[HN Gopher] Ecosia - A search engine that plants trees
___________________________________________________________________
Ecosia - A search engine that plants trees
Author : fossislife
Score : 269 points
Date : 2021-01-10 10:09 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ecosia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ecosia.org)
| sixti60 wrote:
| I am always surprised when (be it greenwashing or not) companies
| call themselves "search engine" when in fact ... they actually
| aren't a search "engine".
|
| They don't have any indexing/searching technology, they just re-
| use another search technology in white-label.
|
| We can criticize Google for many things, but at least those guys
| really built a technology, from scratch.
|
| TL;DR: Calling Ecosia a search engine is like calling yourself a
| "restaurant" when all you're actually doing is reheating factory-
| prepared meals.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Calling Ecosia a search engine is like calling yourself a
| "restaurant" when all you're actually doing is reheating
| factory-prepared meals._
|
| You might be surprised how many restaurants do this. Even in
| the days before ghost kitchens.
| Kiro wrote:
| So DDG is not a search engine either?
| rexreed wrote:
| It's a marketing gimmick. And I guess it works since we're
| talking about it.
| hk__2 wrote:
| Can you elaborate? "It's a marketing gimmick" is a judgement
| without any value if you don't explain why you think that.
| mg wrote:
| End of last year, I made a page to compare alternative search
| engines:
|
| https://www.gnod.com/search/
|
| You can switch on Ecosia when you click on "Select Engines".
| vorticalbox wrote:
| https://www.gnod.com/search/
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| A directory of search "engines":
|
| https://twitter.com/SearchEngineMap/lists
|
| Who uses what:
|
| https://www.searchenginemap.com/
| ricardo81 wrote:
| You may want to consider adding Mojeek since it does its own
| crawling (as opposed to the numerous metas using Bing data as
| per searchenginemap.com)
|
| Disclosure, I work there
| kovac wrote:
| Thanks for the information. Going to give Mojeek a try.
| mg wrote:
| Ok, added.
|
| I show a short info about each engine. What would be a good
| info line for Mojeek? What makes it unique?
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Thank you, appreciated. It was/is the world's first general
| search engine with a no tracking privacy policy.
| mg wrote:
| Hmm.. since every company promises a focus on privacy,
| isn't the bigger differentiator for the user that you run
| your own crawler? Do you use only your own crawling data?
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Most definitely though Mojeek was the first on that front
| and yes, the search index is entirely from crawling the
| web independently. UK based. Our Twitter handle is very
| responsive if you ever need further info.
| mg wrote:
| Awesome. I will put "Independent search engine operated
| in the UK" then.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| The styling does not seem to properly handle mobile. I get
| clipped content on the start page and horizontal scroll on
| the search results.
| ffpip wrote:
| This doesn't do a proper proxy to bing btw. Bing is loaded in
| your browser, not on their server. It knows who you are and what
| you search.
|
| Might as well use Google for better search results than bing.
| Unless you really wanna help plant trees.
|
| DDG does a proper proxy.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I was confused what you meant by DDG properly proxying stuff.
| When arguing for DDG, people often say that you can still use
| !g to get google results (for example) and that sounds great,
| but when you try it, it doesn't proxy at all, you are literally
| redirected to Google and it doesn't add anything. But I think
| you're talking about which index it is that DDG queries
| internally to yield regular (non-bang) search results?
| chris_f wrote:
| >"...it doesn't proxy at all, you are literally redirected to
| Google and it doesn't add anything. "
|
| If you are looking for proxied Google results, your main
| options are Runnaroo [0] and Startpage [1].
|
| I'm the creator of Runnaroo, and I prefer it to Startpage
| (and also DDG, but that is another thread).
|
| [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/
|
| [1] https://www.startpage.com/
| Daho0n wrote:
| Please don't recommend Startpage in a privacy thread. They
| are owned by adtech company System1.
| ffpip wrote:
| When you search on DDG, it sends it to bing via their
| servers. Bing doesnt know you are searching, it can only see
| duckduckgo and the search term, not you.
|
| DDG gets results back from bing, sometimes modifying it with
| it's own results to make them better.
|
| > But I think you're talking about which index it is that DDG
| queries internally to yield regular (non-bang) search
| results?
|
| Yes. Most of it is Bing.
