this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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my lil trick is I'd just add "Reddit" after most searches to find others in a similar situation or maybe a solution
2 months ago that was fine.
Now I don't have an app for that, the website on my mobile doesn't open my search and instead tells me to download the official Reddit app, or the subs are nsfw or private.
Sigh, so much for easy answers at a type of the finger :(
Not that I'm recommending anyone give reddit any more traffic or leverage, but I've been using Stealth app at the recommendation of someone else on here. It's downloadable through f-droid and specifically is meant to keep you anonymous and avoid any trackers and other trash normally found when opening reddit links. You can't even log into an account. I use it on the rare moments I'm looking for stuff on there, it makes me feel a bit better about it.
Solid advice m8, I downloaded that 1. Funny thing that the 1st thing I saw on the app once I entered was a message saying "in a few weeks Stealth will end due to end of free API". Sigh, these last months all these huge internet companies are making such a mess.
Up until the API debacle, that was my solution too. Now even that doesn't work. It's so bizarrely hard to look something up on the internet now.
I use chat GPT 4 for a lot of things instead of Google now.
Same here, for the reason that I don't have to scroll through crap pages that only exist to show ads.
https://librex.devol.it/
It's pretty amazing to search for something and actually see things you searched for.
Does this work any better than DuckDuckGo? People praise DDG, but imo it's results are pretty shit and I could never end to sticking with it. It can't even get basic quoted text syntax correct.
Yeah ddg is as bad as google imo. This works like the net used to be.
Damn, I've gotten so many good alternatives lately. Thanks for posting that.
Oh fuck man, that's a great find! Thank you for sharing that. It's actually providing really substantiative results which I haven't seen from Google for at least 5 years.
I have definitely bookmarked that website, even though I use duck duck go I will probably use that as an alternate now.
Another good search engine that's less useful for searches but for providing information is of course Wolfram alpha
Maybe that does work again after the thing with subreddits going nsfw has been somewhat resolved but not sure. It was my thing too. I heard good things about bing of all places. In general search just got worse over the last 5-6 years.
People talk about Bing and duck duck go like they're good replacements, and I've given them honest good faith tries.
I always switch my search engine back to Google after simply not getting the results I'm looking for
you can use Google or Bing from duckduckgo using !bangs. g! (for google) or b! (for bing) then whatever you are searching for. I use g! all the time for non privacy related things. and since duckduckgo doesn't use trackers and all that the results can be terrible so sometimes I just resort to using g!
Using DuckDuckGo to search through Google seems pretty damn pointless if you ask me. If the search engine is shit and I am just roundabout using Google then why even bother?
I know you said the thing about trackers, but a lot of us don't really care about that. If the end result is just using Google anyway then I'd rather just start with Google and not use another site to use Google.
oh yeah. if you don't care, there really is not a point to use duckduckgo. I should say IMO because I'm sure a much more technically minded person will have a better answer.
I disagree. A lot of the Google search results are based on your previous search history and your advertising profile the company has generated for you, which skews and promotes most of the front page Google search results as advertising links. And unless you're searching for an actual product, they are not so useful.
Like if I want to search for comments, and all my search results are advertising me telescopes and astronomy software that's not so helpful.
I think something broke with Bing's advanced search. It doesn't seem to respond at all.
I used Bing chat to plan my itinerary for my next vacation. These LLMs are the new best way to search, although the recent stories of their results becoming worse doesn't bode well
Literally the only time I still use reddit