I’ve seen a lot of discourse over which browsers we use and I myself have made the switch from brave to firefox. I still use brave as my search engine though, so… which do yall recommend? Is brave’s engine necessarily bad to use? I personally like its ui/theme.

  • @[email protected]English
    11•2 years ago

    I use startpage which is a google proxy. So, it does what duckduckgo does with bing but with google instead. Searx is also a great option. Neither have their own crawler though

    As for the brave engine there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. In fact, I’d argue it’s much safer than google, bing, or the proxies of each. While proxying you can still be fingerprinted. With brave only brave could do that and I trust them not to more than most.

    You should be cautious though, as brave has had some privacy issues before injecting affiliate links which would track you when going to ecommerce sites.

    Of course, the brave CEO is a piece of shit though. Full on covid conspiracy lab made Fauci plandemic ivermectin type stuff, believes that gay marriage should be illegal while donating to anti-gay orgs, and otherwise uses his position to further far right ideas. He also tries to fund weird micro nation projects with the goal of creating anarcho-capitalist heavens in the ocean. Think bioshock, but crypto bro. All around weird guy

    All this said, I’d still argue from a privacy perspective brave is a perfectly reasonable option. The company has one privacy controversy but that’s better than the big two. I’ll stick to startpage though for political reasons, until I find something with good enough results that’s fully independent and moral. Currently looking at mojeek myself

    • Hal-5700X
      3•2 years ago

      Of course, the brave guy CEO is a piece of shit though. Full on covid conspiracy lab made Fauci pandemic ivermectin type stuff, believes that gay marriage should be illegal while donating to anti-gay orgs, and otherwise uses his position to further far right ideas. He also tries to fund weird micro nation projects with the goal of creating anarcho-capitalist heavens in the ocean. Think bioshock, but crypto bro. All around weird guy

      Brendan Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla. So if you’re not going to use Brave because of him. How can you use Firefox?

      • 8bitguy
        9•2 years ago

        Eich resigned Mozilla and started Brave over pressure from Mozilla because of his opposition to same sex marriage, and financial support to anti-same sex marriage intiatives.

          • @[email protected]
            9•2 years ago

            And Mozilla basically kicked him out for his political beliefs, so how is that a reason not to use Mozilla software today?

      • foo
        8•2 years ago

        Brendan Eich is not involved with Mozilla anymore.

        He also created JavaScript though. So by your logic how can you use the web in general?

        • Hal-5700X
          2•2 years ago

          Brendan Eich is not involved with Mozilla anymore.

          Yeah, but he’s one of the co-founders. He did help make Mozilla.

          He also created JavaScript though. So by your logic how can you use the web in general?

          I’m not against using the stuff he made/helped to make. Because he keep his beliefs and his work separated.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•2 years ago

        I’m not, not directly. I’m using the mullvad browser. However, even if I was using firefox that is part of a not-for-profit organization that he is no-longer part of where the money and success do not benefit him. This is different than using a browser whose success gives him money, which he then uses to support causes I am vehemently against.

        If using brave did not support him I would accept an argument around my usage of it. It does however.

        Apologies for the fact that you’re getting downvoted, that is a reasonable question to ask

          • digdug
            4•2 years ago

            Okay, maybe a not-for-profit organization that he voluntarily resigned from gave him a golden parachute deal with perpetual royalties that’s totally secret. We can never know …

            One thing we do know? Using Brave has a 100% chance of supporting him financially.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        Oh shit, hey! Been a bit since I’ve said this but I’m happy to answer. I’ll admit I don’t remember exactly where, but I had asked about a privacy respecting independant search engine in a few matrix chats and separately did a bit of searching on startpage. It’s likely one of those two places I first found it but word of mouth through matrix is what convinced me to use it

        I’ve been liking the service btw, I think you guys are doing something fantastic

  • @[email protected]
    3•2 years ago

    For any given query, if you’re not satisfied with the first results out of one search engine, try two competing ones. Next time you have a search, begin with whatever one did the best on your previous search. Iterate. Record and publish your results.

    Folks were unsatisfied with AltaVista and Lycos; that’s how Google won for a while. At one point, Yahoo stood for “You Always Have Other Options”. You still do.

  • hitagi
    3•2 years ago

    Google’s localization is much better than any search engines I’ve tried.

  • Xusontha
    19•2 years ago

    I personally use Ecosia, it’s got a pretty decent privacy policy (esp compared to google/microsoft) and it uses Bing’s index so the results are pretty good. The main selling point is they use 100% of their profits for planting trees. The quality of the results is 99% of the time fine but if I ever get something I can’t find (or if I’m doing an image search) you can just add #g to your search to search google.

    It’s overall a pretty good search engine by itself, but the fact it plants trees pushes it leagues ahead of the others for me

  • luky
    2•2 years ago

    not duckduckgo from what i remember there was something with data and microsoft but you probably research thag before you trust me bcs i dont remember all of it. searchng is good, selfhosted or public instances. good luck

  • foo
    19•2 years ago

    Your question seems to be confusing between browser and search engine. These are two separate pieces of software.

    But to answer both:

    • Browser: Firefox. Google has demonstrated clearly that they cannot be trusted as the sole owner of the web which is what is about to happen as Chromium (which Brave is based on) fully takes over. Mozilla (makers of Firefox) is the last holdout. If you care, this is case in point about how Google having a monopoly on browsers will kill the free web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity.
    • Search engine: Another +1 for Kagi. It has completely replaced Google for me.
  • raubarno
    24•2 years ago

    Browser: Firefox because I can download its source code, use it, inspect, modify and share. All of these 4 freedoms make Firefox free, as in freedom. Brave is non-free (closed source and not contributing to software freedom).

    I use Qwant (unfortunately, it only works in the EU) and site-local search (Wikipedia, ArchWiki, etc.)

    All web search engines are crap, honestly. Maybe Kagi makes better, idk.

    EDIT: Brave is free, apparently.

  • DeebsterEnglish
    6•2 years ago

    I’m another Kagi fan - after customising it a little it’s just so good, and I haven’t even played with features like lenses.

    I really like the custom bang searches (e.g. I could make !ks gravity search on simple Wikipedia), especially on mobile since Firefox Android doesn’t support the normal browser quicksearches (where you set a keyword for each search).

  • @[email protected]English
    6•2 years ago

    4get.ca, it’s a metasearch engine, you can use it to get results from different search engines without trackers and anonymously