|
| Ecosia doesn't proxy it properly. It sends it to bing from
| you browser, not from Ecosia's servers. Bing knows your IP
| and sets cookies to track you. You can observe it with dev
| tools.
|
| They might have changed it since I last checked.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Yeah, I think they were talking about the index, and I'm not
| sure that's true any more. I don't remember the sources, but
| I remember reading that DDG started relying more on their own
| indexing and less on Bing about a year ago. And from some
| testing I did some time ago, it was the case that only 50-60%
| of the search results on DDG were similar to Bing - meaning
| it's still a significant source, but not so much as to say
| DDG is just proxying requests.
| abc-xyz wrote:
| > DDG does a proper proxy.
|
| How do you know? I mean they're closed source and you have no
| idea what data they send to Microsoft's Bing and Advertising
| APIs.
| ffpip wrote:
| DDG does a proper proxy from my side. Bing is not loaded when
| I load duckduckgo.com, unlike ecosia which loads bing.net and
| bing.com subdomains right in my browser.
| Daho0n wrote:
| No but Google is if you use !g on DDG. HN users seem to
| love that feature.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| check out oceanhero.today similar concept removes plastic from
| the ocean.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| I hate this thing with a passion, my corporate job mandates it
| and you can't turn it off, so Ecosia is the default search
| engine. 9/10 times I type something in Chrome's URL bar it's
| 'Google'. There's no opt-out.
|
| Ecosia is fine but I just don't get the corporate policy. It's
| making my work a lot more inefficient, and when I worked for
| clients (I currently work for internal clients which isn't
| chargeable) I billed $300 per hour.
|
| An Ecosia search is worth half a cent, you need 45 searches to
| plant one tree.
|
| Suppose I do 20 searches in a day, that's 10 cents. Suppose the
| extra search to Google takes 3 seconds, at a billabe rate of $300
| that's 25 cents times 20 searches is 500 cents, about 50x
| whatever Ecosia is gaining. I just don't get why my employer
| can't just pay 20 cents into Ecosia's tree fund, get the same
| marketing, contribute 2x as much to trees, save 25x as much money
| on this thing and save me frustration.
|
| If I then figure that (1) a search for Google (I don't use Ecosia
| search results at all) is not contributing any revenue at all and
| (2) even those who use Ecosia search results are getting worse
| and less time-efficient information versus Google, the economics
| of simply letting people use Google instead of Ecosia (Bing) and
| contributing the equivalent in money, makes even more sense.
|
| And then (3) corporate actively does not want you to go shopping
| online during work. This idea to show ads during workhours when
| employees just want search results is a ridiculous idea.
|
| Other than that I think Ecosia is a great idea, but it must be
| opt-outable.
|
| tl;dr I hate big corporates.
|
| In other words, at the cost of 8 cents per second in billable
| time, I'm generating half a cent
| growt wrote:
| The billable $300 an hour go to your company. So if your
| company can charge for more time because you spend more time
| searching, that's actually good for your employer!
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| Haha, not sure if you're serious but of course charging
| doesn't work that way. Otherwise it'd make sense for every
| company to just implement as many unnecessary time-sinks as
| possible. Being higher-cost than competitors (or hell, even
| higher-cost without competitors) without adding proportionate
| value (e.g. when you add a time-sink) will lose you business.
| Second, as immoral as it may sound, plenty of companies or
| rather employees within companies don't write time purely on
| a time-spent basis. Time spent is one of the variables, but
| you'll mostly look at sensibility and industry practices,
| too. If you did project X for a client for $10k and can
| modify it and do it for $8k for client Y the week after,
| you're likely still going to charge something close to $10k
| even if you didn't spend the time. And vice versa, if you bid
| aggressively on a project claiming you can do it in less-
| than-ideal amount of time and spend more time anyway, you'll
| get push-back and will not be able to charge it fully. In
| other words, operational efficiencies are helpful in a world
| in which you agree to get paid on a time-spent basis.
| tlrobinson wrote:
| Of course that only works if there is no competition that is
| more efficient.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Good to see that Apple included them as an alternative default
| search engine choice. Apparently it's quite popular in the USA
| and Germany according to Similarweb.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Ecosia starts their privacy policy with, "We protect your
| privacy."
