DuckDuckGo Has Joined the Censorship Ranks with Google

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By the author of The Faithful Prepper and Zombie Choices.

As the silencing of all anti-MSM narratives grew throughout Big Tech, people around the world began to abandon Google, Safari, and other search engines for DuckDuckGo instead. Rush Limbaugh seemingly was a huge proponent of the search engine before he passed away due to cancer, and Americans everywhere finally felt as if they had not only found a search engine that would actually “not be evil” (what Google’s motto tells people to do), but that would protect their privacy, and allow for free searching of the internet without search results being toyed with.

That has now all ended.

As the mainstream narrative has merged into a proclamation that vodka must be poured out, Ukrainian Nazis must be supported, and that there is too much Russian disinformation out there, DuckDuckGo has now stated they are now going to begin downranking sites they deem to be Russian disinformation.

Here’s the problem, though: who gets to decide what is disinformation?

If anything, the past two years have taught us that the arbiters of truth are often blatantly lying to us. Two weeks to flatten the curve was anything but. Remember when saying anything counter to the Jussie Smollet narrative was a “dangerous conspiracy?”

Too many “conspiracies” were later revealed to be true by the establishment after the truth became too widespread and irrefutable. The downranking of what is deemed “disinformation” is often nothing more than a facade for the silencing of those we do not agree with.

When users began to respond to DuckDuckGo’s CEO/founder Gabriel Weinberg’s tweets, making it clear that avoiding downranking was the reason they had chosen to utilize the search engine, Weinberg replied that DuckDuckGo was about privacy.

This seems to be a misunderstanding on Gabriel’s part as to why so many users use DuckDuckGo, to begin with.

Sure, these people are most certainly interested in privacy, but DuckDuckGo found a wealth of new users as a result of the silencing of pro-American voices by Big Tech. People flocked to the platform with the hopes of finally having a means of finding information related to a topic without having to worry about the results of what they were searching for had been tinkered with to mesh with a political narrative.

(Pssst! You! Yeah, YOU! Check out our free QUICKSTART Guide on how to starve the beast.)

For these users to once more discover that their search engine of choice has resorted to filtering out “disinformation” only brings up bad memories reminiscent of Big Tech’s actions in the past (and modern-day, as well).

If one will remember, back from 2020, DuckDuckGo actually had something of a public relations problem after TechWorm (and others) reported that DuckDuckGo had been transferring users’ browser history to DDG servers without the end user’s consent. Whether this was done intentionally or not, the point remains that this created a serious degree of suspicion among the public on whether or not DuckDuckGo actually was as private as they claimed to be.

Gabriel Weinberg may have just caused irreparable damage to his company with this virtue signal.

There are multiple reports surfacing on social media of people who have already left the search engine never to return.

It had previously been reported that DuckDuckGo was responsible for 3% of all internet searches throughout the globe. It’s very plausible that this move by Weinberg will cause him to drop down to a decimal of all internet searches throughout the globe. I am personally of the notion that Weinberg is going to have to engage in a mass series of layoffs at DuckDuckGo in the very near future.

There will still be people who use the app out of laziness or (potentially) agreement with Weinberg’s position, but from my own anecdotal experience, everyone I know of who uses DDG is likely to seek alternative search engines, and I don’t think my experience here is the anomaly. DuckDuckGo had a very specific customer base, and Weinberg just voluntarily pushed them away. And for what? Both Ukraine and Russia have serious levels of propaganda that are being pumped out at the moment. Does Weinberg expect his customer base to trust him with dictating what is truth and what is not here?

Alternatives to DuckDuckGo are stepping into the newfound gap.

In response to DuckDuckGo’s announcement, the search engine Brave has come out to state that they don’t downrank/censor any of their search results and never will. This is an obvious move to harvest users who are looking for an alternative to DuckDuckGo as the exodus commences, and it very likely is going to work. Brave saw a massive spike in users throughout 2020, and it’s likely to see even more this year.

