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Already discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490515

395 points, 240 comments

Could we change the title to say "DuckDuckGo Browser Isn't..."? This has nothing to do with their search.
Plus, this might be a bit nitpicky on my part, but “X isn't as Y as you thought” headlines are almost always uninformative clickbait. I mean, how private did I think DuckDuckGo [browser] was before? Did you think it was more private than I did? Or less? How private did the author believe it to be?

I would much prefer informative headlines which make no assumption of prior beliefs, for example:

“X sells itself as Y, but it does Z”

“X not as Y as alternative option A is”

...or even a headline where the author's subjective belief is invoked, if that is the style of the article:

“X isn't as Y as I thought”

If you are doing ANYTHING on the internet you do not have privacy. If this is news to you then the internet isn't as private as you thought.
Privacy is not binary. There are degrees of it and it's dependent on context.

The problem here is that DDG promotes itself as a highly private service and at the same time makes a deal to share tracking data with (arguably) one of the worst privacy offenders.

This makes them substantially less privacy-friendly than they make it seem.

With respect to Microsoft being one of the worst privacy offenders, can you please expand on this?

Why can't you just unlink your Microsoft login and use offline account if you're using Windows, or use ad blockers? Even if you somehow see an ad aimed at you, why can't it be in your power to just ignore them? Think in the terms of "I'll only look up a product/services if I have a functional need for it" rather than fall to the trap of "just because I have lots of money doesn't mean I have to spend it today"?

A lot of times by the way if I see something I fancy, I'd end up looking at Amazon and find the best product at affordable cost, so I don't really click on any ads. If I recall even, I NEVER click on an ad, I'd go as far that I ignored sponsored ads in Amazon, so what's the problem with ads?

I was talking about Microsoft being an offender in general, not necessarily anything specific to this deal.

That said, each new datapoint a large data broker like Microsoft gets adds that much more to their ability to deanonymise you, regardless of whether you're logged in to any of their services or not. This can happen more directly (e.g. shared, long-lived cookies), or indirectly via techniques like fingerprinting.

Either something is private or it is not. What you suggest is that most situations favor the latter.
The only thing that's 100% private are your own thoughts, as long as you don't share them. Everything else fits in a gradient.
True, but DDG using trackers is a problem of a different order.
DDG has received too much unconditional, cryptomaniac-like praise (from HN), so it's good to give them some doubt every now and then.
Doubt is fine, but there aren't many alternatives in this space. Relative to the competition I feel it deserves this praise.
Unless it breaks its only advantage.
And it does not. The title is misleading.
HN is very susceptible to pseudo-nerd hype (Encrypted apps that are actually honeypots, decentralized networks that really are not etc), since a lot of people are not very deeply technical (but consider themselves geeks) they fall for this type of marketing.
Name one decentralized anything that HN praises.
bittorrent
Ill concede to that, but you have to admit, HN does not favor the things in this area.
As much as I enjoy hating DDG, this is about their browser, not their search engine. I doubt many people use their browser at all, so this doesn't impact as many people as the title implies.
DuckDuckGo's browser isn't as private as you thought; this doesn't seem relevant to their search engine, which AFAIK is what most people think of when they see "DuckDuckGo"
Yup. You would have thought HN would care about the truth rather than just reading headlines and assuming the worst. I imagine very few people here are even using the DDG browser.
I was not even aware that DDG has a browser.
It's a rebranded webview/chromium like basically all alternative browsers.
I think I have it, though I never really found a need for it since I have DDG set up as search engine on mobile firefox anyway. There is no point to that app...
Yes, and insofar as other browsers don't block any scripts, it seems safe to say that the DDG browser is still strictly better than those other browsers, isn't it?
Thanks for pointing this out. It is certainly what /I/ thought of.
I switched over to Brave Browser and Brave Search, both more than sufficient to meet my needs.
I think Brave has builtin crypto nonsense though? Which is worse than any trackers.
How? You have the option to see ads and get paid. Don't opt in if it doesnt interest you.

It shouldnt even be in the same conversation as trackers tracking you across the internet.

It's also such a small part of their product. Without it on, you wouldnt notice it exists.

It's a curate's egg situation. "Only a little bit of our product contains the largest tech scam of the 21st century". Once a small part of your product is infected, the entire product is corrupted.
I guess I dont agree.

They created their own currency. They pay you that currency to view ads. You can take that currency and hold it, or exchange it for dollars, every time it pays out.

Is it basically the same as a centralized loyalty program? Eh, sort of, but once you have your points, you can go sell them to anyone else, off platform. It's an improvement in usability over any sort of reward points in the restaurant and ecommerce industries. I dont think BAT is a scam. There isnt a promise that holding it will make you rich. There is actually an economy for it, as advertisers are buying it for a reason, vs it just being something that people buy hoping to later offload on to the next sucker.

And it is optional. Don't turn it on, and the product isnt infected at all.

Brave is 100x worse than DDG, they're just cryptocurrency grifters. Their search service isn't OSS either.
Is DDG search OSS?
This site says otherwise.

https://privacytests.org/

doc told me cigarettes are good for my nerves
Second hit piece in DDG in as many days.
Seems like media coverage of the same Microsoft issue that was posted on HN yesterday. Hardly a "hit piece".
To me, this is clearly a hit piece. The headlines insinuate that this applies to all of DDG.

This only affects the DDG mobile app. Just for starters, and not to be snarky, but doesn't the very use of a mobile telephone contradict concerns about privacy?

The whole thing has a slashdotty kind of odor to it.

"doesn't the very use of a mobile telephone contradict concerns about privacy"

yes. bought the Librem5... still waiting though...

Sensational stuff sells... Better to focus on the twitter conversation linked from the article instead.
DDG is just another company that converts (y)our data to money.
My understanding is that they make money by providing ads based on your current search, a bit like a good old gardening magazine would make money by printing ads related to gardening. That is very unlike Google and Facebook etc.
I did not compare it to other companies and my statement is still true. Prove me wrong you all down-voters.
> just another company

By using "another" vs "a" you are implicitly drawing a comparison. And, I think we all, and you, are very aware of that.

DDG is more private than Google or Bing, which is what really matters for most people. But since it's closed source, there is a degree of risk that it tracks more than it says. It might eventually get purchased or coerced somehow (like their recent contract issues with MS.)

Searx is the best search engine I'm aware of right now provided you can find an instance that works (searx.be is good for me.)

Is it really more private? I don't think we can ever know.

The fact that DDG is neither of Google or Bing should probably be what really matters.