|
| ...but when you dig in, they:
|
| 1. Use Facebook for "conversion tracking".
|
| 2. _May_ collect messages, photos, calendar information if you
| 're using the app.
|
| 3. Hold on to personally identifiable information for upto 7 days
| post which they (pseudo)anonymize it to store it indefinitely.
| Now, without more information on how they do so, I'm not sure I'd
| trust the effectiveness of their anonymization, given they _may_
| store logs (and other metrics) "as long as necessary".
|
| 4. Integrate with advertisement platform run by Bing on the
| search pages (and so they 'don't control the data Bing
| collects').
|
| Who reads privacy policies, right? Everyone just reads the
| headlines and FAQs.
|
| "Ecosia is a "privacy friendly" search engine. We take user
| privacy very seriously." _Right_. I wish they were upfront and
| admitted to collecting data instead of trying hard to convince
| they don 't do so for nefarious purposes (in their own eyes, that
| is).
|
| https://info.ecosia.org/privacy
| acvny wrote:
| Something - friendly is just the same as Something - ready. If
| you remember the HD - ready TVs you know what it means.
| nalekberov wrote:
| Well if you say "we plant trees" people start to think of you
| as being an angel and being extremely good at everything you
| do.
|
| I don't mind if they use environmental issues for their
| marketing interests, but this is so ridiculous to have such
| privacy policy.
| Bellamy wrote:
| I think they mean: "We don't store all your search results for
| years and monetize you, like the other major search engines.
| Especially the biggest one, u know what I mean."
| toper-centage wrote:
| The only place where Ecosia uses Facebook tracking, in on
| Marketing landing pages. If you don't land there from Facebook,
| i.e. If you go to the website directly, there is no Facebook
| tracking.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Just went directly to Ecosia's search page and disable
| tracking protection.
|
| This appears to be accurate.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Ecosia, especially since they lay claim to protect their
| user's privacy, shouldn't, in my eyes, have anything to do
| with Facebook regardless of where their integration points
| are.
|
| That said, my gripe isn't with their Facebook integration,
| it is with their _dishonest_ privacy posture when the fine
| print reveals something else. They can do way better.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I concur. I just thought it wise to check the above
| commentors statement just to make sure that what they
| said was accurate.
|
| I definitely agree about the fine print. I wish more
| companies would just say up front what they are going to
| do.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Ecosia requires a User-Agent header else will block user and
| ask her to solve captcha. Few if any search engines ask for
| this additional identifier. Google. Bing, DuckDuckGo all work
| fine without it. Does Ecosia's privacy documentation explain
| why Ecosia is different.
| kazinator wrote:
| And "Results by Microsoft". Uh, okay.
| Daho0n wrote:
| DDG uses Bing too. Nothing wrong with that.
| agar wrote:
| I'm not weighing in on Ecosia specifically (no direct
| knowledge), but...
|
| It's very important to remember the legal and liability
| requirements associated with privacy policies. In many
| jurisdictions, you are subject to liability if you collect
| something that was not disclosed in your privacy policy.
|
| Therefor, the default is to over-report. If there's a chance
| that something is collected, better to put it into the privacy
| policy. This is similar to the famous "California Cancer
| Warning" - the incentives to include everything, no matter the
| materiality, ultimately render the warnings useless.
|
| Any central server will "collect" everything typed into a text
| box. If it allows registration, requires password verification,
| perhaps offers customer support, it will disclose collection of
| "personally identifiable information" including email, phone
| number, possibly computer-specific information like browser,
| IP, installed version info, etc. Hosting on Amazon means it's
| shared with a 3rd party. And so on.
|
| Also, this seems crazy to the privacy conscious, but many
| consumers _want_ Facebook integration. They ask for social
| logins, and easy ways to share via social media. Once those
| features are enabled to satisfy their users, they 're subject
| to all the cruft that comes with those APIs - and need to
| disclose those in their privacy policies.
|
| None of the above means that a site is nefariously using the
| data it collects. Nor does it mean they do not take privacy
| very seriously.
|
| The interconnectedness of the web, legal requirements,
| litigious privacy advocates, and overarching privacy
| regulations (none of which are bad on their own) combine to
| make the Privacy Policy an almost useless signal of a company's
| actual privacy posture.
