I suspect that this is the direct result of AI generated content just overwhelming any real content.
I tried ddg, google, bing, quant, and none of them really help me find information I want these days.
Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts
ETA: someone suggested SearXNG and after using it a bit it seems to be much better compared to ddg and the rest.
Perplexity seems to work but I don’t like the idea of AI giving me “facts” since they are mostly based on other AI posts
It helps that it gives actual sources, so you can verify them. But yeah, not helpful if all of the sources end up being AI posts.
EXPONENTIALLY worse.
Thank god I can find everything I need in wikipedia and reddit
Wikipedia has its own problems, especially now since it’s an excepted fast source, companies and vips often will hire a team to manage their Wikipedia presence, specifically to eliminate controversial and problematic history. If you know anything exciting about the Kellogg family or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or, heck of J. P. Morgan (who was a walking human atrocity) you’ll find their Wikipedia pages scant of details, and sometimes almost hagiographic.
There are no search engines besides Google and Bing, because everyone else just uses Bing under the hood.
I think it’s just you. Differential Transformers are pretty good at regurgitating information that’s widely talked about. They fall short when it comes to specific information on niche subjects, but generally that’s only a matter of understanding the jargon needed to plug into a search engine to find what you’re looking for. Paired with uBlock Origin, it’s all typically pretty straight forward, so long as you know which to use in which circumstance.
Almost always, I can plug some error for an OS into a LLM and get specific instructions on how to resolve it.
Additionally if you understand and learn how to use a model that can parse your own set of user-data, it’s easy to feed in documentation to make it subject-specific and get better results.
Honestly, I think the older generation who fail to embrace and learn how to use this tool will be left in the dust, as confused as the pensioners who don’t know how to write an email.
Stable Diffusors are pretty good at regurgitating information that’s widely talked about.
Stable Diffusion is an image generator. You probably meant a language model.
And no, it’s not just OP. This shit has been going on for a while well before LLMs were deployed. Cue to the old “reddit” trick that some people used.
Also, they’re pretty good at regurgitating bullshit. Like the famous ‘glue on pizza’ answer.
Or, in a deeper aspect: they’re pretty good at regurgitating what we interpret as bullshit. They simply don’t care about truth value of the statements at all.
That’s part of the problem - you can’t prevent them from doing it, it’s like trying to drain the ocean with a small bucket. They shouldn’t be used as a direct source of info for anything that you won’t check afterwards; at least in kitnaht’s use case if the LLM is bullshitting it should be obvious, but go past that and you’ll have a hard time.
I’m not eating pizza at your house, that’s for sure.
And here I thought Startpage was acting up…
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I agree with you. It has gotten worse.
Kagi is working very well for me! and honestly i like that it’s a paid service.
Another vote for Kagi here as well… except for searching for local businesses near where I live, I revert to Google for that, but I Google through Kagi so privacy is somewhat protected
Thank you. I needed this. The “free” search engines have tainted my experience of this world. Frankly, I hate it here. I’m ready for the inevitable “Apocalypse”/" Alien invasion" that stops the absolute incompetence that permeates our society. Whether you understand it or not, I beseach upon you my blessings, may your days provide success in your endeavores, and bountiful returns to your entire home. Bless you for sharing.
Search engines make you yearn for the destruction of the human race…?
When you have no other problems, the question of search engines is the biggest issues in your life
And naturally, the solution to your biggest issue is always to destroy everything and everybody. ^^’
I know there’s some controversy but its spoiled me now, it just works
Not just you.
DDG has deteriorated to absolute nonsense, I’ve used it for years and years.
Recently gave startpage another go - maybe marginally better but still really poor
I switched to DDG right after Google added the ai answers to search and in baffled by how fast DDG seemed to go down hill. Just a few months ago it was still giving me on point results on the first try, now it almost feels like I’m using one of those malware search bars from back in the day.
yes - it’s a recent thing, no more that a few months I think
DDG has also really gone downhill for me. It’s still noticeably better than Google, but DDG nows does a lot of the same shit that originally made me give up on Google years ago. I’m assuming a big part of this is because DDG heavily sources their results from Bing, and while Bing does manage to be better than Google, it’s not much better.
I really need to put some effort into trying out a few more search engines and seeing if they are any better. Last time I looked, many of them were also pulling results from Bing so they all had similar issues.
DDG still mostly fine for me, but anytime I use Google I’m reminded why I left. I wonder how much Googles beancounter enshittification has to do with that…
I wanted to make a joke about my first search engine, MetaCrawler, and then found out it’s still around and still does search. Going down that rabbithole, it’s changed hands a ton and was only relaunched kinda recently at some point. Is it any good? Nah, probably not.
I guess I’ll just have to rely on my other aggregate search engine, SavvySearch (no, no the first search engine does not in fact still exist, much to my disappointment).
I’ve found that using Kagi, then DDG, then Google always gets me the results I need. But 95% of the time, Kagi gets it.
I feel like it’s especially bad if you are searching for anything related to a marketable product. I tried searching ddg for information about using a surge protector with halogen bulbs and all I got was pages and pages of listicles on “best halogen lights 2024” full of affiliate links.
And if you’re looking for legitimate reviews, good luck! Everyone’s an affiliate now.
This about the only i still use reddit for
I hate that they block VPNs, I’m forced to route Reddit traffic through my home router. I usually use a redirect to an alternate frontend but it’s been buggy lately.
can’t even trust that anymore with all the bots floating about
Brave has their own search. There is also meta searches such as metager, searx and mojeek. I hope more search engines enter the market
Kagi is very good.
