Yeah they aren't useless. They are useful for someone but to mee they've become nearly useless.
I remember when I could find real science online. It was easy. Sometimes I had to translate it from a foreign language. It was raw science directly from the source, unfiltered.
Written by scientists for whomever it concerned. Not political pr. Fictions.
But that's just one example. It's like there's a huge filter hiding 99% of the real Web.
Sounds interesting.
What I really want is a search engine that isn't crawling on, or rather that's not depending on crawling on Google and bing indexed library.
I don't know what it would take to independent index all of internet. But Internet existed before Google.
I have tried many search engines over the years. So far the best one I have found is freespoke.com
But it is not super great for local search outside of the US.
So the problem is, far as I know all search engines are still crawling on Google/Bing and they seem to be heavily affected of their algos that are 100% politically motivated.
The freespoke app doesn't need cookies. They have your phone number and all emails registered as "accounts" on the phone plus what other applications you have installed. They know exactly who you are.
1 no. Since I use a degoogled phone. It is installed without any google account and so on.
2 Integrity is an important issue but that was not top priority in this quest to find a search engine that is able to look outside of googles ideology.
SearXNG instances are honest. No cookies and usually no JS.
But their results may be insufficient. In that case you may go back to google or yandex for occasional searches. Yandex is better than bing. Just never forget that they are logging and tracking you.
Startpage also used to be good, I haven't used it in a long time.
I've been using a searxng instance on fbxl that points to most engines other than Google and Bing as my default search engine everywhere -- on mobile on desktop, at home and at work. I keep on thinking that I'm missing something, but then if I have a search that isn't coming up with very good results and I go to Google and try the same search it usually ends up with much worse results. I really expected to miss Google a lot more than I do.
I have found Kagi to be more useful than any other search engine since before 2016. And I like paying for a service and knowing I am the customer instead of being the product for an advertiser who is the search engine's customer.
I have started paying for my email, search, and cloud storage again and it is liberating to be (mostly) out of the google archipelago.
@sj_zero@LCCMV@FourOh@pkteerium.xyz @realcaseyrollins YouTube is good but you could also use Grayjay app from FUTO to follow not the platforms, but the creators. It allows the use of most of the video hosting and streaming platforms all in one app (with sponsorblock included). It is still in development and it is an Android app, which is also not free (you could use it for free without any restrictions, but the developer decided so that it could be paid for, 10 dollars for a license key)
@wowik_taken I see you said: "the developer decided so that it could be paid for". Upon reflection, that means it's an opt-in subscription. Good to know that there is an uneqivocally direct way to support the developer, in the app.
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