Can't read this article thanks to shitty paywall. Yet it has 28 trackers even tho it just need pure HTML
Edit: thank you for archive link OP!
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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The second threat is the rise of “answer engines” like Perplexity which, well, do what they say on the tin. OpenAI has added internet search to ChatGPT, Meta Platforms is exploring building its own search engine, and even AI chatbots that can’t search the internet are proving increasingly capable at addressing many questions. They’re also becoming ever more widespread, as Microsoft and Appleintegrate them directly into the operating systems of all the devices they make or support.
That is not an improvement, it's just also not really any worse.
it's an improvement in a way. today marketing for most businesses is 80% google ads, 20% facebook ads. google is massively manipulating google ads to practically steal money because they're the only player in town. if adspace is spread thinner, google is fucked, and small business owners actually stand a chance against the big behemoths with infinite pockets.
But in terms of actual information it could be worse thanks to AI hallucinations and poor training materials.
My younger sister searches tiktok for information and by that I mean she doesn't even use the search feature. The topics just show up in her feed. She thinks she's choosing/finding but is actually getting fed topics.
Its sad because everytime she tells me something she learned on tiktok I do like 2mins of research and find its not true or misleading. People lie about the most mundane things on that platform and I don't know why.
They say stuff that isn't true because it gets them engagement from people who come to correct them. We figured out how to generate profit from misinformation.
That's why I think those platforms should be banned, especially for children.
We're creating a whole new generation of misinformed people.
I really think we need a monitored internet for under 13s. The internet is just to fucked up at the moment. I never thought I would be someone advocating for this because i grew up on the wild west internet watching people getting beheaded and stuff. But all that is nothing compared to being bombarded with friendly, trustworthy (seeming) people that constantly spread lies and misinformation that shapes your world view.
100% agree. I also grew up on the wild west, websites and things that were shocking or straight up illegal and are harder and harder to find nowadays (especially if you're a kid that only uses apps on his/her smartphone).
When I was a kid, I knew that the things I was seeing were horrible, it was clear. But now kids watch complete misinformation that's presented in a serious and interesting way. They have no way to tell the truth from a lie anymore.
This is partially why I kind of agree with the government ban. Tiktok does have some good information but it's a lot of lowest common denominator stuff like all social media, the worst part is for non Chinese users 'the algorithm' pushes only dances and this misinformation or fights/arguments, while in China it's more educational and musical stuff that's promoted.
I'd argue a different approach: Teach critical thinking and scepticism to children. Banning things makes it a race to keep up with whatever new thing comes up; it's not a sustainable solution so much as a constant fixing of new holes without tackling why these things are so destructive.
I dont think critical thinking is enough. If you apply critical thinking to a media landscape full of lies you will still come out wrong.
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Ya my little bro is the same. He'll announce some thing he's learned and it collapses under the barest scrutiny... I only hope that the rest of us are able to teach him to apply that scrutiny himself. It's pretty scary how kids just accept shit, if you take that into adulthood... Well, I think we see the results all around us in the world.
Oh my… searching TikTok for information is so misleading and so encouraged by the platform…
It's because the truth is boring, sad, and unnoteworthy. That doesn't make for good you know what viral videos.
Googling is for advertisers..
I've almost forgotten how shitty Google has become. Been using kagi search for a year now.
It's so nice to get clean unbiased search results.
Old people are the only ones with any money.
The average American spent just over $60,000 a year in 2021, but spending habits vary significantly between age groups. Those born from 1965 to 1980 – spent the most money last year, with average expenditure of $83,357.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/10/americans-spend-their-money-by-generation/
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Another problem is they ruined their own search with AI.
Kicked themselves right in the nuts.
They ruined it without AI before AI was commonplace. They ruined it with higher profit margins. 🥹
They specifically made search less accurate so that users would search multiple times to boost the number of ads that get displayed to juice their numbers for quarterly earnings. You can blame Prabhakar Raghavan.
Avid Amoeba is right that Google ruined their own search before LLMs entered the public consciousness (this does not mean LLMs didn't exist before this, but that they were not widely available for the general public to use or became part of the zeitgeist).
If you don't agree please listen to the Better Offline podcast episode "The Man That Destroyed Google Search". The episode goes through the rollbacks/changes Google made to their search Algorithm well before AI was commonplace.
Better Offline: CZM Rewind: The Man That Destroyed Google Search: https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/czm-rewind-the-man-that-destroyed-google-search
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Their search was shit before AI. Unless you like pinterest and quora spam.
It's fucking awful with our without AI in 2024.
