - to clarify: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/duckduckgo-offers-its-privacy-centered-browser-in-a-windows-open-beta/

Like its Mac browser, DuckDuckGo (DDG) uses “the underlying operating system rendering API” rather than its own forked browser code. That’s “a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath,” according to DuckDuckGo’s blog post. Fittingly, the browser reports itself as Microsoft Edge at most header-scanning sites.

[-] Dee_Imaginarium@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago

They’re using whatever’s built into the OS

looks at Edge

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but isn't that just more Chromium?

[-] FoxBJK@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago

You're not misunderstanding at all, and you're exactly right:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/duckduckgo-offers-its-privacy-centered-browser-in-a-windows-open-beta/

Like its Mac browser, DuckDuckGo (DDG) uses "the underlying operating system rendering API" rather than its own forked browser code. That's "a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath," according to DuckDuckGo's blog post. Fittingly, the browser reports itself as Microsoft Edge at most header-scanning sites.

So on Windows its Edge, so its another chrome client?

[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago

If they are wanting to be privacy focused, why use Chromium? It's a data hover extraordinaire.

[-] ymhr@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Isn't that a Chrome/Chromium distinction?

[-] win98se@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This browser's installer has a damn huge size of ~760 MB. Usually browser installers is only <200 MB... What the heck does it actually contain?

[-] lemann@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

While the browser on Desktop is a neat idea, it's not for me. I do use the mobile app alongside Firefox and Fennec though.

I'll happily carry on using DDG search on both platforms, since I'm not giving Google unnecessary details about my online habits... and oh yes, the dark mode.

[-] Ilandar@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I'm a Firefox user for life but I do appreciate these simpler alternatives. They allow older and less technologically literate people to regain some level of privacy online.

[-] assclapcalamity@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Firefox has been my main since forever and hasn't failed me, though I have tried others. I worked in a library back when IE/Microsoft was trying to compete with Netscape. I was constantly, gently trying to remind patrons, Internet Explorer doesn't work very well.

"also there's a new thing called google..." that was the tits back then

[-] Scorch@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I know this is a Windows release but I guess for my limited use 2 cents with DuckDuckGo (DDG) browser for macOS:

  • It is enjoyable and quick to use.

  • No extensions but with its protections feature, there are no ads?

    • However, compared to Firefox with my extensions setup, vanilla YouTube on DDG is way more crowded and distracting.
  • Duck Player plays YouTube videos without trackers and ads.

    • But it does take you to another page. No biggie for me though.
  • Haven't used its fire proofing feature yet (a white list for saved accounts/passwords to prevent being cleared after using the Fire button feature)

Now, I wouldn't use it as my main daily driver. That's still Firefox, most probably because of my custom firefox css, bookmarks, and extensions setup (especially containers).

But I do use DDG browser once in a while, I guess to just have that fresh feeling of trying the new shiny thing (or just something out different from the regular daily routine). I use it almost like a tor browser-lite, after every session I'm done with using DDG, I click the Fire button/"Clear browsing history".

Might try it for an extended trial for some tasks but I'm using it to exclusively browse the federated communities and as an article reader for focus to mentally separate from the multi-tasking, less than 50 total tabs, hell that is Firefox at the moment.

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago
[-] KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I like the random link that shows you random pages. Reminds me of StumbleUpon.

[-] MrComradeTaco@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Right now using brave and presearch.

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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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