People don’t like search results being hidden from them. People don’t like being told what to believe, what is real, and what is not. People want to discover the truth for themselves – to make their own decisions. And it’s because of Weinberg’s refusal to acknowledge this that his company is in for hard times ahead.

What do you think about this?

Do you think Duck Duck Go is justified in downranking Russian sites?  Will you change search engines? Which search engines do you recommend? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

About Aden

Aden Tate is a regular contributor to TheOrganicPrepper.com and TheFrugalite.com. Aden runs a micro-farm where he raises dairy goats, a pig, honeybees, meat chickens, laying chickens, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. Aden has two published books, The Faithful Prepper and Zombie Choices. You can find his podcast The Last American on Preppers’ Broadcasting Network.

Aden Tate

Aden Tate

Leave a Reply

  • Do you think Duck Duck Go is justified in downranking Russian sites?
    No.
    Will you change search engines?
    Yes.
    Which search engines do you recommend?
    Going to try Brave search while I look for others. I’ll probably try Tor browser some as well.

      • Don’t use Start Page, they’re very much compormised. Do some research and you’ll see. They’re owned by Big Tech now.

      • Since hearing about DDG issues recently, I have been using SwissCows for search engine. I use Brave for internet browser. Based on recommendations a year ago. Brave is not 100% accepted for all websites and apps but works pretty well.

        • Another possibility is Qwant. I’ve used it on occasion with no issues. Probably go to it by default now since I had been using DuckDuckGo.

  • Someone at a club I belong to had recommended duck-duck-go as a non-censored/non-tracked browser. So that’s what I was using. Because they will now be determining what is worth my eyeballs, I will no longer be using them, and you can bet the person who recommended them won’t either, nor will anyone else in our group. I’ll try Brave and see how that it.

  • Lol I don’t care about Russia or Ukraine. Ones a dictator and the others a kommie.
    I’m trying to figure out what I’d be searching that would take me to a kommie site first. NOTHING

    I’m pretty sure we got a lot bigger issues than this. If y’all actually think this “war” is real or about something the media showed you you’ve learned nothing the last two years.

    Control what you can and prepare for definites and strong possibilities

    • While I realize that each of us can’t fight every battle, I truly believe we’re in this mess now because we refused to fight the little ones for so long.

  • I dropped DuckDuckGo immediately when I heard this.

    I was always suspicious of them because Google Chrome and other browsers always had DuckDuckGo as a setting you could select for searches. Why would fascist tyranny-loving companies like Google, who were created for the purposes of the Great Reset one world fascist anti-science dystopia, allow you to select something that they would oppose?

    Anyway, DuckDuckGo’s completely idiotic announcements made it easy to finally drop them.

  • I have moved to Brave on my mobile device and I am using SwissCows as my search engine on my laptops. Both meet my needs until the day they become information censors.

    • The point is not that censorship of news is not important because you just use your search engine for shopping. The point is that you should be concerned about the loss of one of your freedoms and should not be supporting any search engine that decides what you will and won’t see. It brings to mind the old WWII quote from a German Christian minister that said the Nazis came for various groups that it didn’t approve of and the person did nothing because it didn’t affect him directly, but when the Nazis eventually came for him, there was no one left to speak up for him. You have to let these search engine companies know in no uncertain terms that if they take it upon themselves to determine what is allowable information, you will move to another company that won’t censor your searches. Hit them in the pocketbook. That’s the only language they will understand.

      • I think there’s a difference between marking something considered being disinformation and censoring.

        I also think the search engines would be against the Nazi propaganda, not the other way around.

  • Probably for most people … any of these search engines will probably suffice “most” of the time:

    https://search.brave.com/

    https://swisscows.com/

    https://presearch.org/

    But it’s worth knowing that worldwide there are several hundred search engines and several different search engine directories to help you sort through that mess. The more specialized your needs, the more likely one of those directories might help you to target a search engine for your specific needs.

