Absolutes are rarely 100% true, and it entirely depends on your perspective, your use cases, and your expectations
Neither DuckDuckGo nor CloudFlare (the other favourite punching bag around here) have surveillance capitalism business models, but they do require you to trust someone else’s software running on someone else’s computers, and you still need to communicate with them over someone else’s networks
From my own perspective, which suits me fine but might not suitable for you, I prefer to avoid surveillance capitalism companies like Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Google
I’m also not a free-speech maximalist: I want to live in a world where information flows freely, but I acknowledge that not every single idea deserves exactly the same amplification
The same people screeching about DuckDuckGo and CloudFlare regarding censorship are often exactly the same people claiming that LGBTQIA and Black history education is not “age appropriate”, so even free-speech maximalists are rarely consistent
The mature answer is “it depends”
Absolutes are rarely 100% true, and it entirely depends on your perspective, your use cases, and your expectations
Neither DuckDuckGo nor CloudFlare (the other favourite punching bag around here) have surveillance capitalism business models, but they do require you to trust someone else’s software running on someone else’s computers, and you still need to communicate with them over someone else’s networks
From my own perspective, which suits me fine but might not suitable for you, I prefer to avoid surveillance capitalism companies like Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Google
I’m also not a free-speech maximalist: I want to live in a world where information flows freely, but I acknowledge that not every single idea deserves exactly the same amplification
The same people screeching about DuckDuckGo and CloudFlare regarding censorship are often exactly the same people claiming that LGBTQIA and Black history education is not “age appropriate”, so even free-speech maximalists are rarely consistent
CloudFare is considered harmful for a whole host of separate reasons, too. Excellent write-up.