For me, DuckDuckGo was supposed to represent private (not selling user data), unbiased (i.e. apolitical), fast search results. Ideally a replacement would meet as many of these goals as possible. Some alternatives I'm aware of:
* Searx - https://searx.github.io/searx/
* Brave search - https://search.brave.com/
Note this is not a discussion about the morality of DuckDuckGo's recent actions.
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/duck-duck-go-reverses-course-will-dem...
I don't understand the mental gymnastics that sees filtering out propaganda as "biased".
I see it actually as the opposite, as removing an intentional bias, as removing an intentional manipulation by the propaganda agent himself.
Compare to spam-filtering in your email: when you remove the noise, you get a better signal/noise ratio. When you hide information under a pile of noise you are actually "biasing".
There is no such thing as political-neutral information.
And if you believe that you alone, as an individual, have all the resources to efficiently filter out political manipulation in the information you receive then you're probably very close to the QAnon bunch.
qwant.com, based in the EU, using their own index without tracking.
ecosia.org, based in the EU, backed by Bing but with their own algorithm for filtering the results.
startpage.com, based in the EU, backed by anonymized Google results.
swisscows.com, based in the EU, backed by anonymized Bing results.
(this is not an advert for EU-based search engines, these just happen to be the ones that I know of)
And Russian propaganda is probably already taken care of because the rare moments I decide to search for information about the conflict, the only little propaganda I stumble upon is coming from Ukraine (over exaggerated body count, Snake Island, etc). Nothing new under the sun, fog of war is obviously expected and natural.
But this kind of censorship is clearly impeding my capacity to grow my worldview. And I don't trust the West more than the Russians (Irak's weapons of mass destruction anyone?)
I own a fairly big media in France and we have been covering the conflict, we made two videos on war communication tactiques and it's pretty bad from both side. Ukraine is using propaganda to drag Europe into this mess, Russian is using propaganda as usual.
It also reminds me the Covid, 1 year ago, any search about the "Wuhan leak theory" was deemed to be a "conspiracy theory", you had a hard time finding interesting resources about people digging into the idea with a scientific mindset and a desire to really figure out where that might come from. People who believed it was possible, were laugh at.
And now, it's considered plausible, nobody has a definitive answer to it, but it's a real possibility. For this reason, I don't believe in censorship from people who keeps calling the shots but who are as clueless as the rest the population.
Last but not least, like any individual I do have biases of course. But I am very wary of people who also have biases but who might have hidden motives and skin in the game.
Using the "liberal idea" of page ranking which is in my opinion a very abstract way of dealing with information (similar to the invisible hand almost) appears to me as a superior and more trustable way.
That's why, I am also leaving DDG.
This isn't about silencing a political view, cancelling an unpopular opinion, or whatever. It's defending against a deliberate attack from an oppressive regime. Search engines already have to do a lot of tweaking, for instance to defend against SEO spammers. I don't know how can this be controversial.
Anyway, answering your question, I use and like Ecosia. I've heard good things from Brave Search, but haven't tested it yet.
But I’d vote again for them. Independent index, US based.
You might say, hey I just mean political bias. But consider what that means. When does it not show up?
Search for front end frameworks and there is no question that rankings will be “political” in the sense that the ranking will favor some things over others. (Example: this ranking shows React, Svelte and Vue because it over weights popularity and doesn’t give my obscure but mighty framework any oxygen!)
If you search for the history of any battle (just to take us away from the present conflict), I doubt two experts agree on the salient aspects let alone two algorithms.
The best alternative for me is kagi.com but you need an invite and in the end you need to pay for it.