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.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I didn't take the search engine enshittification discussion a couple months ago seriously at the time, but I think I've just been a "boil the frog slowly" victim.
I just saw a mention of Jerry Doyle online. I remembered making some comment when he died a decade ago, but a quick search couldn't find it. This time, though, I didn't just give up, because I clearly remembered making those comments - my father was in an operating room at death's door at the time, a Metafilter obituary thread was an ironic choice of topic with which to try to distract myself, and ten years later I couldn't tell you what I typed but I still remember where in the hospital waiting room I was sitting while typing.
How bad are things? Google thinks only one thread mentioning Jerry Doyle exists on Metafilter, and it wasn't the obituary thread. Gemini at first thinks an obituary thread existed, but then can't find a URL and swears it must have made a mistake. Bing seems to think nobody on Metafilter has ever talked about Jerry Doyle.
I could swear I remember DuckDuckGo being a search engine at one point, but today it just takes me to a GPT instance that is
This is only helpful in the sense that it's really funny for a search engine to ask me to search the web for it. Any Resemblance To Actual Future Is Purely Coincidental.
But there were winners here: Brave search (3 hits, including the one I wanted) and Kagi search (4 or 5 hits, likewise a success). It should not have felt this amazing to find web search engines in the modern era that actually index the web and then let you search it.
Everything sucks. It’s hard to use google images to search for Renaissance art, Pinterest purposely gives me a PHP error when I try to save things, if I google on my phone more than a few things in a minute it will purposely time me out unless I close and reopen the browser (Google Translate does something similar), and my device was somehow banned from google scholar for too many searches. The worst part about everything sucking is that I know they are purposely making it suck without telling me. I know that the PHP error is to pressure me into making my own Pinterest album; I know that Pinterest “likes” purposely don’t save for the same reason; I know that Twitter would show me an interesting post and then refresh before I can click on it to increase my FOMO and habitual use; I know Reddit is purposely making it hard to post on its mobile version so that I download the app. Everyone is dishonorable and deceptive. Even 4chan, too, with its captchas.
They’re trying to shape your preference by making it painful for you to refuse to subject yourself to participation in their walled garden. Reddit’s become worthless for me to visit in any sense, let alone without reason for downloading their app. I’ll stick with Kiwi Farms to explore a headline, read the comments for a laugh, check Hacker News for some interesting discussion, etc., but I can’t recall the last time I checked Reddit.
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