Jonas :fedora:  

Today's act of kindness: I helped two victims of surveillance (mainstream users) with some basic privacy:

Google search > DuckDuckGo
Chrome > Firefox + uBlock Origin
Gmail > @Tutanota
Minimize number of apps

Simple actions that cuts a big chunk of surveillance. As usual they were surprised how it works.

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resist1984  

@Tutanota @jonas @Tutanota is a terrible recommendation. see dev.lemmy.ml/post/29179

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Wu Wei :xfce: :rss: :fsf:  

@resist1984

Privacy is almost always relative to the threat model of the individual.

Searxes often get blocked or simply don't return anything due to bad configuration.
Despite that I prefer them and recomended it to all my tech friends.

However it's simply a poor choice for an average person that preffers stuff like search bubbles and targeted ads

@jonas

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resist1984  

@wuwei @jonas I think you're confusing the Searxes instance (searxes.eu.org) w/the the decentralized network. If you use a searx instance arbitrarily it often gets zero results; but Searxes avoids that problem & gives good results

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Wu Wei :xfce: :rss: :fsf:  

@resist1984

No, I'm afraid I wasn't confusing a tree for the forest.

However can you expand on your Searxes avoids that problem comment?

Are you talking about constant public instance switching, self-hosting, meta-searxes or something else entierly?
@jonas

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resist1984
Follow

@wuwei @jonas Searxes is coded to randomly select from a pool of quality searx instances on each query. It then does some post-processing to filter results. Searxes never says "due to there are no results". IDK how it avoids that. Either the source pool is only instances that don't scrape or it jumps to another instance in the background.

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Wu Wei :xfce: :rss: :fsf:  

@resist1984

I looked at it now. It's a meta-searx. That means it scrapes off of other searx instances and switches between them as needed.

However it also means it lacks some basic searx features like choosing which search engines to use.
Something that is very important depending on your language or when searching for images and other specific file formats.

Also it's hosted by some random dude in Germany which isn't exactly ideal.

Thanks for the link still

@jonas

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resist1984  

@wuwei @jonas Like , all searx instances are inherently meta-search engines. Searxes is a meta-search of searx instances, which you could call a meta-meta-search. Meta-searching does not necessarily imply scraping. A meta-search can be accomplished by scraping &/or using an API. The searx s/w is not designed for corporate protectionism. It's unlikely that Searxes scrapes.

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resist1984  

@jonas @wuwei many searx nodes scrape b/c they tend to be non-profit projects. But Searxes most likely uses an open API to get results from searx nodes.

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resist1984  

@wuwei @jonas is a US-based /for profit/ corporation that pays privacy abusing surveillance capitalists (VZ, MS, Amazon), which should make you far more uncomfortable than a random guy in a basement working on a project that is likely not for profit.

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resist1984  

@jonas @wuwei also note that if whatever strange bias leads to you trust a profit driven corporation more than a privacy driven non-profit, would be a better choice than

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