Digital Nomad - IT и номады

A little something about free software and private search on the internet. Everyone knows and uses the well-known independent search engine DuckDuckGo. But is it really independent and how much privacy does it offer? It turns out that this private search engine is owned by Gabriel Weinberg. He is the founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, a search engine known for emphasizing user privacy and rejecting online tracking. However, in recent years, the company has been at the center of several major scandals. The main criticisms against Weinberg and DuckDuckGo revolve around two key themes: undisclosed collaborations with IT giants and political censorship. The most prominent scandal that significantly damaged the search engine's reputation as a "privacy advocate" occurred in May 2022 when an independent security researcher discovered that DuckDuckGo's mobile browser intentionally did not block trackers from Microsoft (including LinkedIn and Bing domains), allowing them to collect user data. It was revealed that DuckDuckGo had a secret advertising syndication agreement with Microsoft. According to the terms of the contract, Weinberg was required to make concessions for the scripts of this corporation. Weinberg had to publicly justify this on Twitter. The company promised to change the terms of the contract, but the fact of a hidden exception for a major technology sponsor disappointed the crypto and privacy community. Introduction of political censorship (2022). Initially, DuckDuckGo attracted users by providing a "clean" search without algorithmic manipulations, which was popular among people with alternative views. In March 2022, Gabriel Weinberg officially announced that DuckDuckGo was starting to artificially lower the ranking of websites associated with "Russian disinformation." Users accused Weinberg of abandoning the principle of internet neutrality in favor of the Western political agenda and the US State Department. The search engine also suspended its collaboration with "Yandex." This led to a mass boycott by users who switched to other platforms (such as Startpage or SearX), stating that Weinberg had implemented the same censorship that Google had always been criticized for. Interestingly, DuckDuckGo was created by a person who made his first capital by selling his first major business - the social network NamesDatabase, which he created in the early 2000s and sold to Classmates.com in 2006 for about $10 million. The irony is that the person who made his first fortune by collecting and subsequently selling a huge database of personal data to a third-party corporation later positioned himself as the leading advocate for privacy. In conclusion: officially, DuckDuckGo remains a private American company (DuckDuckGo, Inc.), registered in Pennsylvania. It is not directly owned by the US government, however: It depends entirely on Microsoft's infrastructure (DuckDuckGo search engine operates on the Bing engine). It complies with US legislation and operates within the Western information sphere, openly applying censorship in search results for political reasons, engaging in political censorship. And whose side the company was on during the pandemic times is also clear. Enjoy your privacy. But remember that Gabriel Weinberg is a snitch. Yes, he is already snitching on your personal data and search history to three-letter US agencies. And to one six-letter agency outside the US.