|
| That's why it's highly unfair to Ecosia for OP to so strongly
| imply they lie (or are, at best, misleading and hypocritical)
| and use your data nefariously, simply by excerpting a few lines
| of the Privacy Policy. The scare quotes, italicized "may"s,
| rhetorical questions, and other devices written to instill
| doubt and distrust makes me wonder about the agenda behind the
| message, frankly.
|
| Privacy is extremely important, but so is customer service and
| a viable business model. Suggesting that any product that
| collects data to run the business (and properly discloses it,
| as Ecosia does) will "do so for nefarious purposes" and does
| not "take user privacy very seriously" (" _Right._ ") is unfair
| and undermines the work good people do to craft a viable
| balance in today's difficult tech ecosystem.
| beardog wrote:
| Further, the difference between this and how Duckduckgo uses
| Bing is that DDG does a proper proxy without forwarding your IP
| or any info about you.
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| Microsoft knows what they both do, but ain't saying. Maybe
| they have the same contract or each syndidation partner has a
| unique one. Probably the latter. Trying getting a syndication
| partnership where you don't agree to pass on some part of the
| IP; I've not heard of anyone getting that but anecdotes is
| all I have. Microsoft (or Google in the case of their
| syndication partners) are not going to tell us.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Ecosia also does that
| bboygravity wrote:
| Rule #1 on the internet: the more a website screams something,
| the less it's true.
|
| Examples:
|
| "Our mission is to organize the world's information." (proceeds
| to organize the world's commercial brands and spam people based
| on what they do online)
|
| "We value freedom of speech." (proceed to literally ban the
| president, wrong opinions and alternative apps like Parler)
|
| "We value your privacy." (Every big"tech"/cloud company ever
| that sells your data and has an automated system in place to
| pass all data on to the NSA, authorities and anybody willing to
| buy data)
|
| "Download now" (not actually now, but after you get our
| download manager adware/cryptolocker)
|
| "Download full functional version for free now" (actually a
| limited trial that you get to use after you dump personal info)
|
| "Free trial, unlimited music downloads, cancel any time"
| (proceed to charge your credit card even though you cancelled
| the limited DRM download service on time. I'm looking at you
| Amazon Music)
| [deleted]
| kitkat_new wrote:
| You imply that a website that does not mention tree planting
| at all, plants the most trees. Interesting.
|
| What would you recommend people to put on their website when
| they genuinely would want to provide a search engine that
| plants trees?
|
| Do you imply matrix.org being a protocol for closed islands
| for insecure, centralized silence instead of a protocol for
| an open network for secure, decentralized communication?
|
| Please start finding actual arguments instead of spreading
| superficial unfounded commentary.
| anon321321323 wrote:
| Pragmatically, a regular full audit by an external entity
| might produce interesting results. Who is their auditor?
| That might be a pertinent detail to provide.
| bboygravity wrote:
| >> What would you recommend people to put on their website
| when they genuinely would want to provide a search engine
| that plants trees?
|
| Everything except lies. Simple.
|
| PS: I think the idea of a search engine like that is great
| (assuming the tree planting is done in a responsible way
| without destroy ecosystems). But I don't think implying to
| be privacy friendly when you're not really is great.
| drinkcocacola wrote:
| Absolutely agree. @bbobgravity is trying to create a sort
| of heuristic rule that simply does not work.
| gverrilla wrote:
| if those people wanted to plant trees, they would. when
| they announce that's what they're doing, it's not about the
| trees anymore, but about communication and branding. and
| communication and branding is poised with lies and
| misleading.
| notretarded wrote:
| Impressive mental gymnastics there.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm looking for the plant tree apache module.
| tumaal wrote:
| > You imply that a website that does not mention tree
| planting at all, plants the most trees. Interesting.
|
| They actually don't imply that but the exact opposite,
| which is "the website that talks the most about tree
| planting, plants the least". The way you phrase it reverses
| that logical implication, which is not what they said.
| mrpopo wrote:
| For context, this isn't true either. Ecosia does plant a
| lot of trees. https://youtu.be/z1AVgbI_1r0
| nalekberov wrote:
| But to be honest Parler is also going into this basket, they
| also overstate freedom of speech, which is in the long run
| practically impossible for any centralized service especially
| for those operated in the USA.