    –Lewis

  • Some recommendations (including Brave, which is the one I use) worth investigating from Manuel over at strangesounds.com:

    Mojeek
    Searx
    Whoogle
    Seznam
    Peekier
    Infinity Search
    Okeano

  • We have Duck Duck Go on our phones as well as our pc. Yesterday, my phone wouldn’t let me go to Frugalite. I doubt it’s a coincidence.

      • Independence, self-reliance/resilience from Big Box stores, Big Tech, Big Rx, Big Ag, government???

      • “How on earth could a frugal living website be a threat to anyone?”

        simple. it’s a threat to their goals for you – complete subservience to and dependency upon them.

      • Didn’t make any sense to me. But I tried several times and it wouldn’t let me go there. Sometimes bigtech takes an objection to something and doesn’t even say why. facebook disallows links to my personal blog and it’s mostly about home stuff with rare mentions of politics and Christianity.

  • I will be leaving DDG now and will continue with my main engine Firefox as it provides a superb bookmark library in which I have thousands of websites easily indexed and referenced. Plus they are open source which I always support. I will continue with BRAVE and leave it there for now and see what the Globalist’s next censorship agenda will reveal.

  • Thanks for all of the alternative search engine suggestions. I looked at Brave about a week ago when I first got an inkling that DDG was compromised. Never heard of Swiss Cow; I use Opera as my browser and their drop down menu for search engine alternatives is not alternative friendly with not even one search engine that I would use. This whole scenario of search engines and browsers is a rats nest; it is difficult to put it all together. I have been using protonmail.c for some time because of their encryption of my messages and have been having some strange anomolies occur; I do not believe that my mail is being read at this point, but looks to me like they are reading my subject title for a message and disappear some of them that they don’t like (seemingly Christian subjects). I investigated PM and discovered that the company was founded by some former (and maybe not fomer) scientist from the CERN project and the thought that that project seems to have satanic/demonic connections is of concern; now, I am very careful about my subject titles to avoid loss of data.

    • Opera is tied in with snapchat and instagram so do not use that one. And Opera is run by a Chinese company.

  • FYI for Firefox users; Update 98.0.1 – Release Notes

    Yandex and Mail.ru have been removed as optional search providers in the drop-down search menu in Firefox.

    If you previously installed a customized version of Firefox with Yandex or Mail.ru, offered through partner distribution channels, this release removes those customizations, including add-ons and default bookmarks. Where applicable, your browser will revert back to default settings, as offered by Mozilla. All other releases of Firefox remain unaffected by the change.

  • Hmmm… does anyone else think that Russian vodka will become the 21st-century version of Cuban cigars?

    This sounds like what Gilette did, pushing away users. Who uses Gilette razors? Men. So why would you have man-hating commercials? Virtue signaling, why else? I no longer buy their products, and I’m also going to move away from DDG. Brave, PreSearch, Gigablast, SwissCows, etc. for me. Of course, I still use Google on odd occasions, like their scholar search engine, but not for regular searches, and no longer DDG.

  • Previously used DuckDuck. Have tried Brave, but find it to have less search results and also fewer listings per page. Still looking for another search engine.

  • Tor is government run so that is out. Brave saves info and is not quite trustworthy either (and they use a chrome based browser which tracks). I have run out of options. Startpage you have to make an account so that is making a record of who you are.

  • Firefox believes in total internet censorship. I have researched them all and have come up with the info I have posted on my comments.

  • “Too many ‘conspiracies’ were later revealed to be true”

    pretty much all of them, actually.

    “Gabriel Weinberg”

    .

  • I switched my search engine right away. I have Brave browser, so I switched to Brave SE.

    I just checked several search engines on Hillary Clinton, corona masks, corona vaccine deaths and corona vaccine injuries, all gagme-altered subjects. The results were disquieting–all SE’s I tried were heavily biased toward one side or the other.

    I tried brave, swisscows.com, yandex, presearch. If anybody finds a real, unbiased SE that will show all sides of a question, please let me know.

  • There’s also a new search engine called “PreSearch” that doesn’t censor their searches and also provides the necessary privacy.

