this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Une communauté dédiée à l'achat de produits Canadiens.

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Search Engine: Ecosia - Invests in Canadian reforesting initiatives 🌱 (lemmy.ca)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca to c/buycanadian@lemmy.ca
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Unfortunately, there are no Canadian owned and operated search engines (they were all acquired by Americans! Yes really). The next best alternative is Ecosia, which is the only major search engine that actually invests to Canadians' benefit. Ecosia partners with Tree Canada to regenerate Canadian forests.

In Canada, Ecosia’s reforestation project is located within the Acadian Forest and focuses on restoring its historic diversity in areas that have been degraded by centuries of intensive land use.

Video playlist: How Ecosia works.

Ecosia is also B Corp Certified. This means they have changed their by-laws to be mission locked, and are required to consider stakeholders' interests such as employees, customers, and the environment.

Ecosia is a not-for-profit tech company that plants and protects trees. By dedicating 100% of its profits to the planet, Ecosia has planted over 214,229,374 million trees since its founding in December 2009. In addition to trees, Ecosia invests in environmental and social initiatives like regenerative agriculture, renewable energy and community-driven climate projects.

Getting Started

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[–] jayk@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Alternatively, you can use a self hosted searxng instance, or try and find a local instance here: https://searx.space/ There's sadly no trees that are planted with this method though

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

My problem is that it’s just an aggregate, if I could self host a crawler that just indexes sites I want then that would be infinitely more valuable

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

Maybe there should be known public crawlers hosted by several people that would set up some kind of shared but separated indices, and people could self host their own search page and set it to subscribe to these indices and filter for sites they care about. The index hosted by one person must be public and easily recreated elsewhere, so that if they can’t host it anymore for whatever reason, others can fill the gap.

Or! Each server would kind of be in some federation, and we all have our own index, some overlapping. The overlapping simply becomes a kind of redundancy.

Sorry if that makes zero sense or is a bad idea. Just tossing it out cause I thought it might be somewhat viable after some (or much) tweaking. Been somewhat interested in information retrieval lately and this is making my little brain kind of excited.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How do they profit? I'm allergic to advertising, and I happily pay for Kagi to be able to control what I see and how my search results are displayed.

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

See the video playlist: How Ecosia works.

For myself, I think the community benefit is more important than the "cost" of seeing ads. Perhaps in the future, as Ecosia grows, they'll be able to offer paid ad free plans.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

As someone with ADHD, an ad-blocker is not a want, it's a need, so I'd be using Ecosia with an ad-blocker, which defeats the purpose.

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I have to say, I don't really agree with the assertion that having ADHD indicates a need for ad-blocking. What happens if you see a couple of ads or distractions?

Even if ads are blocked, when you click on a link a search engine has provided, would you not realize if what you were looking for was there?

I suppose in theory, even if ads are blocked, there would still be some beneficial metrics that Ecosia could gather.

In any case, you are free to use whatever search engine you choose, without justification to anybody else. I do choose to keep the ads, because I feel the cause is more important than the "cost" incurred upon me.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's a visual distraction that makes it harder to parse a page rather than about accidentally clicking on it. Regarding clicks, advertising has often been used to carry malware and is a security risk.

I have pretty severe ADHD, and I do best on straightforward content. Turns out, most sites are rather straightforward after you strip out the advertising. It's a question of cognitive complexity.

From your response, I can tell you don't have ADHD nor understand the cognitive difficulty that comes with being offered things I do not need all the time or having to find the real content like a needle in a haystack when I have the attention span of a fruit fly.

On top of that, I'm of the philosophy that my eyes and data are not aspects of me that are for sale, as those are not things that I can easily control. I would much rather just directly pay for what I use.

Bref, I don't think Ecosia's business model is accessible, nor does it sit well with me philosophically. Just let me pay for those trees in exchange for a service, take my money, I have money!

[–] AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca -4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

From your response, I can tell you don’t have ADHD

That's a very big assertion, and without compelling evidence to justify the claim. What license do you have to practice medicine? What diagnostic criteria have you used to rule out ADHD? If you truly do have ADHD, wouldn't it be in your best interests to not so carelessly levy such statements, as ADHD is already not taken so seriously by the public at large?

Independent of whether I personally have ADHD, what does that have to do with your own personal choice of search engines? The answer is nothing.

You are free to choose what ever search engine suits your needs, but at the very least don't make statements about others you know nothing about. It's intellectually dishonest and lazy.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

Um, hello? You are the one who made a mistaken medical assessment about ADHD accessibility or needs and then made a blanket assertion based on that uninformed opinion... then get huffy when called out? With projection, no less. Shame.

The ADHD portion of accessibility software for websites is very interesting, check it out and learn.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I did not make a statement about you, I made a statement about your response. I apologize if it came off as rude, but it's clear in your response that you don't care much for accessibility (and neither does Ecosia, or most people for that matter) and don't understand what ADHD is. Whether you do have ADHD or not or do / do not care is a different topic, and is not what is being displayed here.

Besides, it's not a choice, it's a need. Ecosia is not accessible. I've been looking at Ecosia for a long time, and unfortunately I can't use it without practically stealing their server time because they won't take my money.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago

This why Ecosia is my favourite!

!ecosia@mander.xyz

[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Interesting. They have a browser as well. We do we know about it?

[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago

I downloaded it and have been playing around. Looks like it's Chromium-based?