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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1787 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 15, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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What are your experiences with the latest google search auto summary AI. I find it hilariously bad - usually the summary is opposite of what i am looking for/the truth.

Earlier today I was looking for a particular high resolution image. I don't know when Google removed resolution information from the results it returned, but I had to use DuckDuckGo and then TinEye to actually find what I was looking for--and even then, the level of linkrot I encountered was astonishing. A few weeks ago, I was looking for the source of a specific text string, but Google kept ignoring the way I put the string into quotation marks.

The enshittification of Google has been underway for a while now, but I feel like over the past few years it has accelerated precipitously, and AI is just the tip of that iceberg. Google search no longer exists to return useful results (even if that was not its main purpose to begin with, I at least got results as an acceptable tradeoff for having my privacy sold). Google search now exists exclusively to sell me things, or to sell my attention, so increasingly it gets to do neither.

Ahh yes. I haven't been able to find direct quotes for eternity. And we are talking for punchlines of popular jokes here for example.

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