Ecosia plants 200 million trees

Comments

• nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is a necessary reminder that Ecosia is a scam:

  • they don’t “plant trees” but rather contribute very little amounts to existing programmes
  • "Every search plants a tree" is a lie. It’s not every search, but rather every couple clicks in an ad
  • They use Bing results making them useless

  If you’re using Ecosia with an adblocker or knowingly skip over sponsored results then you are NOT in any way contributing to the tree-planting

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  • Star@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    they don’t “plant trees” but rather contribute very little amounts to existing programmes Ofcourse they don’t plant trees themselves, it’s a search engine with a small team. They donate their entire profit which averages upwards of a million euros every month, to local tree planting initiatives across the world and that isn’t a ‘little’ number at all.

    “Every search plants a tree” is a lie. It’s not every search, but rather every couple clicks on an ad I agree, they were ‘a bit’ misleading with that in the past. Although they did state in their tree counter earlier and somewhere in their website/blog that it was roughly 45 searches (in Germany, depends on region) which raised enough money to plant a tree. They’ve since removed most, if not all of the misinformation.

    They use Bing results making them useless Since when does using Bing results make a search engine a ‘scam’? DuckDuckGo also uses Bing results, would you call that a scam as well? Ecosia uses Bing search results because it’s close to impossible to make an independent search engine which gives satisfactory results without the resources of a tech giant.

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    • ultratiem@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      to local tree planting initiatives across the world

      Pick a lane. It can’t be both. Either they donate to local initiatives or global ones. Pick one.

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  • joelimgu@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But they are pretty clear about that. Also, how is that worse than Google or bing? It’s not a dream sure, but its a lot better than your money going to Google

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    • nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      they are not “clear about that”. I can see they removed it now but for the longest time the main page had a banner saying “every search plants a tree” and also an actual counter which went up by one every time you made a search – which was misleading, because it wasn’t every “search”, because you would have to click on an ad, and it wasn’t “every”, because it took several clicks on an ad to actually contribute an equivalent of a tree

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  • _edge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Does not sound like a scam.

    The build a website, with ads, and donate the revenue.

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    • nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It is a scam if you make claims that “every search plants a tree”

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  • YungOnions@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’d rather ‘little contribution’ than none at all. I’d rather ‘every couple of clicks’ than none at all. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the major alternatives.

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    • nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      clicks on ads

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  • Sniatch@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Can I ask what search engine you would recommend that is not some kind of misleading or a scam

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    • nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Qwant?

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  • vodkasolution@feddit.it ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think your second and third point are well known or at least easily conceivable, but where did you get your first point from? Plain curiosity

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    • nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      their own blog

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  • Cuttlefish1111@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What’s your contribution?

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• fiat_lux@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Can we... see them?

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  • LibreFish@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The big turning point came in 2018 when I signed a legally binding commitment to ensure that Ecosia could never be sold and that 100% of our profits would always go to the planet. Today, your searches enable us to work with partners to plant and protect 1,250 species of trees across 95,000 locations globally.

    Keywords plant and protect. Basically a papermill can plant trees to harvest 20 years later and in the meantime sell carbon offsets for 19 years then harvest and replant.

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    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ecosia doesn’t sell carbon credits though.

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• uuhhhhmmmm@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They integrated AI chat which is using OpenAI technology. So they’re paying for ChatGPT API instead of spending this money on trees? And doesn’t running generative AI consume a lot of electricity?

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  • myxi@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We have estimated the carbon footprint of our AI chatbot and according to our first estimates it does not significantly increase the overall carbon footprint of Ecosia. The estimate takes into account that Ecosia searches are already 200% carbon negative,as we produce twice as much energy as is consumed by our search engine. We are currently working with two universities to refine our carbon footprint assessment.

    Unfortunately the more important issue is that the leading language AI model providers are still not transparent about the energy consumption of their models, so without this clarity we can only make rough estimations of our impact. We will continue to monitor our energy usage and urge leading AI companies to do the same and be transparent about their impact.

    (ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/…/534-ecosia-chat-ai)

    I am not against it. I don’t want to miss out on AI to support this search engine. It’s quite helpful to me, and I assume many others. I think this search engine should compete with other search engines so that more users use it. I am already a fan of their Ecosia Chat; the interface is damn fast and the responses are even faster. Bing Chat is just awful, it’s blood slow: both the interface and the text generation.

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  • hannes3120@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Running AI doesn’t - training an AI is where the real power hungry stuff happens

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• LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’d like to try using this, but I like to search by “all regions” and it won’t ever save my preferences in Fennec

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  • eager_eagle@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Image

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    • LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m usually connected to a VPN, so it incorrectly auto-detects my region, and also I just don’t like the idea that results are being served based on regional trends and interests

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  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Same. I wish there was a way to provide settings via a custom URL

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    • LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes! That’s how I do it with Mojeek, which is my current search engine of choice

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• Roldyclark@literature.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I miss their old app logo

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