I don't agree with the distinction you're trying to make. Google also tries to customize your results for you, but does not offer you any control (don't know about ddg). I think of it as the same thing with Kagi, expect I have explicit input into the results.

Some of these changes are subjective. E.g. I have blocked all of Pinterest since it just clutters my results, but other people explicitly want Pinterest in their results. (not I don't know who would want the seo'd programming sites, but that's a different matter).