DuckDuckGo works really well for 90% of my “searches,” which are basically asking for a specific Wikipedia article / blog / Twitter account / etc, so I don’t have to type in the full URL.
But I find DuckDuckGo really bad for some searches where I’m not looking for a specific domain:
- searching for papers or technical blog posts is almost useless in DDG. Software stuff in particular seems heavily front-loaded towards SEO trash and plagiarized blogs/“tutorials” instead of useful information. Pure mathematics is a little better (probably because there isn’t a “pure mathematics boot camp” cottage industry)
- political news is heavily slanted to the right, often prioritizing flagrantly disreputable sources. While this might be a userbase issue (lots of lonely white men) I do wonder if DDG (or someone in their tech stack) is putting their thumb on the scale (maybe this comes up in Bing as well? I haven’t checked). I realize people on the right might say Google is slanted to the left and don’t want to get in to that. But DDG seems to push more outright propaganda than Google. Google also returns plenty of conservative results for politics news/blogs, but it seems very rare for DDG to return liberal commentary (even from major sources like The Guardian).
Obviously this is anecdotal and colored by my own interests and biases. But, especially with computer science stuff, I have given up on DDG returning reliable results. At this point I basically only use them as a Wikipedia gateway.
Part of the reason I suspect Bing/DDG return right-leaning content is because grassroots US internet culture itself slants slightly to the right (as it slanted to the left back 10 years ago). Whereas Google pushes authoritative sources heavily, which tend to skew corporate-left.
Corporate content is less likely to push flagrant untruths (unlike grassroots extremists on either side), and what propaganda there is, is usually much more subtle.
It is a plain statement of fact that far-right politics and privacy-focused tech culture in the US are dominated by white men. It is a reasonable inference to suppose that this would explain why DDG tends to overly promote far-right search results.
You really don’t need to be a social justice warrior to understand my point. It is a shame if either of these completely uncontroversial statements offends you, but HN in fact truly does not need your centrist form of political correctness policing legitimate comments.
I'm not here to be offended, only to disagree with the framing (and provide the additional context I think is more productive for this conversation). You can make those comments all you like.
The ultimate reason I disagree is that the users of DDG don't seem to influence their algorithm. I don't believe DDG is treating users like Google (and shaping results based on interests of the userbase).
But I find DuckDuckGo really bad for some searches where I’m not looking for a specific domain:
- searching for papers or technical blog posts is almost useless in DDG. Software stuff in particular seems heavily front-loaded towards SEO trash and plagiarized blogs/“tutorials” instead of useful information. Pure mathematics is a little better (probably because there isn’t a “pure mathematics boot camp” cottage industry)
- political news is heavily slanted to the right, often prioritizing flagrantly disreputable sources. While this might be a userbase issue (lots of lonely white men) I do wonder if DDG (or someone in their tech stack) is putting their thumb on the scale (maybe this comes up in Bing as well? I haven’t checked). I realize people on the right might say Google is slanted to the left and don’t want to get in to that. But DDG seems to push more outright propaganda than Google. Google also returns plenty of conservative results for politics news/blogs, but it seems very rare for DDG to return liberal commentary (even from major sources like The Guardian).
Obviously this is anecdotal and colored by my own interests and biases. But, especially with computer science stuff, I have given up on DDG returning reliable results. At this point I basically only use them as a Wikipedia gateway.