I just learnt about the search engine Ecosia which claims to use its advertising revenue to plant trees. I was going through their website and they seem legitimate on the surface but I wanted to check if its bs or not before using it.
Yes I have! And no idea if they are. Their search is just better than google, and doesn’t freeze like yahoo, isn’t Russian like yandex, isn’t a privacy nightmare and lying about it like duckduckgo, isn’t chinese like baidu, isn’t bloated like bing, and isn’t slow af like searx
Most of those search engines just mentioned are just bing with a wrapper tho
Thanks. I’ve only used for the second today but so far it’s pretty good so far
Apparently they are legit. But it’s important to remember that this is the tiniest of tiny good deeds if you’re really concerned about the environment.
Yes, that’s obvious. But the cognitive fallacy of small gestures is a real issue, i.e. the problem of people changing their lightbulbs and calling it a day. Especially since there are things we can do that really do make a difference. For example, cutting down on red meat, dairy, and flying. Any one of those will have more impact than decades of using Ecosia.
Privacy is a better reason to use Ecosia.
Privacy? Ecosia literally forwards your information to Bing. They’re also behind Cloudflare.
So we’re running out of reasons to use it. Personally I find the “planting trees” USP to be a potentially risky gimmick for the reason outlined above, but that is just my perspective.
I looked into them a while ago, and from what I can find, they seem to be legit in that they really do use the profits for tree planting.
Thanks for the answer! They seem to be transparent, and even have a breakdown of they use their money by month, which I appreciate. Just wanted to make sure there weren’t any huge news stories that blew the lid on this and said it was all fake or something. Thanks again
They seem pretty legit based on the research I’ve done. With a small niche program like that, they kind of have to be because one misstep and they would lose their entire base.
Didn’t they start shoving AI bullshit into it? Kinda undermines the point.
I’ve been using that for years. They do good work around the world, and it’s much more sophisticated than “planting trees”. They’re great, go for it.
Yes. But of course you have to enable and interact with the ads.
Use different search engines for different things, spread your data around.