|
| I don't believe any particular company cares about anything
| other than maximizing their profit.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Rights = Duties
|
| You lose your freedom of assembly if you use it to form mobs
| with the objective of perpetrating crimes.
|
| You lose your freedom of speech if you use it to form
| unlawful assemblies with the objective of perpetrating
| crimes.
|
| Trump was banned because he sent a mob of Q-indoctrinated
| lunatics to the Capitol with the likely objective of
| kidnapping senators and staging a coup (they were
| photographed carrying zip-tie handcuffs in Senate chambers).
|
| It was a good idea to ban Trump, let's keep it that way. He
| rarely said anything of value anyways, only reality show
| trash talk, hate speech and pseudoscience.
| j8hn wrote:
| How did he send a mob into the Capitol building?
| andruby wrote:
| I've always found the "we value your privacy" an interesting
| _admission_. They definitely put a _value_ on your privacy by
| selling it! They exactly what other are willing to pay for
| it.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Funny. Big corporations also value your privacy at a value
| measured by their stock price.
| endori97 wrote:
| That phenomenon is called counter-signaling, which I first
| ran into listening to Dan Jurafsky making the point that if a
| menu uses the word "fresh", its a low-brow restaurant. A
| high-brow restaurant would never use the word "fresh" -- the
| freshness is implicit in the other signals.
|
| https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf
|
| "People of average education show off the studied regularity
| of their script, but the well educated often scribble
| illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher's easy
| questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove
| their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their
| good intentions by politely ignoring one's flaws, while close
| friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People
| of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress
| employers and society, but the talented often downplay their
| credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A
| person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations
| against his character, while a highly respected person finds
| it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response."
| svara wrote:
| Discovered this very early in life when I found out that
| the more adults tell kids that something is "fun", the less
| it's true. If it really was fun, it would be obvious and
| wouldn't need to be said ;)
| not_knuth wrote:
| This is why I love HN. Learnt something new again today :)
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Ah yes I always see cheap food packaging that says
| "gourmet" or some other obviously unfitting epithet. Words
| printed on packaging are free and somehow folks who market
| cheap foods think stuff like that helps.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| > " We value freedom of speech." (proceed to literally ban
| the president, wrong opinions and alternative apps like
| Parler)"
|
| Saying this is not open-mindedness or support for free
| speech.
|
| The president and Parler both have acted as direct,
| unequivocal instruments of fomenting and directing violence,
| especially with racist and fascist nature.
|
| Banning them from any platforms is in no way connected to
| free speech whatsoever. President Trump's Twitter account and
| Free Speech are two completely disconnected, unrelated
| concepts.
|
| It requires fascism-sympathizing and racism-sympathizing to
| even suggest otherwise.
|
| At this point, anything of the vein like, "Banning Trump from
| Twitter is unfair censorship" or "Banning Parler from app
| stores is unfair censorship" is just hate speech disguised as
| if it's an attempt to uphold freedom.
| nalekberov wrote:
| For the first time I used Ecosia to search something through VPN
| connection, I ran into Google ReCaptcha challenge.
|
| Ok, not too bad.
| calmworm wrote:
| Similar experience. It was fine for some time, then I started
| getting ReCaptcha challenges every time... back to DDG it is.
| MarcScott wrote:
| We had a developer from Ecosia on the Raspberry Pi Livestream a
| few months back, if anyone is interested, along with a code along
| Scratch video for the kids.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMlaVVr0X98
| rakoo wrote:
| Important to know: Ecosia only receives money if you click on
| ads. It doesn't get any if you merely display them, and even less
| if you block them.
| k1m wrote:
| I don't know if they still do this, but not long ago they used
| to try and get you to switch off your ad blocker with an
| obnoxious message saying "Ads plant trees! We've detected that
| you are using an ad blocker. We plant trees thanks to income
| earned from ads. Please disable your ad blocker for Ecosia so
| that we can keep on planting."
| kitkat_new wrote:
| no point in using it if you block ads?
