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Mastodon server operated by David Troy, a tech pioneer and investigative journalist addressing threats to democracy. Thoughtful participation and discussion welcome.

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#search

25 posts21 participants2 posts today

I am still getting a handle on the full power of #Mastodon #search capabilities, but the ability to combine queries and have queries that target specific data is very powerful. I thought I would share an example.

I wanted to catch up on reporting on threats to public federal research funding for universities in the last 1-2 days. This query got me what I was looking for:

“After:2025-04-01 from:\@npr\@flipboard.com fund”

Change the news site account to suit your needs, of course.

lifehacker.com/tech/the-best-h

Kagi offers some good Reasons to pay for search:

- See AI results only when you need to
- Remove AI generated images from search results
- Try search filters to fine tune results
- Hide clickbait from videos
- Create lenses to refine results
- Tweak results to your liking
- keyboard shortcuts
- Use redirects to reduce annoyances
- Use the Privacy Pass for anonymity

Lifehacker · Why I Pay for Kagi, the Ad-Free Google Search AlternativeKagi is a paid search engine, which offers a good alternative to Google search. You can use these 10 hidden features in Kagi to get your money's worth from the search engine.

dear #DuckDuckGo or other search engine: I want a little button next to every #search result that lets me exclude it from all search results for me, personally, forever. With an option to block the entire domain.

I'm definitely looking at #pinterest but there's just a lot of #AI slop out there. Tons of AI-generated websites. Even without the AI search "helper" things, I get a lot of shit that is just really low quality.

I don't think I see this witih DDG (there is a "give feedback" button with unclear effects on my personal search experience) and I'm not familiar with many other search engines now (except google and no). But if there's something out there that already has this functionality, I'll be happy to check it out and happy for the referral.

I want a browser add-on like an ad-blocker, that doesn't block sites, but marks domains in search results with things like:

- pay walled
- requires email
- pop-up modals
- AI written

So that I can choose whether or not to visit that domain, depending on what else is in the search results.