  • Yes, I am going to change default sites. My husband has used nothing but Brave for years now. I tried it a few years back, but found it to be slow, so I opted for DDG. Not now. Privacy and autonomy matter more to me than speed. If they care, DDG just sealed the deal for my preference.
    Thanks for the article.

  • EVERY time somebody comes up with a decent service (email, search engine, forum, whatever) the NAME STEALERS move in and buy (or steal) the service, then turn it into a moneymaking machine, selling our data to the highest bidder (first to the three-letter-boys, though). This’ll happen to the semi-independent ‘good ones’ suggested here, too.

  • Try startpage.com
    They were my backup option after deciding on usinf DDG back in 2013
    More recently, I’ve tried swisscows.com

  • I order these engines find everything for me nearly every time:

    -Perkins
    -Caterpillar
    -International
    -Detroit

    I avoid john deere at all costs. Mainly due to the costs.

  • I read your article DuckDuckGo Has Joined the Censorship Ranks with Google. That does it! ‘DuckDuckGoogle’ not my search engine anymore. Huge mistake GW! I say no to woke! Changing over to Brave. Good riddens!

  • Wow… I started using DDG because of Rush Limbaugh about 5 or 6 years ago. Now I read you info and am stunned though I really shouldn’t be. I’ll give brave a try… and hope that it doesn’t fall into the same scheme as DDG. Thanks for your giving us the scoop.

  • I don’t believe Duck Duck Go is justified in what it’s doing!
    I’ve deleted them and no longer use them.
    I’m already using Brave browser and going to do Brave search as well.
    If they go down the same road hopefully a few others will already be up and ready to handle all of
    us who have had enough with the nonsense.

  • Unless you want information about Russia, the Yandex search engine (made in Russia) is very raw, honest and unfiltered.

    If you have sense enough you’ll know what in the results is propaganda from Russia’s side. But the American big tech/ globalist media filter is totally absent. No more pushing BLM, gay rights and zionism in searches like “barbecue chicken”, lol.

    Every search engine is curated, but with Russia’s Yandex you know where they stand, so you can curate yourself.

    • “with Russia’s Yandex you know where they stand, so you can curate yourself”

      for free citizens, honest free speech is always the best policy all around. for cattle herders, limits and restrictions on speech are always the best policies for control.

  • As a result of the comments in this article, I decided to try SwissCows. Can’t believe how fast it is and it brings up useful results (at least for what I’m searching). DDG might have been privacy oriented but it was slow and the results were limited and not very usable. So DDG going down the wrong path has actually led me to a better choice! Thanks DDG – you have just cut off your nose to spite your face!

  • I agree that the Brave search engine seems very viable at the moment. Although the Russian search engine Yandex is still completely operational and hasn’t censored anything I have searched, so far. (In spite of what the media is “reporting.”) What’s disturbing me, is that it’s OUR media and sites that are omitting and distorting information, not the sources that they’re claiming. Which reminded me of an older comedy video “Are We The Baddies?” …. Jeez, I hope not.

  • Swisscows has this statement; not entirely reassuring:
    “What makes Swisscows different from other search engines?
    Our search engine protects your privacy while searching AND FROM INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT [caps mine] in the results. We do not use cookies or other tracking technologies; your search query remains anonymous with us and you are a guest without a user profile. At Swisscows you will find everything you are looking for without being found.”

  • I have switched to Brave search….and I was a big fan of DuckDuckGo until the censorship move was made……will they never learn , deliver what you do best, technical prowess….but get off the social judgement and censorship kick…..be what people envisioned you to be in the first place , a breath of fresh air and a true alternative to the OTHER GUYS……goodbye DuckDuckGo , it was nice to know ya before you got stooooooopid……..

  • In my own tests, the (supposedly censoring) Russian search engine, Yandex, gave far more unbiased results than DuckDuckGo, concerning Russia and Ukraine. It’s a sad day when the supposedly very best, most private search engine America has to offer, is more tyrannical than the most popular search engine in Russia.

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