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Ads on Mojeek

You might have noticed that text ads have started appearing on Mojeek. If you are wondering why, or what has changed, let us explain.

  1. Since 2006 Mojeek has been committed to a no tracking policy. That policy is still in place and that commitment is a key influence on all that we do.
  2. We intend to be a search engine company in 2030 and beyond.
  3. The internet has not been broken by ads. It’s been broken by data harvesting and monopolies.

Unlike the Google founders who started off not wanting to do ads, but then relented under financial pressures, we have never been anti-ads. Ads convey information, they can even entertain. They can be a useful economic signal for a buyer and a way for upstarts and smaller brands to get attention and compete.

Ads are not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is tracking.

Tracking on the web is now recognised as digital surveillance. Google and Microsoft, with the dominant search engines, are surveillance masters. Their greed to feed hungry AI algorithms with your personal data and expressed intent is rampant. And those algorithms are turned back on you. These algorithms and companies are seeking to optimise engagement and their returns.

Who decided it was OK to track us? After all, when you search, you express intent; and this intent means that relevant ads are possible without tracking.

DuckDuckGo and Startpage, to name just two of many, have shown that ads with privacy can work. They show useful ads based on just search queries and location. But here’s the problem; they still feed data, to Microsoft and Google respectively. And they must accept the search and ad results that they get back from them. You might get privacy, but you are still feeding the beasts.

Mojeek is now a third alternative; a third and very different place for putting search ads on a real search engine.

Search ads on Mojeek are currently provided by Linkvertise whose privacy policy complies with the data protection laws of Germany. The only data that is passed by Mojeek to Linkvertise is a search query and a country code. No tracking is therefore involved. When you leave mojeek.com, including when clicking an ad, you are of course subject to the policies of other sites, including their data collection practices.

Advertising is one of our options for creating a sustainable business; as outlined in this post.