Many “alternative” search engines are better for privacy, but they are still vulnerable to censorship, because they rely on g**gle and m*crosoft’s indices for their search results. This isn’t a deep-hidden secret either, many of them disclose what search index they use on the “about” page, for example:
- https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
- https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/5138782571796-Why-isn-t-a-particular-site-appearing-in-the-results
- https://www.ecosia.org/privacy
There are still search engines that (claim to) maintain their own index. Most surprisingly, br*ve:
These days crypto is opt in, and you can disable the Brave rewards button if you like:
https://community.brave.com/t/completely-disable-crypto-wallet-and-brave-rewards-features/214563
Thats nice to know. Their CEO is a massive right-wing dickhead. So it doesnt matter whats optional its not worth it to use in the end.
Unfortunately there is still one thing that you have to opt out of manually, and that is monetized new tab pages. It’s not strictly crypto-related, and it’s only like three clicks to opt-out, but can be slightly annoying if your workflow relies heavily on browser profiles like mine. Still a great browser tho.