When I had that conversation, #sonTwo mentioned that he didn't think #SnapChat was as popular as it once was. I'd seen someone online making the same claim earlier today. The only person I know who used it is my nephew #Papaya, but he's in another state, so I don't even know whether he still uses it.
> Snapchat has always had a reputation for being an app for teens or young people, so it has always struggled to keep an older audience. Only 3.7% of Snapchat users are over 50. The heavy lean towards younger people may be why Snapchat has had trouble staying relevant over its history. People over 24 may feel like most of their peers don’t use the app anymore, so it is less popular.
and
> As of the third quarter of 2022, Snapchat has 363 million daily active users, according to Statista. This puts it in a similar region to Twitter. It is also the highest number of daily active users reported on Snapchat for the entire survey period spanning back to 2014.
Today I uninstalled #DuckDuckGo from my #Android/Linux phone, primarily so I could switch from the #GooglePlay release stream to the #F-Droid one, but I didn't think that when I uninstalled it, even temporarily, it permenatley removed all of the webpage short cuts I had on my Homescreen, many of which I can't even remember right now, but I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be like, "where is that site that does such and such, I should have a shortcut right here"
@musicman They don't seem to be running Duckbot anymore, just grabbing results straight from #Bing. And Bing's results were almost as bad as Ask's, last time I checked.
So, yeah, I don't know how #DDG (and to some extent #Yahoo) were able to do it before, but their results were far better than Bing's despite mostly coming from Bing. Now, they're pretty similar ... and overall bad.
I still go to #DuckDuckGo first, but more and more, I find myself going to #Startpage or directly to #Google after a failed DDG search.
#Microsoft #Bing censors Tienanmen Square "Tank Man" search results, even outside of PRC (where they are required to censor such results). Naturally, since most of #DuckDuckGo's results come from Bing, #DDG searches are also censored.
This is a good reason for DDG to switch from being Bing results with a little additional from Yandex and Baidu results to either fully independent or at least being more of a metasearch engine.
First of all, any time you do this, the top half of results are the “search for anyone and we’ll find them … for a fee” sites. If you go to those sites and throw in first-middle-last name and age, you usually get hundreds of results, but that’s because they are not filtered … there will people from 18 to 80, people who only share one of the names in your search, people who have or had relationships with a person with the name, and people who have aliases close to the name in question.
Next are “close, but no cigar” results: Similar names. Mug shots sites.*
Only then will you see any interesting results.
I haven’t been in contact with Charlie since we were both less than half our current ages. I am pretty sure I saw him walking across a store’s parking lot in the 1990s, but no contact was made. Nor was contact the object of my search. A good chunk of the people I once knew have passed on, so I really just wanted to see whether he was still among the living and to have a general idea where he might be.
* In the past, I did find out about both Steve and Jay because of a mug shots site. Steve is presumably still behind bars in another state. Jay served a year or so and was released.
New (in 2020) ranking factors used by #Bing. They mostly look good, so one would expect their results to become more relevant to the search over time. Unfortunately, Bing’s results are not improving. In fact, both #Yahoo and #DuckDuckGo search engines, which use Bing as a source, are declining rapidly.
Where Yahoo’s results were formerly almost as good as Google’s, and DDG’s were even better than “the G”, both now give almost identical results as Bing.
@mangeurdenuage Is #Qwant really that pervasive? #Google got to be so big because its results were better than existing search providers. Yahoo used to be close (even with a Bing backend) and #DuckDuckGo was even closer (with Bing, #Yandex, and others), but lately, using a non-G search results in just going back to G.
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The deep secret among search providers is that the "B" in #Bing stands for "broken". Despite 20+ years of Microsoft pouring money into search, its results are usually comparable in their awfulness with #Ask.
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#Seeks & #Searx can get decent results when they're set to use Google as their provider, but if an instance gets popular, it will hit its API limit.
@hrthu Indeed, #mojeek is an interesting #privacy project to keep an eye on. They did an AMA in March, which I found to be quite informative, e.g., differences between crawler-based search engine vs. metasearch engines like #DuckDuckGo.
@blort @johnnynull I noticed years ago that #DDG’s results differ from #Yahoo’s, which differ from #Bing’s. Non-bubbling may be part of it, but it doesn’t explain the sharply different results (or at least sort order of the results) between the Bing and Yahoo.
It doesn’t surprise me that #Startpage’s results differ from #Google’s, even beyond the filter bubble.
As for which to use, I use a variety, including Startpage, but the main one is determined mainly by quality of results, and Startpage’s results are generally inferior to #DuckDuckGo and to #Searx & #Seeks (but far superior to #YaCy or the abysmal results that #Ask gives).
Ultimately it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're saying you get better results from #DuckDuckGo's combining of results from #Bing, #Yahoo, #WolframAlpha etc. with their own index, than from the results #Google returns to #Startpage, right?
Great.
Meanwhile I'm saying I'd rather have search algorithms and indexes that are transparent and not controlled by for profit companies that often have a conflict of interest.
Thanks, if you do come across that, I'd be very interested to read it!
It's unclear from that link though, whether there's anything going on beyond that they're getting different results by removing #Google's "personalization" (aka filter bubble).
If there is, it reinforces the point that we need to get away from black box, proprietary, for profit search algo's/indexes. Eg. who's to say #Bing and #Yahoo aren't doing similar things with results going to #DuckDuckGo?
Heh. If #Startpage's results have been getting worse, maybe it's just because the results it gets from #Google have been getting worse. 🙄
I'd be impressed though if #DuckDuckGo was actually managing to provide better search results than Google, while still also being superior in terms of privacy.
Quite possibly. It misses the point though. For just search result quality, just use #Startpage, with Google's index. If you don't want a profit minded company deciding what everyone gets to (not) see though- don't use their index. #Qwant has their own and they're non-profit. #DuckDuckGo uses a mix including #Bing, #Yahoo with their own. More biased than Qwant, worse results than Startpage. Personally I use Qwant for 95% and Startpage where I don't find the result I need.