• liv
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    8 months ago

    When will people realise that google has tailored algorithms and we are not all experiencing the same search results?

    The first thing you’ll see if you search Google for “tank man” right now will not be the iconic picture of the unidentified Chinese man who stood in protest in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square, but an entirely fake, AI-generated selfie of that historical event.

    No, this is the first thing the author saw. Probably because they are a journalist writing about AI.

    When I google tank man I don’t even get the AI image on the first page. The top result is from history.com. If I go to google image search it is the 7th result on the page. The top result is from wikipedia.

    • LinkOpensChest.wav
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      268 months ago

      When will people realise that google has tailored algorithms and we are not all experiencing the same search results?

      You’re right. This is the real problem with search engines like Google and one reason I use SearXNG instances and Mojeek instead. Where I live, the algorithm is more likely to net content that is biased toward right-wing conspiracy theories and problematic agencies because of that algorithm. Any search engine that does this is not a valid search engine, in my opinion.

      • liv
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        8 months ago

        Yes I had a family member in a right wing conspiracy area. It was infuriating because his friends would tell him their nonsense and he would be skeptical and google it, only for google to seemingly support what they were saying.

        I couldn’t replicate his results at all and it would take a lot of searching to even find what he was talking about so I could debunk it for him.

        • LinkOpensChest.wav
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          38 months ago

          I became hyper aware of it the first time I tried using Tik Tok, and I was served nothing but alt-right hate videos. Obviously, search engines aren’t usually quite so obvious, but for instance, people in my location are certainly more likely to net results connected to far-right ideas and agencies, because of the interests of people who live here.

          I don’t like that idea at all. Search engines should only respond to deliberate input from the user imo. I know that’s a big ask for people to acclimate to appending “in [location name]” if they expect location specific results, but the convenience of just saying “hey Google, restaurants near me” is not worth the consequences.

          Unfortunately, almost all search engines are complicit, including supposedly privacy friendly ones like Kagi, Qwant, and Startpage. I’m no longer recommending those to people. SearXNG and Mojeek are the only ones that don’t lean into the algorithmic and locational fuckery, but even that’s with a lot of tweaking the settings.

          It’s no great mystery why things like fascism are on the rise. And people will say I’m in the minority for caring about this, and … yeah, that’s the problem.

      • @[email protected]
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        48 months ago

        I suppose it’s invalid in the context of showing you what you exactly searched for. But it’s pretty valid in the context of showing you what you’re looking for. For example, someone with a disdain for science when searching for the terms “big bang” or “evolution” is probably not looking for scientific articles detailing the rigor of the prevalent theories. If the point of a search engine is to find what you’re looking for, it’s pretty effective by that measure. It just so happens that what you’re looking is biased in its own ways.

        • Cethin
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          58 months ago

          Similarly, but from a good view, if a programmer searches “how to kill child” they probably don’t want a tutorial of how to kill human children.

        • LinkOpensChest.wav
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          38 months ago

          Rather, educating people how to use keywords and syntax is far better than teaching people to depend on an algorithm. This would net one the results that you describe without any of the problematic aspects of an algorithm.

          I don’t see any need for an algorithm whatsoever, but I see many ways it can be used to frustrate or manipulate users. It is my strong opinion that a valid search engine only responds to deliberate input from the user, and things like algorithms or location-specific results are an endless source of discouragement and frustration to me.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 months ago

            I understand what you mean, I agree with you that search engines should be simpler tools and in general tools are better when they just do what I tell them rather than trying to guess and do more things. But I think we’re in the minority there. It’s difficult enough to get people to care about Google watching them across the internet, much less when it actually proves useful like suggesting restaurants or businesses near you.

            • LinkOpensChest.wav
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              28 months ago

              We’re definitely in the minority, but I feel like it’s still a significant enough minority that you’d think someone would be creating something to fit this need. The closest I’ve found are SearXNG instances and Mojeek, and neither are entirely free from the claws of these algorithms.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        I had it but really had to scroll to the bottom. It was also not Reddit but articles saying it was the first result. Which is kind of ironic.

  • rastilin
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    448 months ago

    Google’s becoming pretty terrible anyway, it only seems to return pages that are selling things. I’ve switched to Kagi at this point and it seems to work better, it’s subscription only, but you know you’re the one paying for it and that means that you’re the end customer.

      • rastilin
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        98 months ago

        Because last time I checked they just used Bing anwyay, while Kagi runs their own indexer.

        • Elise
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          18 months ago

          Yes but why is that better. For censorship you mean?

          • rastilin
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            28 months ago

            It’s better because Bing may still have selling ads as a priority when building the indexer. If you’re not the one paying, you’re the product.

          • eltimablo
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            18 months ago

            It changes the question from “why not use duck” to “what does duck really add to bing”

            • Elise
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              18 months ago

              Well they have a sensible business model and can provide another stream of income for Bing from users it otherwise wouldn’t reach.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        Duck duck go is practically broken. I switched to startpage which worked alright until I got a VPN, then I just started using bing with better results. So it is somehow worse than bing even. Duck ignores my quotes and minuses and such things.

    • thejevans
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      88 months ago

      I recently switched to kagi, too. Couldn’t be happier.

      • @[email protected]
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        48 months ago

        New Kagi user here too, been very happy so far. Though it turns out I do a lot of searching and blew through the 300 searches in the $5 plan in like 2 weeks…

        • @[email protected]B
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          8 months ago

          Make an effort to use bangs and I bet you’ll stay under the limit. Edit: bang searches don’t count towards the limit

          Knowing I wanted a result from a certain site but using the search engine to get there was a (bad) habit I brought over from Google.

          !imdb barbie

          !w mattel

          There’s even custom bangs, which is something DDG doesn’t give you: !libgen some book

            • @[email protected]B
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              18 months ago

              But they don’t allow bangs for sites that do illegal things like copyright infringement. Libgen was my example.

              • viq
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                08 months ago

                @Byter allowing illegal stuff *and* taking money doesn’t bode that well for their longevity.

                • @[email protected]B
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                  18 months ago

                  Custom bangs are private to the user. It’s not dissimilar to saving a bookmark in your browser, except your bookmarks are hosted by someone else.

                  It doesn’t have to be about legality either. Maybe you like a service that is being protested by DDG for whatever reason.

        • Beej Jorgensen
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          18 months ago

          I just signed up with them, too. They were able to get me a link to the age of a small, nondescript lava flow near my town on the third hit. (5000 years old! A youngster!) All the other search engines gave me unrelated crap.

          I have a hard stop set up for when I hit $10, so I’ll switch tiers if it comes to that. 😅

          I don’t necessarily like paying for search, but I couldn’t take ad-driven search any longer. Big waste of time getting through the chaff.

      • Narrrz
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        28 months ago

        I wonder if the verb Google will stay with us when its origin is lost in history

  • BitOneZero
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    248 months ago

    we aren’t far away from easily-made interactive images / video where people will be able to create realistic selfies / video clips of their own self - in famous situations. Like Forest Gump being inserted into meeting historic President. The appeal is too strong and it will likely create tons of highly upvoted/shared social media images distorting the original.

    People tend to treat detecting photoshop images as a game of one-upmanship, not as an importance of preserving a documented concept or situation for others to learn and understand.

  • Otter
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    128 months ago

    Maybe google images needs a toggle for AI generated content. It won’t be perfect, but it should filter out a chunk of it just by excluding pages that have it

    • @[email protected]
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      68 months ago

      Accurately detecting an AI generated image may be more computationally expensive than generating it in the first place.