Gabriel Weinberg
@yegg
Followers
116,753
Following
3
Media
6
Statuses
382
Founder & CEO of DuckDuckGo. Co-author of the books Super Thinking & Traction. Tweets auto-delete via TweetDelete. DMs open.
Valley Forge, PA
Joined April 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
This is clearly a problem already and does not have any straightforward solutions.
4
16
45
“Judge Contreras wrote…Compliance problems with the F.B.I.’s querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread.”
Court finds FBI misused a FISA Section 702 database 278K+ times between 2020 and 2021, as the White House seeks to persuade Congress to renew the law in 2023 (
@charlie_savage
/ New York Times)
3
6
9
14
19
34
Three new major DuckDuckGo privacy protections bundled together in our first subscription service! People have wanted a VPN from us for a long time and Personal Information Removal and Identity Theft Restoration take our protections even further.
📣 We're excited to introduce...
DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro: three new protections bundled into one easy subscription. Subscribers get:
✅ An Anonymous VPN
✅ Personal Information Removal
✅ Identity Theft Restoration
Learn more 👇
36
62
259
7
9
41
Some people still use dialup internet, fax machines, and physical newspapers.
Technology that takes a long time to get entrenched into habits and workflows takes a similarly long time to wind down. Lindy effect for all you mental model aficionados
Some doctors, bird watchers, and others still use pagers due to their simplicity; paging company Spok has 800K+ pagers in use in the US, down from 6.6M in 2004 (
@arianapeca2
/ Wall Street Journal)
1
5
12
6
14
33
@SarahJaneguru
@GalaxyKate
@DuckDuckGo
We have not been bought out by anyone. That is a false rumor. We've been an independent company since our founding in 2008 and remain so.
4
2
20
@BBuddyb713
@DuckDuckGo
@dewS_Sweb
That is me, and no one is lying. I used poor words that got grossly misinterpreted initially, so I subsequently wrote the help article referenced above. In reality, we never censored anything, nor do we have a disinformation detector, nor did we go looking for any Russian…
9
1
8
A couple of approximations that have helped me over the years to have memorized:
• A 1,000 sample of an unknown yes/no question has error bars ~±3% and 100 ~±10% (at 95% confidence)
• 1 standard deviation in a normal distribution contains ~2/3 and 2 ~95%
What about you?
2
11
18
@GarbonzoRick
@GalaxyKate
@DuckDuckGo
This is not true. We've never sold data to anyone. There are a lot of false rumors going around about us (we're not owned by Google or anyone for that matter), but on this false rumor see
4
1
16
"To find the sites, NewsGuard researchers used keyword searches for phrases commonly produced by AI chatbots, such as 'as an AI large language model' and 'my cutoff date in September 2021.'"
NewsGuard finds 49 websites populated by generative AI posing as news outlets with generic names like News Live 79; some feature falsehoods and programmatic ads (
@daveyalba
/ Bloomberg)
0
7
16
8
11
15
@greg_f_miller
@DuckDuckGo
That's odd -- we haven't had any other outage reports. What about on other networks/devices?
1
0
0
Wow, this article seems to be correct in terms of Chinese apps currently having the top 3 spots in the US App Store: Temu, CapCut, TikTok. “The No. 1 downloaded app in the U.S. and Canada in the first quarter was the Chinese mail order app Temu.”
Sensor Tower: 156 of the 475 top five apps in 95 countries and regions for Q1 were Chinese, up 8% from 2020; Chinese apps took the top three spots in the US (Nikkei Asia)
0
5
5
4
6
15
@th3j35t3r
We have been planning on adding it also for YouTube since Google also tracks you a lot in this way, but in this case we also have the option to show the thumbnails. See for more details. In either case (thumbnails or not) it is still just a click to…
0
0
7
Privacy Pro is available to US residents only right now, but hoping to expand over time. More details and background on our blog:
0
2
10
@joshm
@Papo_Fett
@bing
@Google
@browsercompany
That's not really true in terms of how users actually experience our search results, and happy to talk about it more with you if you like.
1
0
8
@KarlEmilNikka
@milichab
@DuckDuckGo
@nikkasystemsSE
@BunnyCDN
FYI -- this fix should be rolled out now.
2
0
6
@waynetroulez
@DuckDuckGo
This is a fake headline from last year. I've never even met Bill Gates.
0
0
6
@th3j35t3r
Hi, I see from the comments you are having trouble with our extension. What specifically are you referring to so we can look into it? The extension's primary purpose is to protect you from third-party tracking, see
1
1
5
@Michael43859536
@DuckDuckGo
We have nothing to do with Google. There is a completely made up rumor going around.
1
0
5
@uzumaki_3000
@ProsaicView
Lots of false info on that going around too. See for the ground truth.
0
4
6
@Itsallfake5000
@Techmeme
@kevinpurdy
No, we are not owned by Google (or any other company for that matter). See
3
0
4
@KNAILBOMB
@DuckDuckGo
Sorry about your tiredness of seeing our ads. We actually don't censor though. See "we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings"
0
0
5
@th3j35t3r
Our extension prevents embedded social media content, e.g. Facebook comments, from showing automatically when a page loads since then Facebook can track you, but there is an option to show it -- see
1
0
2
@th3j35t3r
Hey thanks, appreciate it -- just trying to understand if you just don't like this feature or if it is actually breaking websites.
