alt Hacker NewsI've been using searxng for several years now. I don't run my own instances because the inhumane network censorship imposed by GFW, and proxy detection enforced by search engines. Instead, I rely on public instances on the list [1] and libredirect [2]. Note that service from a single instance is not guaranteed, but you can always switch to other available instances with little cost within a minute.
I won't say searxng can help you degoogle because metasearch engine calls other search engines, e.g., google, to collect results. However, if you try searxng, you can at least get rid of things like ai reviews in no time.
In the end, thank you people after searxng project and public instances.
The thing about the public instances, is now you often have to go through a lot of them to verify they work properly. SearXNG needs better quality control.
Often have to go through the preferences to deselect search engines that don't work (often because of the instance being blocked) or select those that do work, because of reliability problems. Which engines are working, can be different for each public instance, so that even saving a preference hash doesn't always work.
Would be great if SearXNG did automatic adjustment of presented search engines (or offered the option) based on reliability.