cross-posted from: https://vlemmy.net/post/317922
Alternate title: Google admits Reddit protests make it harder to find helpful search results
Search engines have been becoming increasingly useless for years at this point as SEO gentrification runs rampant and more content moves behind walled gardens like Discord and anything that requires a subscription. Not to mention that Google enshittifies just like everything else. The amount of overly verbose garbage I have to trek through just to not get an answer to my query is far too high. God fucking help us now that AI can generate content, which will be even more garbage to sift through.
When Google first started making a name for itself, it actually returned links to shit where the content literally had the search terms in the visible text. Ah, the good ol’ days before the fuckin’ search engine decided it was smarter than its users.
Sometimes it just straight up ignores my search modifiers to send me shit. I know the tech illiterate need their hands held, but bruh.
You know, that was a good article until the author took a completely unnecessary and irrelevant swipe at Biden; at which point I completely lost interest in anything the author had to say.
I’m really fucking tired of political bullshit being embedded into every-goddamned-thing I read.
Thank goodness someone is here to defend the reactionary fuck who was literally creating a Disinformation Governance Board as part of the ever-expanding police state and its fascist DHS organization. /s
Oh boo hoo. I would have bitched if it was a completely-out-of-place swipe at any politician, even ones I hate. I would have bitched just as much if it was an anti-trump joke. It was irrelevant and obnoxious, shitty, opportunistic writing.
I don’t give fuck one about Biden, but I do give fuck one about journalistic integrity, which the author seems to lack.
Some have suggested that the lack of Google alumni on the transition team of president-elect Joe Biden, a noted sex pest, might bode well for a crackdown, though the presence of veterans from other tech giants like Amazon and Uber suggests otherwise
a completely-out-of-place swipe
Ah. I see you think that reminders that the man in the most powerful position in the world is an actual fucking rapist are totally irrelevant…while that guy is currently helping to dictate what people may and may not see on the Internet. What could go wrong with a rapist deciding to further marginalize rape victims by making them even more invisible?
Brilliant!
Agree. I also feel like the monetization behind use of Google tools, user information, etc just further complicates it.
I think back on when the internet was first getting started and how everyone was so excited by the prospect of have an essentially “living library” at their fingertips, full of potential to share information and learn in what was perceived by many to be a more open source type model — initially. It didn’t take long to see it succumb to all the same practices that have plagued free exchange of ideas in the real world since forever.
Add to this the stand by the “free press” of the world, which is no longer free, bent as they are with guarding information access behind paywalls since they continue to decry loss of paper readership and revenue from it as the reason for doing this; that may be true in part but it’s only a fraction of the issues at stake.
I remember using the internet before smartphones were ubiquitous. At the time, I was thinking that we would be entering a period of unprecedented enlightenment with all the easy access to all the information a person could want. Lol. Lmao.
We need the AI to sift through the garbage, so we don’t have to
It feels like AI wrote it already. Try googling a windows error now. Instead of getting forums or a blog you get 10 shitty websites with lists of generic fixes that end with them recommending their shitty software that will absolutely not fix your issue.
“Many of you may wonder how we have a search team that’s iterating and building all this new stuff and yet somehow, users are still not quite happy,” Raghavan reportedly said.
Their search has been getting worse and worse for a long time before the Reddit protest.
Ironically, reddit’s search feature was also trash. If I wanted to find something on reddit I just went to google and appended “reddit”.
IIRC, they cited google as a reason not to work on their own search, since that’s what most of their userbase had got used to searching reddit with anyway by that point.
Reddit also cited 3rd party apps, bots and extensions as a reason to not develop many of the features on their own… and here we are now.
“Many of us may wonder,” yep. Some of us are pretty sure it’s because Google is now optimizing searches for profitability rather than relevance. They’re very careful to avoid fully explaining how the algorithm arranges search results, but I think the algorithm now has more financial subroutines than software behind it.
I recently googled “grass” to find out more about different species and the results were all trying to sell me grass.
Grass.
Where I live it’s as common as dirt. I wonder how many people Google the word “grass” with zero qualifiers when trying to BUY grass.
Ffs
“But have you considered special-edition artisanal grass? Guaranteed to impress your neighbors! Practically mows itself! Thrives on zero water! [in small print: made of 100% high grade polypropylene filaments, not suitable for hot climates].” [/s]
For that kind of research, I usually go to Wikipedia, pick a random technical term for the topic I’m looking for, and add that. It doesn’t always work, but it does eliminate some of the sales sites. But it shouldn’t be necessary, sigh.
