Comment on Daily discussion thread: ⚔️ Friday, May 3, 2024

melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• SituationCake@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I particularly notice it on google searches. So cluttered with ads and promotional listings. It used to be that the most useful answer was in the top 3 results. Now your lucky if it’s on page 2.

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  • Gibsonisafluffybutt@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Google search is dead. The alternatives aren’t much better but I barely use it anymore. Or if I do, I have to put the word “Reddit” in the query to get a decent answer.

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    • TinyBreak@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yep

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  • melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I often have to go to Reddit, but the shit hit there too

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• dumblederp@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You’ve heard the term enshittification?

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  • melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh yeah. It’s turned up to a gallop though

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    • ajsadauskas@aus.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      @melbaboutown @dumblederp Yeah, it's not just you.

      And it's deliberate.

      This article by Ed Ziltron has a really good rundown of what happened inside Google: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

      Basically, in February 2019, there was a some corporate politicking going on within Google.

      The search/tech experts (some who had been there from the start) wanted to improve search results.

      The finance guys wanted to deliberately make search results worse so people would search more often and there would be more money from ads.

      The finance guys won.

      They replaced the head of the search team (who had been there from the very start) with the guy who had been in charge of the search engine at Yahoo at the time Yahoo stopped having its own search engine.

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      • RustyRaven@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If by “search more often” they mean searching the same thing on multiple different search engines trying to find better results I guess it worked 🤷‍♂️

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      • melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yep. The numbers must always go up, at the cost of killing the golden goose. And it’s not confined to Google. It’s in social media, any kind of tech, streaming services…

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      • Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I barely even bother with google anymore

        I just go straight to wikipedia and if want further reading i look up the references on the wikipedia page ( I do pay for wikipedia , not much but something )

        and yes, i search reddit quite a bit

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• Seagoon_@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  it isn’t just sites like insta or fb or apps that designed to suck your attention and time, the net has become a battlefield between countries

  they are fighting for your approval and your vote and the bad guys will use lies to get it

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