A couple of months back, everybody went ballistic when the EU GDPR declared IP addresses as "personal data". Can't recall any posts/articles that were actually defending this GDPR provision—if you can point us to one, I'd love to read the counter-arguments.
So I believe that there is a consensus that using IP addresses to improve search results would be fair game for DDG. It's also consistent with the DDG promise: "we don't track you".
OTOH, not using them has only marginal effect on user's privacy: (a) DDG doesn't serve ads anyway, and (b) the metadata of user's online activity are still available to three-letter agencies to analyze.
So I believe that there is a consensus that using IP addresses to improve search results would be fair game for DDG. It's also consistent with the DDG promise: "we don't track you".
OTOH, not using them has only marginal effect on user's privacy: (a) DDG doesn't serve ads anyway, and (b) the metadata of user's online activity are still available to three-letter agencies to analyze.