First SearXNG, now 4get, it scrapes from Yandex as well
Thank you so much for this one comrade! I am very thankful!
I have been trying multiple at this point, though I am not sure I found one I am happy with. I tend to use SearXNG, but I tend to make too many searches too quickly and it causes various search engines to block me for a bit.
I thought I should share another search engine if it helps:
Here’s a few more search engines:
Marginalia Search - A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design - I just tried this one, and it’s very handy. Definitely recommend, though the results may not be relevant depending on your search, but sometimes you may find another similar site you would want to bookmark for later.
wiby - A search engine of curated websites, useful for finding small blogs
Mojeek - Proprietary but uses its own web crawler
MWMBL - A free, open-source, and non-profit search engine
At this point, I have been unsatisfied with search engines because the internet it just filled with SEO optimized crap. I made a habit of bookmarking every interesting or useful thing I find. I rely on sites like Lemmy/Lemmygrad, Reddit, Hacker News, etc. to find interesting links. I also look for awesome list git repositories (such as this, this, this, and this) (and this and this to search for more) and Reddit/Lemmy wikis to find useful resources. If I find (semi-)trustworthy news sites like Grayzone, AntiWar, etc., I will keep a tab open to use that as my news feed instead of Reddit. If I want to look up a news story or opinion on a search engine, I tend to add the word “Marxist” or “socialist” and it sometimes gives me results I want. If I want to find help online, I either find the documentation web page or I will just add the word “reddit” since I still rely on reddit question posts to find answers.
Bringing Back The Minimal Web - A blog post about an idea I agree with and that I want to see manifested
One thing I would wish if we reach a socialist society is for everyone to be provided the option to make their own website (multiple options available for various levels of tech savviness, from self-hosting on one’s own dedicated server to “simplified web designing tools with presets” for the least tech savvy) subsidized by the government. Then a search engine can be built to prioritize those sites, especially those that people used to make important informational resources.
I also like browsing Gemini websites, which requires a browser add-on or an entirely different browser. You may learn about it here: https://geminiprotocol.net/
I wish there were more Marxist Gemini capsules, though I hope to make Gemini equivalent mirrors of important Marxist websites someday.
I also wish there to be an org-mode protocol to make websites as org documents for emacs. There’s this person’s blog post that mentioned a similar idea, which I found from this discussion on Reddit.
I find that visiting niche communities on niche platforms helps with finding quality content and resources, thus I tend to enjoy looking through old/new protocols and small websites/platforms before they are flooded with commercialized crap and are abused by users that don’t respect the sites’ rules/etiquette/culture.
Sidenote: If you like to sail the seven seas, you can self-host Jackett to use as a proxy server to query torrents.
I tried to mention other search engines, protocols, and tactics that no one else mentioned yet. I am glad you found one you are happy with. :) I know I made a wiki-like comment at this point, lol.
Do you find Gemini to be very reactionary as of late? I’ve been browsing Gemini for at least 2 years now, it has become full of fash and like 2 anarchists, at least in aggregators such as Antenna and Cosmos.
I store bookmarks in a text file and have over 300 at this point in less than one year.
Yeah, I do find it the same, but I still find some helpful and interesting computer-related blog posts.
I have been storing my bookmarks in Firefox and Buran for Gemini on my android phone, but I eventually want to transfer all of them to a text file and launch links via a menu launcher like dmenu, bemenu, etc.
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It’s risky to self-host your searx instance for privacy reasons if you don’t share it with at least a few dozen people.
https://jacobwsmith.xyz/stories/searx.html
Hosting Your Own Searx Instance is a Bad Idea
Moving your search requests from one of your IP addresses to another doesn’t do much for privacy
July 26, 2021
Searx is a wonderful piece of software, it runs on a remote server and upon request will query multiple search engines all at once to find find what you are looking for, hiding the IP address you are using from all of these so that those search engines have a much harder time profiling you. Not only that but it has features that make it easy to find files across the internet and it has an incredibly functional UI that is not pretty enough for you to want to spend hours looking at it so it theoretically causes you to spend less time on your computer. And to many people the fact that you can host it yourself is absolutely great, but once you take a critical look at it you’ll find that it may not be the best idea.
