It's occurred to me that the reason #DuckDuckGo is such an unshakable trend is #DDG marketers are fully exploiting the concept of #socialProof. https://ignitevisibility.com/social-proof/ They have mastered this approach to manipulate people. Everything they do is to leverage social proof. #showerThoughts
@tilduke That's an oversimplification. If you're familiar with logical fallacies, #socialProof is a covert way of injecting the "bandwagon fallacy" into your head subconsciously. But it's not just about creating an illusion of numbers of people, but more importantly *people like you*.
@tilduke E.g. notice how campaigning politicians used to have a curtain or flags behind them when they talk? Now notice that in the past ~10 years or so it has changed, so now there are *people* behind the politican w/a lousy view of the back of the politicans head? That's a deliberate abuse of #socialProof. They place a mix of races, genders, ages, and attactiveness behind the politician.
@tilduke They want viewers to see people that look like the viewer backing the politician, so that they subconsciously think "people like me like this guy".
@tilduke #DuckDuckGo wants privacy seekers to see other privacy seekers & privacy authority figures referencing #DDG. So DDG does things like donates huge amounts to projects like the #EFF, so that EFF will not only not condemn DDG, but actually recommend DDG. Bruce Schneier is a sell-out because of this. Schneier (a DDG board member) has a DDG search bar on his blog.
@tilduke So when people see Bruce Schneier endorsing DDG, they listen, and follow that example. It works because most people don't know who the sell-outs are. Every move DDG makes is to further the manipulation of #socialProof.
@resist1984 lol
Getting 403 Forbidden from their nginx.
All asshole websites I've encountered so far run on nginx. It must have some easy configuration switch that locks out "non-standard" user-agents, and clearly Lynx is non-standard.
(What's an #AssholeWebsite again? One that renders fine in Lynx, but where Lynx has to pretend to be firefox or chrome to get access.)
@icedquinn Doesn't what?
@resist1984 Thanks for reminding me of the age old marketing tactic spiffed up in the digital age. DDG is still better than Google even though it gets results from Google. I only recommend DDG to very few because of its ease of use. I recommend Searx to everybody who can take more than a minute and a few more steps to improve their digital hygiene.
@krock AFAIK, DDG only gets images (!image) from Google, but normal searches are sourced from #Microsoft Bing. And because MS is also the hosting provider for DDG, MS sees both the IP address and the query of every user. If you want Google results without google contact, Startpage is the common tool for that.
@resist1984
My flawed memory thought it came from G, but that might have been years ago and has changed to Bing as you say. "He who controls the past, controls the future." So MS is to gain with DDG. Owning Lockedin and Github and escaping current antitrust scrutiny puts them in a powerful position.
@resist1984
Seems to basically be a synonym for good reputation. Are you saying they are manipulating their reputation counter to their actual value?