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| As a counter-argument, is it not a little obnoxious to use
| Ecosia with your ad-blocker turned on?
|
| What's the point of using Ecosia if not to help them fund-
| raise for their environmental projects? Why not use Google or
| Bing directly (with an ad-blocker) and save the Ecosia the
| bandwidth costs?
| k1m wrote:
| You're right. I don't use it, and I don't promote it. But I
| don't think it's very clear to everyone who does that
| Ecosia needs you to click ads. Many environmentalists are
| also anti-consumerists, and I suspect would hesitate to use
| or promote this search engine if its reliance on
| advertising were made clearer.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| I guess it's quite a difficult thing to communicate
| without encouraging users to click on ads, which
| presumably would get them in hot water with the ad
| networks.
| giarc wrote:
| I tried Ecosia for probably 2-3 weeks. It is awful, correction,
| bing is awful. The ads are totally not related to my search and
| my search results are much worse than Google. Had to uninstall
| it.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| hmm, they get money although you block the ads? Really?
| toper-centage wrote:
| Yes that's true. But you know how on YouTube you only receive
| ad money after you have a certain number of views? And the more
| views the bigger the % of ad revenue? Bing Ads is the same
| rakoo wrote:
| Indeed, but with the typical HN audience that has a higher
| anti-ad bias than the rest of the population, I was thinking
| it was important to remind that merely switching to Ecosia
| will not totally help them
| rini17 wrote:
| Planting trees has became such a marketing gimmick. Preserving
| old growth forests and restoring wetlands has bigger impact on
| CO2 and climate.
| k1m wrote:
| And Ecosia's business model relies on promoting consumerism
| (getting you to look at and click on ads).
| nerdponx wrote:
| If I could legitimately help stop or reverse ecological
| damage to the planet by clicking ads, I would do it all day.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Be careful as click fraud could get them thrown off Bing.
| toper-centage wrote:
| You're absolutely right, but here's a counter point of view.
| People are not more likely to use Ecosia and click ads than
| they are to use Google and click ads. Ecosia is trying to
| give you a "greener" option to something you will do anyway.
| k1m wrote:
| But then you're having to ignore an even "greener" option.
| That's using and promoting ad blocking in general to lessen
| the environmental impact of consumerism. The thing with
| Ecosia is that it seems to ignore the damaging impact
| consumerism has on the environment. Instead, it encourages
| it by urging you to expose yourself and your friends to
| advertising.
| toper-centage wrote:
| But then that's up to you, right? Ecosia does not
| encourage you to buy anything, but if you search for
| products, it suggests places where you could buy it. I
| don't get your point.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| You could always just donate to tree;
| https://edenprojects.org/
|
| Eden is around 10 US cents per tree planted.
| EcoMonkey wrote:
| At least on this climate policy simulator built by MIT,
| planting trees is indeed not a big winner for achieving climate
| goals. And actually, neither is limiting deforestation. (But we
| should do those things for other great reasons like preserving
| and restoring habitat.) This simulator doesn't address wetlands
| specifically, unfortunately.
|
| If you really want to see what gets emissions down, move the
| carbon price slider.
|
| https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7....
|
| According to tons of leading economists, we can make a steadily
| rising fee on carbon emissions economically sustainable and
| politically viable by returning the net revenue from the fee to
| households as carbon dividends.
|
| https://econstatement.org/
| kitkat_new wrote:
| doing both has an even bigger positive impact
| rini17 wrote:
| Trees plant naturally themselves (keyword:natural succession)
| anytime when the land is ready (like not overgrazed,
| desertified, drained). In such locations the tree planting
| mania is superfluous even to the point of rejecting
| spontaneously grown shrubs/trees as "weeds". Such land is
| needlessly cleared and replanted with trees, with loss of
| biodiversity. I'm not exaggerating here in europe it happens
| all the time.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| There's also animal species that will go extinct without their
| old growth forest habitat.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I thought new growth absorbed marginally more CO2? Happy to be
| corrected, perhaps you have a source?
| rini17 wrote:
| Old forests better retain water and thus are able to grow
| better - marginally accumulate more biomass. I'm NOT against
| planting trees but against overdoing it as I explain in the
| other comment.
|
| https://envirobites.org/2019/09/24/old-is-better-than-
| young-...
