This is a DDG issue.

Responce from DDG Team:

Announcement: We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search that might prevent you from getting results. Thanks for your patience while we work to get it solved as quickly as possible.

Saw comments that people were having issues with Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Bing and Qwant search engine sites. Though DDG is still having issues.

That is correct. Issue word is used just to avoid strict answear. I'm pretty sure it' s kind of organized malicous activities. Which will be anonunced after some period of time... Like it was with cozy bear. Do not forget Firefox is still underhood part of Google... maybe it's time to switch to yandex ;) or maybe find another not colletcing data search engine...

The Firefox web browser is not a part of Google company in any way. Google is paying to have the privilege to be the main default search engine in many locales.

Yandex is basically "Russia's Google" so I would not consider it to be safe.

from almost six hours ago https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1793652538476216398

Aaaand we're coming back up! Phew. We appreciate all your support and patience while we rearranged our feathers