DuckDuckGo Removes Piracy-Related Sites, YouTube Ripping Tools
DuckDuckGo appears to have (partly) removed piracy-related websites from its search results.
TorrentFreak reports that DuckDuckGo can no longer be used to search for content on The Pirate Bay, Fmovies, and other sites of dubious legality. The service seems to have removed sites dedicated to YouTube ripping tools such as youtube-dl and youtube-mp3 as well.
DuckDuckGo hasn't entirely removed these sites and tools from its search results at time of writing. Searching for "The Pirate Bay" still returns the main website, for example, and searching for "youtube-dl" returns the relevant GitHub repository. (Which briefly disappeared from GitHub in 2020 due to a DMCA dispute.)
TorrentFreak notes that DuckDuckGo previously removed "bangs"—commands preceded by an exclamation mark that make searching for content on specific websites easier—for piracy-related sites in 2018 so it wouldn't be held liable for copyright violations taking place on those platforms.
DuckDuckGo users could search those sites using the "site:example.com" syntax, however, so removing the associated "bangs" was mostly a matter of convenience. But that syntax no longer works, so it seems that DuckDuckGo is being even more strict about indexing pirate websites.
DuckDuckGo didn't immediately respond to request for comment.
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