0
0
2
@DuckDuckGo
@CactusCocktail
We’re having trouble reproducing. What browser and version are you using? Is this in our app?
1
0
3
@VikingsInRedSox
@DontTreadOnNE1
@DuckDuckGo
We do not have a parent company. We have been completely independent since our founding in 2008.
I have absolutely no idea where you are getting that from. We are not owned by Google nor use any Google results.
1
0
4
@theheadidiot
@DuckDuckGo
We don't have a policy to change settings. Since we don't have accounts, they are set by anonymous cookies and if you clear your cookies they are gone. We have some alternatives though here:
2
2
3
@ChevronRoad
@Tim_Hayward_
Our advanced syntax operators are not working 100%, as recently noted in . For quotes try putting a + in front of them as it might work better, and putting the full URL in is best for testing. As per we do not censor.
0
0
3
@lykkefisker
@DuckDuckGo
FYI we don't censor anything. See : "when we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result…
1
1
3
@DuckDuckGo
@Jon47
This should be fixed now in . Should have updated automatically by now but if not can do it manually in about:addons -- should be from version 2023.5.23
0
0
3
@wjmicke
@DuckDuckGo
No we don't. We actually have nothing to do with Google -- completely made up rumor. Love Tommy Boy though!
0
0
2
@L8drJonesy
@DuckDuckGo
We never changed in the first place. We've always been an apolitical organization aside from advocating for privacy. As such, our ranking algorithms have always been non-political. See for more details.
2
0
3
@Moose_Joe100
@DuckDuckGo
Made up headline. I've never even met Bill Gates. For more details see
2
0
3
@DevilNinja64
@DuckDuckGo
No, we've been an independent company since our founding in 2008. Never bought out by anyone.
0
0
2
@xsemeldefeo
@BBuddyb713
@DuckDuckGo
@dewS_Sweb
Well here's the thing. You are asking me to "fix" something that doesn't work that way -- it works as described in and that never changed.
0
0
2
@Ratonisko
@DuckDuckGo
Actually, no! More info in the post under "What's under the hood" section:
3
0
2
@MikeDTS85
@LucianaMSGBRA
@BBuddyb713
@DuckDuckGo
@dewS_Sweb
As explained in the page, "we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings" so there is no censorship here. There also isn't a magic ranking either -- for every word you type in there are…
2
0
2
@JuleeKAllen
@JeniferRose44
@Rockingham1221
@AwakenedOutlaw
@DuckDuckGo
I just reported it to Quora and messages the person, but it won't let me comment.
0
1
1
@d0nChan0
@DuckDuckGo
Not sure what you're talking about, but we are not connected to Google. We've been an independent company since our founding in 2008.
0
0
2
@JuleeKAllen
@JeniferRose44
@Rockingham1221
@AwakenedOutlaw
@DuckDuckGo
Looks to be from from an unknown author and an unsourced quote.
I never said that because it isn't true. We've never had a deal with Google for results. This is completely fabricated. Unfortunately, that happens a lot.
2
1
1
@KarlEmilNikka
@milichab
@DuckDuckGo
@nikkasystemsSE
@BunnyCDN
Thanks for the report -- we will look into this and remove it if it is a false positive.
1
0
2
@Pile38389006
@DuckDuckGo
We were not bought out. Been an independent company since our founding in 2008 and still are.
1
0
2
@procdaddy
@DuckDuckGo
An expert did that as part of . That said, I'm not sure anything will stop the hate. I do think showing we're not and have never been owned by Google seems achievable though, since that is downright ridiculous!
0
0
2
@joshm
@Papo_Fett
@browsercompany
Will DM with more details, but for example, local is the most important "index" on mobile and we don't get any of that from Bing.
1
0
2
@writerherethere
@DuckDuckGo
That is completely anonymous, per our strict privacy policy:
Details on that particular anonymous parameter here:
1
0
1
@Helliotr
@DuckDuckGo
The truth is in the post I referenced above, which is subsequent to all those news reports which were largely misreported because they didn’t understand the technical details.
1
0
0
2
0
1
@StuartM87191138
@DuckDuckGo
No, this is completely false. We've never talked with Bill Gates nor have we ever sold any data.
0
0
1
3
0
1
@trietly7
@DuckDuckGo
Our tracker blocking does rather effective ad blocking since most ads are tracker-based. What websites are you referring to in particular?
0
0
0
@SilentShogun82
@DontTreadOnNE1
@DuckDuckGo
We never went looking for anything Russian in particular, nor do we have a "disinformation detector" in that we do not look at any individual stories/narratives. We have essentially a news spam detector, and it had detected some spam domains that were Russian-state linked.
0
0
0
@beaver_naughty
I don't know what you mean, but there is a lot of wrong and misleading info about us out there. If you want the truth about that story, see the post I wrote about it subsequently here:
If you don't want the truth about it, then I'm not sure I can help.
1
0
1
@LaurenThemself
OK thanks. What's broken on the site and if you turn off our protections (by clicking on our extension) does it fix it?
1
0
1
@Bradford_C_S
@StuartM87191138
@DuckDuckGo
This is a completely made up headline. I (pictured) have never actually talked with Bill Gates.
2
0
1
@MikeUrso849857
@TheeCheckGod
@DuckDuckGo
I have no idea why people think that or are saying that but it is absolutely false.
1
0
1