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by qoez4 days ago |
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upvoteby whitehexagon4 days ago|
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I use DDG too, but that has also recently started inserting AI spam as the first result. I keep switching if off, but soon reappears. I dont care if it useful or not, but on principle I wont buy or use any service with 'AI', I find it almost as offensive as all the advertising shoved down our throats.
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upvoteby jacekm3 days ago|
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Just kill it with uBlock. The more elegant way would be to inject a proper parameter to session storage with some kind of extension. Or switch to the light version of the service https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/

edit: I can see that in a comment below @yegg shared an even better way - switching to https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

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upvoteby Aurornis3 days ago|
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> Silly name but the results are no different

DDG is my default, but I’ll be the first to admit that the results are not as good. I have a bookmark to quickly switch to Google when I need something specific and DDG isn’t cutting it.

DDG also seems to have adopted the YouTube search strategy where once you scroll past the first several dozen results you start getting non-specific results that aren’t entirely related to your query.

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upvoteby Clamchop3 days ago|
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DDG supports !g to direct the search to Google, among many, many other bang shortcuts: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
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upvoteby andy12_3 days ago|
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What's up with that search bar for bangs? Every time I write a new letter it appears to reload the webpage, polluting the browser history, and it's extremely slow, frequently missing letters if I type fast enough. That is by far the worst search bar that I have ever seen in any web page.
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upvoteby alganet4 days ago|
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The normal DuckDuckGo also has their own AI assistant.

You need to use plain HTML DuckDuckGo in order to get rid of it.

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html

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upvoteby Throwthrowbob4 days ago|
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If you don't use Private Browsing (or the equivalent) or otherwise clear your browsing cache, DuckDuckGo's AI assistant can be disabled by:

- clicking the little gear to the right of the search types (near "Assist" and "Duck.ai")

- Click on "Manage" for AI Features

- Setting "Duck.ai" to Off

- Setting "Assist" to Never

To the right of the features above, I saw one can save their settings with a password, to the "cloud". This seems to be that you can enter this password when using DuckDuckGo elsewhere for your settings to be set again (or in Private sessions, though you'd have to re-enter the password on a new session).

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upvoteby yegg4 days ago|
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We also offer https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ which is just regular DuckDuckGo with AI features turned off.
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upvoteby jacquesm3 days ago|
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I have to pay you my respect. I've been watching DDG pretty much since day #1 and against all odds you've managed to both stay the course (which pretty much everybody claimed you would not) and steadily improve on it. It's one of the most impressive projects in this space, which many have tried and eventually gave up on (or compromised their ethics). Thank you.
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upvoteby yegg3 days ago|
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Thanks! I really appreciate your comment.
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upvoteby jacekm3 days ago|
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Thank you! I have no issues with occasional AI responses but nevertheless it's great to have a choice!

Are there any other subdomains worth knowing? I was only aware of the Lite version so far.

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upvoteby yegg3 days ago|
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There is noai, html, and lite (and even lighter variant of html).
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upvoteby mdaniel3 days ago|
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I had no idea about this subdomain. Had you not shown up to this thread, how would a DDG user have known about this?
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upvoteby yegg3 days ago|
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If you disable Assist from the inline dialogue, there is a message that comes up about it, but I agree we need to show that in more places, like in the settings screen.
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upvoteby BanazirGalbasi3 days ago|
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Maybe include it in the Assist response window? I know you can disable Assist from the settings icon there, but also including a way to avoid AI entirely where it's most relevant also seems like a reasonable approach.
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upvoteby yegg3 days ago|
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Now, the first few times you interact with Assist, a dialogue automatically appears asking you how much you want it to show.
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upvoteby privatelypublic3 days ago|
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Most people have been trained to just ignore that stuff.
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upvoteby Throwthrowbob2 days ago|
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How does one get the combined effects of multiple subdomains? For example, no AI, safe browsing, html, lite, as proposed by others?
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upvoteby alganet3 days ago|
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That is very cool, thanks!
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upvoteby KingMob4 days ago|
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Or you could turn it off in the settings, which is much easier: https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures
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upvoteby 4 days ago|
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deleted
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upvoteby agnishom4 days ago|
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I really like duckduckgo for their bang commands.
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upvoteby callc4 days ago|
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Didn’t know about these, thanks for sharing!
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upvoteby rusticpenn3 days ago|
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I use Ecosia and it feels much better to me.
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upvoteby npteljes3 days ago|
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Local search ("shops nearby" type of thing) is much better at Google. But hey, that's what bangs are for. I use ddg as my primary, and if I don't like the results (1 out of 20 searches, if that), I just append !g and be on my merry way. (Often I find that Google also doesn't find what I'm looking for.)
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