Me thinks that "we're a privacy-first search engine" and "you have to register an account to use us" are two very opposite things

@campuscodi You have to register a Signal account too. Privacy != anonymity

@buherator @campuscodi You're telling these search engines encrypt queries? :P

@tris Usually what makes a difference is the business model (e.g. adtech vs. regular subscription). Your hair dresser may know exactly who you are and know a lot about you, but you can trust them not to sell your conversations because they make a living from cutting hair, not selling PII. A level of privacy is of outmost concern for many OnlyFans performers (to avoid stalking), while they show a lot of themselves publicly. Privacy != encryption either.

@campuscodi

@buherator @campuscodi So most of these so-called paid search engine just proxies Google's or bing's index? I don't think my barber does that

@buherator @campuscodi That has a clear purpose, unlike the account requirement for a search engine.

@Andromxda IME (with Kagi) the purpose of the account is pretty clear: they need to keep track of your payments and user settings. @campuscodi

@tris They usually have additional features like customizable results ranking and no ads (obviously). I'm not familiar with the technical implementation but it seems reasonable to aggregate queries toward index providers, which would decorrelate queries from users (from the APIs standpoint).

@campuscodi

@campuscodi

Same with news sites that require a login if not a subscription. How I yearn for the days when I could read a #newspaper *privately*. How I wish I had both the spare cash for paper subscriptions to a couple of broadsheets as well as the time to actually read them.

@buherator @tris @campuscodi
Your hair dresser also isn't going to IPO and become owned by some ad tech venture capitalist.

@buherator @Andromxda @campuscodi
Private search engines store user settings in the bookmark query string, no account needed.

@buherator @campuscodi
Requiring an account technically allows to spy on users. If a service provides E2E encryption, like Signal, the most it can do is collect metadata, which is still harmful to privacy.
In case of a search engine, E2EE is not applicable at all, so there's a possibility of logging every search query.
The solution is to either trust the service on its no-logs policy, since there's no way to ensure it; or create short-lived disposable accounts with fake personal info.

@leeloo @tris @campuscodi

This is turning into a flame. I think I made my point about the misconceptions brought forward earlier (anonymity vs. privacy vs. encryption).

User friendly services often have to make trade-offs/compromises. If you don't like those choices you are free not to use the corresponding service.