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I was Googling just fine until Google ruined it with "SEO" and AI so that completely irrelevant results dominate the first 2 or 3 pages.
It's this last two years where it has gotten really bad in my opinion. Before you could at least navigate the ads ridden site. Now base Google search is tremendously worse.
YouTube search is SO MUCH WORSE now. it just gives up and shows random stuff after like 3 results
I searched "friends invited me to lethal company". I got 6 results (one of which is a song?) before it gave up and showed "people also watched this" and "you might like this" aka anything even semi related to Lethal Company
Don't get me wrong, fuck google, but how much can we blame google for SEO? That's just people gaming the system, and they'd be doing it no matter how google presented their results.
Maybe there is a whole cooperation aspect that I'm not aware of.
Google did a rollback of anti-SEO indexing features because the intention is that users issue more searches. Ever since the ads side of the business won the war for the soul of Google the experience has gotten worse on purpose.
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Younger generations are using other platforms to gather information.
What's not being talked about here is that young people don't seem to give a damn if the information they research is accurate or not, it's whether or not it's peddled by their preferred streamer. Those "other platforms" are apparently Tiktok and Netflix, not exactly places known for speaking truth to power.
I've spent twenty years trying to believe that the children will be the saviors of the future, but I think maybe the conservatives actually succeeded in murdering education in it's crib. I am now nearly fully on team "You know, maybe these kids actually are a bunch of dumb fucks who won't save us after all."
"I've heard of RFK Jr. and he says vaccines are bad. He's more famous than scientists, so I believe him for exposing their corruption. "
I can't wait for humanity to go extinct.
It’s not so much that they don’t give a damn, but that they can’t tell. I taught some basic English courses with a research component (most students in their first college semester), and I’d drag them to the library each semester for a boring day on how to generate topics, how to discern scholarly sources, then use databases like EBSCO or JSTOR to find articles to support arguments in the essays they’d be writing for the next couple years. Inevitably, I’d get back papers with so-and-so’s blog cited, PraegerU, Wikipedia, or Google’s own search results. Here’s where a lot of the problem lies: discerning sources, and knowing how to use syntax in searches, which is itself becoming irrelevant on Google etc. but NOT academic databases. So why take the time to give the “and” and “or” and “after: 1980” and “type: peer-reviewed” when you can just write a natural-language question into a search engine and get an answer right away that seems legit in the snippet? I’d argue the tech is the problem because it encourages a certain type of inquiry and quick answers that are plausible, but more often than not, lacking in any credibility.
Is it the tech? Or is it media literacy?
I've messed around with AI on a lark, but would never dream of using it on anything important. I feel like it's pretty common knowledge that AI will just make shit up if it wants to, so even when I'm just playing around with it I take everything it says with a heavy grain of salt.
I think ease of use is definitely a component of it, but in reading your message I can't help but wonder if the problem instead lies in critical engagement. Can they read something and actively discern whether the source is to be trusted? Or are they simply reading what is put in front of them then turning around to you and saying "well, this is what the magic box says. I don't know what to tell you.".
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And how do non-old people navigate the web? I mean I get it, you don't need to google the Wikipedia article about the French Revolution... You can ask AI. But how do you find business hours for the repair shop downtown? Which website sells the concert tickets? News from yesterday? The forum that tells you if 32GB of RAM fit into your laptop?
Hours and menus normally come from Maps. News often comes from social media, unfortunately. But Google rarely helps me there either. Concert tickets is probably an app or venue website (but I don't really go to many concerts because fuck Ticketmaster).
Not that I don't Google stuff, but it's way less useful than it used to be.
I'm over fifty (though fuck does it feel unreal to say that).
Hours and menus normally come from Maps
If it's Google maps, wouldn't it still be considered googling since it used the same search engine?
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News from yesterday? You mean your social media feed of choice?
Forum that tells you if 32GB of RAM fit into your laptop?
Who has a laptop anymore?
RAM?
32GB? My phone has 128GB!
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What? I Google stuff all the time. Just not on Google (DuckDuckGo or Qwant)
I hate to say it, but DDG results are shit. The only half-decent competition I've found is yandex, and I don't really trust it.
Article is behind a paywall, what does it say "young people" do instead of "googling"?
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Have you seen a Gen Z-er trying to research something on the internet?
It's almost like the tools they were taught to use were crippled out from under them in the name of serving more ads.
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Honestly it usually starts with chatgpt or ai. I've been watching my younger coworkers.
It's not a bad thing per-say but sometimes it's wildly wrong and they don't question where it comes from. Which bites them when we do reviews/code.
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