Monday, November 03, 2025

Re: Freedom from oppressive AI

noodle@pastanoggin.com wrote:
> Quoth Stuart Henderson <stu.lists@spacehopper.org>:
>> On 2025-11-02, kc-openbsd@chadwicks.me.uk <kc-openbsd@chadwicks.me.uk> wrote:
>>> This url is one way to avoid AI overviews and which I assume use much less energy but I dislike personally in any case.
>>>
>>> https://www.google.com/search?q=%20&udm=14
>>
>> https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=%s
>>
>>
>
> or https://lite.duckduckgo.com if one doesn't mind duckduckgo search
> results. it's nice and minimal (i use startpage sometimes for image
> search tho)
>

That is good advice. I would want to add to it. There are many FOSS
public search engine frontends which are very handy because they shield
your searches against big search providers, they provide a debloated
experience, and if you like them you can self host them.

An added advantage is they don't use a single search index. If you use
Duckduckgo You only see what Duckduckgo wants or can serve. If you use a
metasearcher, you can see what other indexes have so if a result is
absent for one you have a good chance of finding it from another index.

I like https://4get.ca/. The captcha is annoying but there are instances
which have it disabled, and you can self-host it.

SearxNG is also fine. Go find an instance with good uptime, such as
https://search.citadel.org/

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