Hi, I’ve been using the DDG browser and search on and off for a bit. Specifically trying to contain more controversial stuff like politics into it. .
I just searched on the DDG browser with the DDG search, “2026 midterm primary results” hoping to find the 5 states that had primaries last night. The top horizontal scrolling results were all Michigan. Then the fucking AI bot that I thought I turned off. Then finally the real results…except the real results were 100% local to my state. My states primaries were months ago. There is no rewsonvehy my search should have yielded anything local to my state, and certainly not the entire first page.
Can someone shed a light onto why it would have done this? It feels invasive, at least with Google I can pretend that they know my location because I told them. But DDG? Nah, shits weird.
DuckDuckGo Search simply guesses your location using a GEO::IP lookup with the IP address that’s automatically sent to us via your device; then we throw away the IP address. […] The next time you perform a local search, selecting “Use Location” will send us a random location nearby, while hiding your actual location from DuckDuckGo. […] If you’d rather choose a custom location instead, you can pick “Set Location on Map” instead of “Use Location.” This bypasses the browser location permission, but still keeps your precise location anonymous to us.
I’ve just switched back to Brave, because (No AI) DDG keeps localizing results, despite region filter set to “All regions”; which really bugs me. If you want to disable Brave’s annoying AI “feature” (the reason I switched to DDG), without having to store a cookie: install the Redirector addon and ‘Create new redirect’ with:
Example URL:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=testInclude pattern:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=*Redirect to:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=$1&summary=0Edit: Lemmy reformatting contents of the code block
Simple answer: read the privacy policy from DuckDuckGo. That will hopefully address your concerns.
fucking AI bot
I don’t know about the browser, but you can use noai.duckduckgo.com and the AI thing will always be disabled without depending on a cookie or anything
This is the way to go. This way, it’ll persist even across cookie purges, browser containers, etc.
Unless you are using a VPN it’ll be estimating your location via IP address
This makes sense, thanks! How precisely does an IP address give me away? State level, metropolitan area, city, street?
Without metadata, municipal area. For larger cities that could be at the street or building level, for out in the country it’s wherever your ISPs trunk or fiber breakout is.
With metadata, often times right to your front door. With the isps metadata absolutely to your door.
Depending on the size of your city, they can estimate down to at least the city. In big cities or really small towns you can get it down to a street. In the event that your ISP has a data breach, they can see your exact house address.
Also depends on your provider’s infrastructure. On mobile data, I get sorted into a rough geographic region correctly. When I’m on my home WiFi, I usually get placed about 200-300km away from my real location.
Maybe put the date other than a year in your input?
Like you asked for something generic and expected something specific which you didn’t specify…
I mean, sure, I could have had a more specific search. I just assumed that DDG was privacy focused and more or less gave the same search results to everyone.
My states midterms happened months ago, and weren’t particularly newsworthy then. Let alone now.
Given the newsworthiness of Michigan, especially, and 4 other states last night, I would have expected to see results skew towards the trending news story as opposed to old, largely irrelevant, results that skew towards knowing who is performing the search.
It’s backwards of my expectations with the product. And based on my understanding of how search engines operate, youvare more likely to catch search engine bias with broad sweeping searches, than you would with hyper specific searches. As an example, this search was able to identify that DDG biases location over relevance/newsworthiness. Which is why I asked about it in the community I did.
I wasn’t complaining about the effectiveness of the search, rather the privacy concerns.
Try Qwant
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