#anonymousoverflow — Public Fediverse posts

This is gaining some traction again today, that I just felt like updating that I've been using #SearXNG a ton as my sole search engine since making the move and it's been absolutely great and reliable. As mentioned, it's fast, and it doesn't give me garbage results - it seems to even source answers from sources that scrape from sites you may not want to visit directly such as #Reddit. Some points from my use:

- I've used it to search for a bunch of stuffs like movies, a LOT of programming questions, basic stuffs like currency/timezone conversions, local (to me) bureaucratic/commercial stuffs that aren't international (i.e. shouldn't be the easiest to look up), other basic stuffs like looking up the meaning of a word, etc.

- From those searches, it's only failed once and it wasn't even a fail. I was looking up a local store by its domain name (but without the actual domain), and it didn't suggest the actual site. It did gave me the store's "link tree" which lists down all of the store's links, which led me to the actual site I was looking for. This was the only failure and it's excelled in other searches I deem tougher, more obscure.

- Some questions that I expect useful human answers it'd give me answers from Reddit, but not through Reddit but rather: https://redlib.pussthecat.org. It seems to mirror Reddit in its entirety and I think it's great as it's a lot cleaner, less clutter and it doesn't require any login.

- Programming questions that I also expect human answers, it'd give me: https://code.whatever.social, which is essentially #StackOverflow but similar to #Redlib, this is #AnonymousOverflow and it allows you to source answers from Stack Overflow without the clutter and without the privacy concerns.

All in all, I freaking love SearXNG and I've migrated all my computer devices to use that over #Google. I've not done it on my #iOS devices thinking that it wasn't possible, but apparently it is possible (on #Firefox anyway but should apply to #Safari too since they're essentially the same on iOS) so I'll prolly do just that. If you've not tried it out yet, really just give it a try - you could always go back to regular ol' Google or anything else like #DuckDuckGo if it's not working the way you'd hope.

@strypey @zeh @alcinnz

Indeed mojeek.com is not the only non-tech-giant #searchEngine (+crawler). From strypey’s mentions + some of my notes:

* #Mojeek ← does their own crawling
* #Metager.org ← does their own crawling
* #SearchMySite.net ← avoid (Cloudflare)
* #Searx ← just proxy software, many instances
* #4get ← another proxy software, about a dozen instances: https://4get.ca/instances
* #Gigablast ← does their own crawling, but what happened?.. they were dissolved last year & seem to now be www.alltheinternet.com
* #Ombrelo ← a proxy but more advanced than the others (filters/downranks Cloudflare sites)

#YaCy is notable because it’s a crawler that you can install and operate yourself. YaCy instances can be public-facing and they can also share indexes with each other fedi style apparently. Some Searx instances tap YaCy instances.

I would love to find a searx or 4get instance that rejects the tech giants, but aggregates from YaCy, mojeek, gigablast, metager, maginalia.nu, frogfind.com, & wiby.me.

And I would love it even more if it would make replacements:

* #StackExchange → #AnonymousOverflow
* #YouTube → #Invideous
* #Medium.com → scribe.rip
* #BBC → BBC’s onion site
* #NYTimes → New York Times’s onion site
* etc.

search.fabiomanganiello.com makes some of those replacements.

AnonymousOverflow- View StackOverflow in privacy and without the clutter.

"AnonymousOverflow allows you to view StackOverflow threads without the cluttered interface and exposing your IP address, browsing habits and other browser fingerprint data to StackOverflow."

Example URL: https://overflow.smnz.de/questions/25066214/flexbox-not-giving-equal-width-to-elements?rq=1

Git link: https://github.com/httpjamesm/AnonymousOverflow

Instances links:

1. https://code.whatever.social/
2. https://overflow.smnz.de/
3. https://ao.vern.cc/

Onion instance link: http://ao.vernccvbvyi5qhfzyqengccj7lkove6bjot2xhh5kajhwvidqafczrad.onion/

#AnonymousOverflow
#StackOverflow
#Privacy
#AlternativeFrontend