The search engine DuckDuckGo no longer shows websites that deal with illegal downloads, such as The Pirate Bay and 1337x. Also a striking decision is not to display the official website of youtube-dl, a program with which, among other things, it is possible to download YouTube videos.

who – which Reports TorrentFreak. Testing with the three sites TorrentFreak mentioned at the top of his article, piratesbay† 1337 times And Movies, explains that the first of these three can still be found, but that the main areas of the other two are not really. It is remarkable that TPB is prohibited if one searches Website: thepiratebay.org†

Also youtube-dl.org, the official youtube-dl website, is coming not forward in the results. This is an amazing metric for DDG: Ria Request In 2020 to get youtube-dl from GitHub, which is what this site did initially. However, after a small code change, youtube-dl is back again Back And EFF and github They also expressed their support for the project. However, it looks like DuckDuckGo Safe You want to play in this case and youtube-dl filters at least partially; The GitHub page will still display.

This isn’t the first time that DuckDuckGo has manipulated the content of search results. Last month It did so with regard to sites that “spread Russian disinformation”. Moreover, this is not the first time that measures have been taken in the area of ​​decreasing facilitation of piracy; The so-called “bangs”, a kind of researchhot wordshas become Already in 2018 Disabled for some 2000 hacking websites. At the time, DDG explained that facilitating the illegal distribution of content in this way represented a “risk” to the service. DuckDuckGo did not respond to a request for comment from TorrentFreak prior to publication.

Google also removes torrent sites and the like from search results, where you are forced to do so. In the Netherlands, for example, this is the case Since the end of last year†

Critics of the move note that while such measures can block access to torrent sites, they also leave more room for impersonators, who use similar site domains and designs to try to plant malware on their visitors’ computers.

Update, 13:50: DuckDuckGo striker Gabriel Weinberg let him know That filtering youtube-dl is by no means the intention.