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EU Search engine incoming: Ecosia is teaming up with Qwant to build a European search index (blog.ecosia.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/buyfromeu@feddit.org
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For the people who have not yet decided on a search engine. The most EU way you can go is Ecosia or Qwant as they are building their own search index.

Ecosia is my personal pick as its also aimed at planting trees and they have quite a good browser alongside it.

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[–] -1 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

No I mean actual censorship. For example, RT and Sputnik. They have also banned PressTV and CGTN. They suspended broadcast licenses for EADaily / Eurasia Daily, Fondsk, Lenta, NewsFront, RuBaltic, SouthFront, Strategic Culture Foundation, and Krasnaya Zvezda / Tvzvezda. All of these sites would be explicitly banned from any EU based search engine.

Note that I am not giving American tech companies a free pass here. Google is one of the worst.

Also note that "censorship" doesn't exclusively refer to government censorship. That is an American-centric perspective using the Constitution as the lens. Censorship is often conducted by individuals and organisations. In this case I am referring to the EU.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Pretty much all of those """news""" sources have been witnessed to spread complete fabrications and fake news, and were used to undermine democracy on this continent, much like how Fox News and the likes are actively undermining democracy across the pond by spreading lies as "opinion pieces".

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago*

    How quickly we shift from "it's not happening" to "okay it's happening, and here's why it's a good thing!" It's fine that you prefer the government to choose which information you're allowed to view. I don't. I believe I should be allowed access to all information, and I should be allowed to choose what I want to read. I think banning books and websites and news is wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    @JasSmith Well there is a whole discussion to be had about banning media who is spouting lie after lie after lie and are propaganda machines for the respective regimes.

    But before you just assume censorship... try it yourself. I can open rt.com, tass etc and search for them.

    Sometimes the search result are all nerfed to hell, but they are there.

    And some pages (Zwezda) seem to have blocked access from my country at least, but that's on their site & RT does not have a valid certificate...

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    rt.com is blocked for me. If you can access it and you're based in the EU it means you're using a foreign DNS provider like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.

    I understand well the arguments used by governments to restrict access to books and websites. I reject them. I believe I am the best person to decide which knowledge I am allowed to access. I am certainly far more qualified than the government.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    @JasSmith And you fall in trap many intelligent people fall into... just because YOU may be qualified to discern what is lie and what is truth and know how to verify sources properly, does not mean that the majority of people does and that is where we need legislation to take the helm to prevent greater damage to society as a whole.

    "The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action"

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    It's a perfectly valid ideological divide here, so I can't tell you you're "wrong." I would argue that in order to believe that democracy is valid, one must subscribe to the belief in individual agency. That is, the ability for people to make rational decisions about not only themselves, but their society. If one believes that, they should believe that the same people must have access to as much knowledge as they wish - especially if it's from the guys who oppose the current people in power. Democracy fails to function if the people in power can suppress criticism.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    @JasSmith BTW... changing your DNS provider is a piece of cake, so censorship on that level would not be very effective unless ALL DNS providers would decide to block something.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I work in IT so I can confidently inform you that the vast majority of people do not change their DNS providers. Very few people would know how. Recall that my comment above is not about how easy circumventing censorship is, it was about the censorship existing at all, and how the EU would censor results in a search engine they create.

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