Yes, Ghostery has a subscription based business model and that another reason to great care in protecting users privacy. Take a look on how we use blind tokens to authenticate subscribed users while searching on glowstery.com https://github.com/ghostery/ghostery-search-extension (notice that even when you are a subscribed user there is no session cookie so queries cannot be linked).
Hope this sheds some light on the accusation. If that’s not enough, I do sincerely recommend uBlock Origin or AdGuard on Apple’s platform.
Hi. I'm one of the engineers that was working on Cliqz browsers. My focus was on the iOS one recently. All browser code was always open, you can find it on Github.
Probably lots of people remember the good old days of Google Advance Search. Or the ability to fine tune the results with special operators like +, -, site:, etc.
It was probably 2010 when we started to talk about filter bubbles and how "smart" algorithms adjust the data to our liking. No one even though about disasters like Cambridge Analitica.
As those days are long gone, there is perspective that is not purely negative. IMAO modern search engines are more approachable. They are easier than ever to use. Specifically for people that don't necessarily know how or have patience to learn how to use it.
We are power users and often forget that most people don't have to be ones. They just want to search.
Therefore approach that Cliqz takes to its data collection makes even more sense. What Human Web does is extraction of common knowledge (or sense) on what does Web mean to people. Not to you, not to me, but to all of us.