For whatever reason, some people on this sub seem to have changed its opinion on DuckDuckGo, and I still wonder if it’s still a trustworthy search engine to use. What happened to it? What caused this shift in trust? And can I still trust it now?
I still utilize DuckDuckGo for the time being, but I can easily transition if I must.
Easier to simply never trust an online service, and take appropriate precautions. That way, if a trustworthy service is discovered to later be untrustworthy, you’re ahead of the curve.
What caused this shift in trust?
People not able to read.
The “they let microsoft track you” isn’t even related to the search engine, only the mobile browser.
And they’re not encouraging the tracking, they’re just not allowed to block microsoft trackers because they have a contract with them for bing. They still block other trackers, which is something that no other browser does by default. (besides bromite depending on the block list you use)
If you want to use something else though, use something like searX so you have results from multiple search engines.
It seems to me that their success has been significant enough that there are those who are motivated to bring them down. IIRC recent criticisms have been based upon one of their custom browsers, but they leave that part out of any headline because DDG LIES! gets more clicks.
DDG is an US-American company and thus, subject to the CLOUD Act that forces them to disclose their users’ data with federal US authorities even if stored on foreign soil.
That alone makes it less trustworthy to me than Europe-based services like Startpage.
Just don’t use their browser, use firefox instead
the search engine is better than google.
the browser is better than edge.
nothing is perfect.
Personally I am still ok with them. I’m glad they disclosed what they legally could, and are working to fix it.
Due to a number of reasons, Duckduckgo is no longer the best for private and unfiltered search results.
They have recently announced they will be ranking and censoring sites according to politics or what doesn’t align with whatever their views are.
Use these private, uncensored alternatives:
The quick answer is that you can’t blindly trust anyone.
You make a choice to trust based on criteria that only you can decide on.
With that said, I trust DDG, and I don’t use their mobile browser since I don’t really trust any mobile anything.
Two things happened recently that caused controversy.
Their CEO came out and tweeted that they were going to downrank Russian sites to “combat disinformation”. I think a lot of the reactions to the tweet were not actually in line with the technical reality of what they actually did, though given the overall mission DDG claims and some of their past statements it was pretty hypocritical. I actually stopped using them on principle as I don’t need their CEO deciding on high what “disinformation” is, especially when they would never think to downrank misinformation spread by US officials and media corporations (aka half the internet).
It was discovered that their new browser doesn’t block ads from Microsoft, at least in certain circumstances. They have some contract with Microsoft that allows them to use the Bing search index (DDG is basically bing minus some of the nefarious tracking stuff) that precludes them from blocking certain elements of Microsoft related sites. You can find plenty of info about this, the CEO has been replying like crazy and claims they are “working on it”. Again, some of the reactions may not be in line with the reality of what is happening but it’s certainly unseemly that this was discovered by some researcher and now they are playing damage control.
I didn’t like either of these developments, so I have switched to trying different engines. Brave and Startpage are the most user friendly compared to some of the other options. I prefer Startpage, but thats just Google minus the nefarious tracking stuff whereas Brave is actually building their own index which is worth supporting so theres an actual true alternative instead or just relying on services that sit on top of vanilla Google/Bing. That being said, I find both Brave and Startpage to be clunky/bloated - especially on mobile - and have been considering going back to DDG despite their CEO being a bit of tool.
If you’re interested in hearing directly from the source, the CEO of DuckDuckGo posted an in-depth explanation about this here.
Hi, I’m the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo. To be clear (since I already see confusion in the comments), when you load our search results, you are anonymous, including ads. Also on 3rd-party websites we actually do block Microsoft 3rd-party cookies in our browsers plus more protections including fingerprinting protection. That is, this article is not about our search engine, but about our browsers – we have browsers (really all-in-one privacy apps) for iOS, Android, and now Mac (in beta).
When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection they are usually referring to 3rd-party cookie protection and fingerprinting protection, and our browsers impose these same restrictions on all third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft. We also have a lot of other above-and-beyond web protections that also apply to Microsoft scripts (and everyone else), e.g., Global Privacy Control, first-party cookie expiration, referrer header trimming, new cookie consent handling (in our Mac beta), fire button (one-click) data clearing, and more…
Click thru for more! 
Closed source + based in US. Never was trustworthy in the first place.
The political censoring of searches bothers me.
Yes . Me as well …
A few years ago … DDG was my primary search engine.
By now … I don’t use it … and more important : I don’t trust then anymore, like I was it in prior times.
Still?! What do you mean? I’ts my only goto for searching internet and have been for many years, why would it not be good anymore?.. just dont understand…
Transition to MetaGer.
A lot of it stems from the CEO admitting they they are manipulating the results to down rank disinformation about Ukraine/Russia (https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318).
Many interpreted that as an admission that they are manipulating the results for other things as well. The MS/Bing tracking issue with the mobile browser just threw gas on the fire.
You can always use bravesearch or startpage
i will continue to use the search engine. i have never used their browser.