I just changed my default search to noai.duckduckgo
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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If you’re blocking cookies to a certain extent, or browsing in incognito/private/whatever, it won’t remember you turned it off.
I am talking about the search itself
Yes, the "show AI" toggle you set in the search is saved as part of your cookie. Any website setting will be reset if you cookie is wiped.
For the record, this is specifically because DuckDuckGo doesn't want to store any information about you, so everything gets handled client side. That means they have no way to tell that you are the same person unless you're using the same client with the same cookies.
Basically, DuckDuckGo forgets because it was built to be forgetful. That's how respecting privacy works.
This is likely the problem indeed OP.
FWIW Cookies were once a way for websites to store preferences and logged-in sessions, but they were easily abused for tracking as well. Protecting your privacy by deleting cookies deletes those preferences and sessions generally too, including the ai setting. IMHO ai enabled being the default is a shit idea, but I guess there’s little choice here.
If you want to add it to your browser's search, the pattern is https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%25s
That's supposed to be percent 's' but Lemmy keeps mangling it
If you're on desktop, you can try zapping the entire container with ublock origin. Then it shouldn't matter if it gets turned back on or not, because it'll still never get rendered on screen.
Are you talking about the browser or the search?
You might be crazy for calling it the 3th time 😅
Good point, thanks