| varajelle wrote:
| That's probably true, but when a forest is burned, that's
| decades of absorbed CO2 that goes back to the atmosphere,
| which would take another decades to be absorbed by the new
| trees.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| When a forest burns, most of what burns is new growth:
| grass, leaves, needles, branches, etc. Rarely do trees
| fully incinerate, even in the hottest spots. I imagine the
| charred matchsticks left behind still contain the majority
| of a tree's carbon.
| varajelle wrote:
| The dead tree will eventually decay, releasing all its
| carbon. When talking about deforestation, this means
| reusing the land for something else.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| That obviously depends with what happens with the trees that
| could not have been preserved. If you burn a tree you set
| almost it's entire absorbed CO2 free. On the other hand, a
| recently planted tree has absorbed almost nothing - it will
| take decades if not longer to grow to a big one - reaching
| the level of absorbed CO2 of the other tree before it has
| been burned.
|
| Nevertheless, a tree at the place of an older one can help
| binding CO2 when the old tree is used such that the CO2 is
| not released to the atmopshere, such as for a well-crafted
| table (which could be used for decades, too). But don't
| forget that it usually is not just removing one tree -
| usually big areas are cut out, which includes the huge
| ecosystems around trees in untouched nature.
|
| Though, always keep in mind, this is not a choice. The goal
| should be to preserve as much as possible (especially
| untouched ecosystems) as well as planting as much as
| possible.
| bttrfl wrote:
| CO2 isn't the only reason to take care of forests. If we
| replace a naturally grown forests with newly planted one we
| destroy an existing thriving habitat and replace it, in most
| cases, with a monoculture. This has tragic impact on
| biodiversity.
|
| Here's a good article you might want to read. It also says
| that natural forests are actually better at capturing CO2.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8
| toper-centage wrote:
| There's more to climate change than CO2... Forests create
| micro climates; prevent soil erosion; help fixate water and
| nutrients; produce food for local populations, thus providing
| them income and reducing need to ship as much food to rural
| areas; improve yields of agriculture, so you don't need to
| water as much, or use as much ferilizer... And Ecosia is
| invested is projects to help with all of this (read their
| blog).
|
| This single track kindset of climate change fight is why we
| get so much green washing.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Ecosia uses planting trees as the poster child, because that's
| what people want to hear. But in reality, there's a lot more
| going on. Ecosia produces 200% of it's estimated energy
| footprint in solar. They also protect forests, and help
| populations in Africa with their forests and with adapting to a
| life without deforestation.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Thank you, I was about to point that out as well. Ecosia
| advertises with "we plant trees" because that is what people
| understand and want to hear. Under the hood, there is a lot
| more going on. Ecosia does not only support one but multiple
| projects with a variety of goals, including reforestation,
| preservation etc. What's also nice is the fact that their are
| extremely transparent about their finances. They are a
| registered non profit in Germany and they frequently publish
| their finances and other insights, which is always extremely
| interesting
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| They use data tools that I helped initiate to keep track of
| their work. Here is on dashboard I found.
| https://ecosia.akvolumen.org/s/2H9C92aluRg
| Normille wrote:
| Laudable concept. But unfortunately (at least when I tried
| switching to it early last year) the search results were just not
| very good.
|
| You might almost say that, reading them, I couldn't see the wood,
| for the trees.
| dgellow wrote:
| Don't they use Bing as their search engine?
|
| Edit: yep, that's the case: https://ecosia.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/206153381-Where...
| indysigners wrote:
| I was using Ecosia for a number of weeks and did achieve some 80
| planted trees over the course of that period.
|
| However, I eventually was so frustrated over the poor search
| results that I did move back to DDG.
|
| Ecosia's intentions might be noble and worth supporting, but I
| cannot really follow how one can stay with them when the overall
| experience is so poor.
|
| I don't even mind some possible privacy issues as noted above but
| it all comes down to being at least comparably good to Google and
| DDG. Which is sadly not the case with Ecosia.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Wait, aren't DDG and Ecosia using the same search engine under
| the hood (bing)?
|
| How would you be getting different results from them?
| zed88 wrote:
| I hope they aren't planting monocultures instead of mixed
| forests. If they do...they are no better than the Chinese.
| fortran77 wrote:
| "Why Planting Trees Won't Save Us"
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/tree...
