Much like the iconic Nigerian Prince scam, anyone new/old enough to actually search for that long-standing honeypot just might click that link —ya know, just to see what happens. 😅
If you’re pirating you should really be using ad-blockers anyways.
I still enable for ddg to support
DDG has ads?
Yes thats how they generate revenue. Its done on search terms instead of knowing the customers ad profile like google.
Only if you enable them iirc. uBlock ensures they’re always off so I can’t say I’ve checked in a while
DDG gets their results from corporate indexes.
Edit: wow, there’s a lot of porn and The Wall Street Journal on there
Everyone gets their results from corporate indexes. If they didn’t they’d be fucked, b/c most sites disallow scrapers that aren’t Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc.
Kagi gets their results from corporate indexes.
They check all the indexes everywhere more or less.Kagi’s real difference is in not being an ad platform, like DDG and nearly every other search provider is.
While DDG does show “ads” by default. They can be turned off in settings. DDG does still give the user the power of how they want to use/support them.
All of the AI features can be turned off as well or by using noai.duckduckgo.com
How is that even a search result 🤣
It’s actually an ad and marked as such.
But let’s unpack this bullshit right here. Everything is going up. Someone wants to download something for free because they’re getting squeezed on all sides. So let’s not only charge them for content that’s already been paid for and made all its costs back, we’ll bump up the price every year or so, and use that money to advertise our rising price service to people who are struggling to make ends meet rather than just lowering the price.
That’s without even getting into who owns Paramount and what their politics are.
My problem with streaming services is that shows you are actively watching can disappear at any time.
Watching a show on Netflix? Oops, it’s on Disney+ now. Watching a show on Disney+? Oops, it’s on another service owned by Disney, but sign up now for a discounted bundle! Watching a show on HBO that was produced by HBO and owned by HBO? Oops, HBO got bought by an MBA that thinks they can make more money selling the streaming rights to Netflix, or worse, just save a few pennies on royalties but not making the show available at all.
I’d say, “ok, i have one or two streaming services at a time and i’ll just limit myself to what’s available; I want to support the system” and the system would find a way to fuck me every single time.
Right. I still pay for streaming music because music is still generally all available on each service. If you pay for Apple Music or Spotify, you pretty much get everything. Exceptions generally happen across all services, and they’re rare. Country artist Garth Brooks, great example. He was briefly on Amazon Music for a minute, but AFAIK isn’t on any streaming service. Most stuff most of us like, if it’s on one of the big music streamers, it’s on all of them. I still prefer to acquire FLACs of what I really like. I have most of my favourites on my Plex server. I also have them on my desktop PC. And I have them on an old Android phone’s SD card.
I could go fully offline with my music, but I don’t want to. I love music and I don’t mind paying. If movie/TV streaming had the same idea, I’d support that, too.
I think a better example of your situation was exactly what happened with Yellowstone. That was made by Paramount, but it wasn’t available on their streaming service, because they wanted it exclusive to their cable TV channel. That’s why all the stupid spinoffs exist, because those are on the streaming service. Paramount owns all of it but it can’t put all the Yellowstone content in one place. Personally, I liked it until Kevin Costner dipped out. I’m curious about some of the newer spinoffs, but the whole situation has just left a bad taste in my mouth, and there’s better stuff out there. Also, Taylor Sheridan’s work has gotten so diluted over the years. He spread himself too thin. His movies, Hell or High Water and Wind River still hold up, as do the first couple seasons of Yellowstone (I’d say, until the big assassination attempt season ending). None of the spinoffs I’ve seen were very good. I watched the first standalone, and the first season of the second one (both named after years).
I notice the medium easiest to pirate–music–has the best streaming support. I’ d like to be cynical and say there’ s a connection, but I think it’ s just more that 3-5 minutes of media just commands less market value so it’ s easier for people to bid based on needing to control the entire catalog
Personally, I’m back to local music, even though streaming music is a relatively good experience. I left initially for getting fed AI music, also left because I’m poor, but also left because discoverability was weak; that is to say, there were a few limited number of genres and songs I’ d get pulled into, and often I felt like the songs I were listening to were newer and being promoted, not older and classics… and on top of that, payouts to musicians are mostly garbage, and most of the people I listen to are dead or nearly so… so… I didn’t really think I was " supporting" anything worthwhile.
If you like to watch old men shaking their fists at clouds, Rick Beato’ on YouTube is a musician and music producer who has a lot to say about streaming and the state of music… He’s got some interesting points about how streaming as a medium is changing how music is produced and consumed.
I haven’t seen Yellowstone, but it sounds like the short-sightedness profit maximization that is endemic everywhere now. The idea that you need to build a relationship of trust with your customers is completely gone, the idea that your customers can just walk away not only from you, but the entire ecosystem, is also gone… some encouraging/discouraging news from a lot of different places Gaming, for instance, is in a crisis because every game is trying to appeal to everyone and so appeals nobody.
Ah totally missed that 😅 god I need to unplug from this dystopian corpo shit. Anybody got any good BD? XBDs are fine too.
One gif says more than a thousand words.
just out of curiosity. who do you think pays for the service, if you insist on getting it for free?
I feel like I’m not really understanding the question, but here ya go: The people who are willing to pay for it.
The people who are willing to pay for it.
which, in this case, is the ad agency. hence the ad commenter i was replying to pretends seeing for the first time…
I still don’t think I understand the point you are trying to make.
“free” service is usually paid for by advertisers (or by selling the personal data the service harvests from the users). So being surprised there are ads among the search results provided by “free” service makes it sound like it is that person’s first day on the internet
I don’t think they were “surprised” by it. It seems like they thought it was a search result. Which is fair, IMO. If DDG didn’t want people to mistake that for a search result, then they shouldn’t put it in the spot where the search results go.
Subscribers
they clearly don’t. judging from the fact they need to supplement the income by selling ads (and also by what their subscription actually offers, which is… vpn and “ai”)
Who do you think even cares?
the commenter i was replying to clearly does. if you don’t, all you had to do was shut up 🤷♂️
