What do you use for a search engine? I used to use searx but I can't find any stable instances anymore. It seems like the project has mostly been abandoned, at least as far as public instances go. I may spin up my own instance, but that would either not be very anonymous or collapse if it were open for public use. In the meantime, I've been using DDG and Startpage, but they are both owned by israelis, I think.
Search Engines
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I use several, duckduckgo, noai.duckduckgo, Bing which is most correct lately, Google, all depends, there are too many out there.
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I strongly do not recommend using any DuckDuckGo services. Not only do they openly admit to not removing Microsoft's trackers, but they're actually engaging in even more malicious non-transparent tracking: for certain specific search queries or browsing modes without JavaScript and cookies, they include referrer HTTP headers similar to Google: https://duckduckgo.com/?uddg=something_they_want_know_which_link_you_click Additionally, for Tor Browser, there are undisclosed restrictions: when accessing html.duckduckgo.com, they test your browser's JavaScript and cookie capabilities (although they don't execute anything now, but who's to say they won't cooperate with hackers to inject a web 0-day vulnerability in the future?). If your browser lacks the execution capability, you'll be redirected to the Tor onion version of DuckDuckGo, and the Tor version requires enabling JavaScript and cookies, effectively soft-forcing all Tor users to have JavaScript execution capabilities.
Searx is also not recommended. In their GitHub issues, the development team stated that if JavaScript helps with development, they wouldn't remove JavaScript dependencies. SearXNG is better, but as you mentioned, the problem is there simply aren't any stable instances.
For Tor users, I personally recommend Startpage's onion version, which has no JavaScript requirements and no client-side verification. However, their clearnet version has added JS-worker verification, and the captcha URL also uploads your country, ISP, and other detailed information for their tracking: https://startpage.com/sp/captcha-block?bc=US&bi=Surfboard+Holding&be=[id_and_language_info+search_query+date+search_method] Therefore, I have no clearnet search engine recommendations and welcome others to share theirs.
@GlitchFrame that would also depend on which browser, plus which OS you use.
There are headless browser too
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