I want a search engine that does not use any location data whatsoever to manipulate results because I see it as an extremely problematic practice. For example, someone who lives in my area would be more likely to see agencies and interests that align with fascism, since this is a heavily fascist state.

This, and it doesn’t seem like a big ask to have a search engine solely respond to deliberate input from the user, so I’m not sure why I need to defend searching for such a thing. The agent could have simply disclosed that they do use locational data to provide their services, and I would have moved on. Instead, he tried to dodge the question. Not only that, but he became very pedantic about what constitutes a “search.” In my interpretation, any widgets or any results whatsoever that use locational data would fall under this umbrella. It is needlessly pedantic to claim that it is something else entirely, since as you can see it was presented to me in response to my entering a keyword, a keyword which I might add did not request a widget at all.