Plugin appears to not be working at all
Based on the description in the email received and the freeinternetplugin.com website, as well as the article on HackerNoon, the plugin doesn't appear to be working as described... at all really.
Browser | Search Engine
Vivaldi (latest) | StartPage.com
Brave (latest) | DuckDuckGo
To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- install either Vivaldi or Brave Browser
- Configure either StartPage or DuckDuckGo as the search engine of choice.
- Use Search Term: " about"
i.e., new york times about or wall street journal about
Expected behavior
- Expected behavior is that the user will not see links to the paywalled sites in the SERPs.
Desktop (please complete the following information):
- OS: Win10/64, Slackware -current, Debian Bulseye, Arch Linux
- Browser: Vivaldi 4.0.2312.27 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
- Browser: Brave Version 1.25.73 Chromium: 91.0.4472.106 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Actual Behavior
- Search returns show multiple links to the actual sites that have blocking enabled in the plugin's config. i.e., NYT/WSJ, etc.
- Paywalled sites, if visited via the links returned in search results will, as intended by those website publishers, throw up a paywall after a few seconds or after attempting to scroll the article in order to read.
- It is as if the plugin does not work at all, and indeed, seems as if it does not.
Smartphone (please complete the following information):
- Device: Have yet to test (Might be pointless)
- OS: Android and CalyxOS
- Browser: Vivaldi and Brave
- Version: Will be the latest if plugin is installed and tested.
Additional Details
I wanted to leave a glowing review for the plugin in the chrome store. both browsers are compatible with Chrome plugins and there are currently only seven reviews. After an initial check to make sure that the plugin works it seems to absolutely not work at all, browser restarts, system reboot on windows, etc., fail to affect the behavior of search returns from DDG and StartPage. The same behavior is exhibited when using the Gigablast search engine.
I have not, nor will, test with Google as the search engine, so if this plugin only works with results from Google.com as the search provider then I would think that should be stated and then people who will never use Google will know this plugin is not for them.
I didn't want to just leave a review stating that the plugin doesn't work for me at all considering that the existing 6 reviewers awarded five stars each, so I figure there must be something in the configs (I changed/altered nothing) that needs to be set in order for this plugin to work as advertised.