Now don’t get me wrong, in many cases self hosting is great as it helps to decentralize our ever shrinking internet, but from a privacy perspective hosting your own instance of Searx is not a good idea. So which of these two things would you rather do, enter a search into one search engine allowing it to take record of your search linked to your IP address, or enter that same search into a dozen search engines letting them all take record of that search linked to your IP address? Obviously if you’re trying to protect your privacy you’d prefer the first option, but when you self-host an instance of Searx (which is being touted as the best thing for privacy) the latter option is what you are doing, sure your server is not located where you live so all those search engines won’t be able to track your location but they can still profile you based off of your searches that came from your server which is still an IP address that belongs to you. A self-hosted Searx instance is terrible for privacy, from a privacy perspective you’re probably better off just using DuckDuckGo or maybe even Google (although any search engine which shows ads before they show search results is unethical and should never be used), even without a VPN.
Now I imagine that I will get a bit of hate for making this observation, understand I am not bashing on Searx as a technology I think that it is absolutely great for many reasons, I’ve used it in the past and I will likely start using it again soon, I just find that it is important for people to critically think about programs that they may ever consider running, especially if you want them to run 24/7 on your server. If you want to use Searx find an instance that someone you trust is hosting, and if you do feel like you need to host a Searx instance yourself convince a few dozen people to use your instance as well, by drastically multiplying the number of diverse searches your Searx instance is handling, real search engines will probably mark your server’s IP address as one belonging to a bot and chose not to profile it as it would to one that was only handling the searches of a single person. Searx is a great tool for privacy, but as with all tools it must be used correctly in order to be effective.
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I believe the issue would still be the same because it is still just your searches alone, which means a profile can be built based on your activity, regardless if done through a VPN, a “bot”, or the search engine itself. Self-hosting SearXNG essentially multiplies this issue by the number of search engines you use.
Getting your friends and family to use the instance can help obfuscate the potential profile to make it more difficult to tie the profile to yourself.
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I’m not sure. I figured a profile could still be built based on similar searches across multiple IPs, which could be linked to the same person. I’m assuming search engines like Google are smart enough to detect similar data/metadata in such a fashion. What I understood from the article is that its not necessarily a matter of changing your IP, but making your searches appear generalized enough to not be easily matched to your tendencies/behavior/language, like alternating your walking style and covering your tracks so that it is more difficult to track you. Having a group of people use your instance hides yourself amongst a crowd essentially, since different people have different ways of expressing themselves.
How is the performance?
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various SearXNG instances (I don’t trust them all to be private, but some will be) and occasionally DuckDuckGo (because it’s the default in Tor Browser)
I’d like to use SearXNG instances but they don’t seem to be reliable enough, so I use Yandex to annoy the libs (bonus that they don’t block Lemmygrad results from naturally appearing)
Why Yandex particularly?
It’s also good for finding torrents and free streaming services since other mainstream search engines like Google censor those results.
Really? Oh! I might try it for those then!
Mostly because they’re based in Russia to be honest so they don’t filter out “Russian propaganda”
I know they’re tracking though. I’ll happily switch if I could find an engine that doesn’t track and is reliable.
Can Yandex be added in SearXng?
That’s a good point. The website doesn’t indicate it searches Yandex, but perhaps there is an instance that does since it’s open-source and all
I’m more often finding myself searching specific websites than using a web wide search engine these days, but when I need to it’s generally DDG Lite.
DuckDuckGo because Google is now complete trash, but also because it specifically allows for searching within specific countries, whereas Google likes sending me to captcha hell if I do too many searches in different languages or dare to use a VPN. There are other neat features too, but that was the biggest reason to just drop google completely.
Because I’ve fallen for their privacy focused marketing strategy and I don’t know about any other alternatives.
mostly startpage.com and qwant.com…anything to avoid using google directly
Searxng when I can. At the very least it proxies other search engines and helps a bit with the censoring of various results.
Do you know if there is a way to proxy Yandex search results?
When you self host you can add whatever you like as a search engine. I’m sure someone has already shared the couple config lines required to add Yandex.
Duckduckgo. Not for the privacy concerns, I believe that about as far as I can spit, but becaues I really like their bangs system. A lot of them have become very second nature for me at this point.
Also ducks are cute.
If I am searching something in Chinese I try to use baidu, but my actual chinese level is not that great. Working on it.
Those all get blocked at my office (any unusual TLD are just automatically blocked) so I will probably end up sticking to DDG. I could use them at home but it’s nice just to have a fairly consistent experience.
I hope everyone here knows that DDG is censoring it’s search results https://www.vox.com/recode/22981115/duckduckgo-free-speech-privacy-oops so people’d rather use yandex instead of this shit
At one point, gpo.zugaina.org was censored due to a change in Bing’s web crawler (I think), which was the last straw that led me not use DDG as my primary search engine anymore.
Isn’t Yandex shit with privacy though
Oh I see. Thanks