| niutech wrote:
| Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766
| [deleted]
| stuartbman wrote:
| I work in a hospital. They have switched the default search
| engine to ecosia. All adverts are blocked, so it cant help plant
| trees, and because it's bing, the carbon footprint is then
| positive (rather than at least neutral with Google). So it's all
| virtue signalling. Worst of all, we get worse results, all the
| time, and I think this will indirectly affect patient care.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Ecosia actually covers the Bing side of things on their own
| solar footprint, and report 200% coverage with solar.
| dgut wrote:
| Shameless plug, I run Okeano which intends to spend 80% of
| profits to clean up the ocean by purchasing river interceptors
| from the Ocean Cleanup Project.
|
| We support domain blocklist natively and are (very) privacy
| friendly: https://okeano.com/privacy
|
| https://okeano.com
| juniperplant wrote:
| https://okeano.com/reports
|
| ...Is it supposed to be empty?
| arendtio wrote:
| Is there some kind of search phrase where you would say, that
| your search engine returns better results than the competition?
| dgut wrote:
| If you add Pinterest to your blocklist [1], does that count
| as better results? That said, we have our own index of
| websites posted on HN and other interesting communities. It
| will add filters like size and "privacy rank". Unfortunately
| it's not possible to experiment with it in production yet.
|
| [1] https://okeano.com/blocklist
| Daho0n wrote:
| That is a great feature!
| arendtio wrote:
| I like the idea :-)
|
| Could even become something like an interactive search
| experience e.g. having a button 'remove all search results
| from this domain' or 'add domain to blocklist'.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| This looks really interesting. Bookmarked it. Thanks for your
| work.
|
| But is there any way of verifying if what you're saying is
| true?
| dgut wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| When we can afford it -- we will definitely run multiple
| independent audits to verify our privacy claims. At the
| moment there isn't any simple way to do it. You'll have to
| take my word for it.
|
| We are currently not making money, but when we do we'll be
| very transparent about it including (if we reach that point),
| about interceptor purchases.
|
| Feel free to send me any feedback/suggestions/comments to
| david at okeano.com if you find any quirks. Appreciate it :)
| corney91 wrote:
| This is my go-to search engine, it's pretty good.
|
| While I like the idea of a privacy-focused search engine eg.
| DuckDuckGo, I think the climate is a more important issue and I
| figure at least Ecosia is based in the EU where they're more
| likely to comply with the GDPR. 99% of my searches can be found
| by any engine and it's trivial to add a shortcut to other
| engines, so I don't base my default choice on search results
| (within reason of course).
|
| That's my reasoning around the two common issues anyway.
| Fiahil wrote:
| I'd love to plant a few ecosia-sponsored trees in my city. but,
| of course, it's not possible do that here because they're not
| _actually_ planting trees. They're just giving money to someone
| else.
| giarc wrote:
| I wouldn't trust an add-on company to be able to plant trees
| properly, and why would we? I'd rather they be the middle man
| between me and the tree planting companies.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| if you find it acceptable to watch ads (I don't), use it
| x32n23nr wrote:
| How much would you be willing to pay for search as a premium
| service?
| input_sh wrote:
| I'd pay 5-10 bucks a month without a second thought. That'd
| amount to something like 420-840 bucks to DDG since I've
| roughly started using it (somewhere around Snowden leaks).
|
| It's not a larger amount than they would earn from me if I
| didn't use an ad-blocker, but it's 100% larger than they've
| earned from me over the years.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| depends
| toper-centage wrote:
| Depends on what? Let's assume we're talking Bing-level
| quality and DDG-level privacy. How much would you pay per
| month?
| kitkat_new wrote:
| a lot of factors - future potential - features/technology
| behind it - feelings - financial situation - alternatives
| - need for a search engine
|
| I don't even know if I'd pay anything at all.
| tssva wrote:
| So who do you use for search? The most mentioned around here is
| Duck Duck Go but they derive their income from ads also.
| kitkat_new wrote:
| I mostly use Google
| tssva wrote:
| "if you find it acceptable to watch ads (I don't), use it"
|
| "I mostly use Google"
|
| Are you trolling?
| kitkat_new wrote:
| no, I am not
| Can_Not wrote:
| Ecosia, the Android app that is a browser with this search engine
| as a default, installed a search bar into my taskbar without my
| consent. It disappeared recently. Does anyone know how to get it
| back?
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