Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:
- https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
- https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
- https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:
I had a high school friend shill me brave because he worked there. Was genuinely into all the tech bro stuff and gold. So much gold. I used it for maybe 2 weeks before I got tired of the crypto. I should thank him though, that pushed me into FOSSland.
These days crypto is opt in, and you can disable the Brave rewards button if you like:
https://community.brave.com/t/completely-disable-crypto-wallet-and-brave-rewards-features/214563
Thats nice to know. Their CEO is a massive right-wing dickhead. So it doesnt matter whats optional its not worth it to use in the end.
You shouldn’t base your browser usage on whether or not the boss is a bigot. How many CEOs of big tech companies do you think are lovely people? There are plenty of real reasons not to use Brave, the founder being a knob is just the icing on the cake.
opt in
Unfortunately there is still one thing that you have to opt out of manually, and that is monetized new tab pages. It’s not strictly crypto-related, and it’s only like three clicks to opt-out, but can be slightly annoying if your workflow relies heavily on browser profiles like mine. Still a great browser tho.
