Google's new AI search results promotes sites pushing malware, scams
Google's new AI search results promotes sites pushing malware, scams
Google's new AI-powered 'Search Generative Experience' algorithms recommend scam sites that redirect visitors to unwanted Chrome extensions, fake iPhone giveaways, browser spam subscriptions, and tech support scams.
(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)
Here the funny part, google knew this shit would happen. How you ask? Well, see google has had this problem for a long time.
When google first came out, there was all sorts of techniques you could use to boost your PageRank. Google had to tweak and tweak and tweak to fix it so that nazi sites would not come up when you looked up Jewish holocaust memorial museums for example.
Seems they’ve learned nothing. And yet they’re still one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Scary. Let’s add AI to the mix now.
At least they haven't used ChaosGPT for this.
Lord and master, hear my call! I have need of Thee! from the spirits that I called Sir, deliver me!
Goethe - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Oh yes they learned. This is now a feature, not a bug. Google's slogan changed long ago.
What to use for search engine. Even ddg is not giving reliable results.
If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :
- Startpage
Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage's unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.
- SearxNG https://searxng.org/
SearXNG is an open-source, self-hostable, metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing any information itself.
There's plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/
Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.
Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances
DDG queries can't really be written the same way you'd write one in Google if you're after effective results. It'll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.
I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.
I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!
I use mainly Andisearch, also has AI but relay on reliable sources (and one of the most privat search out there), Startpage and Whoogle use the old Google search engine, Mojeek also is fine, Groot search has a own search index, Etools a Suiss made Metasearch engine and some more. In the Vivaldi Forum you'll find the, maybe, most complete list of search engines you can try.
Nobody will tell you, but keep the best for the last I guess – Yandex. Russian, results reminiscent of old 2005 open internet, has no regard for US DMCA laws or western Atlantic Council censorship laws. Undisputed and incomparable for web results, reverse image search, videos, anything. Preferably use a VPN though to get more search results variety and for extra privacy. Its privacy is better than Google/Bing, but worse than DDG, but DDG has high censorship.
Yeah, Yandex censors quite a bit, at least since the war with Ukraine:
Yandex, the leading search engine for Russian speakers, has meanwhile tightened its censorship, removing independent media from its search results.
And Yandex altered results to trash Navalny.
But at least they have a banner when they're likely censoring stuff.
So I absolutely wouldn't trust it for anything related to politics or Russian interests. Maybe it's okay from a privacy and non-Russian interest perspective though, idk, but by default I don't trust it because Russia is so repressive against media in its country.
As for DuckDuckGo, here's what I found:
- censorship of Russian "propaganda" annoys far-right activists
- another source citing DDG combating Russian disinformation
- potential censorship or reduction in rank for legally-questionable content
That said, it seems as if it's just reducing the search ranking for Russian "disinformation," not removing results. That's annoying, but not as troublesome as Yandex or Google. BTW, I found all of those links through DDG, so it's not like they're trying to hide anything.
Kagi. It's better here.
Not sure who's down voting you, its quite a valid option that, unlike google, is actually innovating in interesting ways.
I remember when Google was the cool new kid on the block. How far they've fallen. But that's what unrestrained, unregulated capitalism gets you. It's all a race to the bottom.
Can we please stop pretending "regulation" is all that effective. It's been tried, and has resulted in corrupt bureaucracy or given way to neoliberalism (and corporate bureaucracy).
What we need is a radically different system where the power truly is in the hands of the people, and not just nominally like in representative democracy (and which is completely lacking anyways in most workplaces). And what this requires is the construction of fundamentally different modes of production and human interrelation that will not resemble what we've got now, neither economically nor politically nor socially. Regulating capitalism won't get us there.
There's an issue at play here that I think we're not confronting enough. America has been on a steady march of deregulating in the name of corporate greed. Some of the most functional countries in the world are also the ones with the strongest regulatory bodies (granted they're also largely petrochemical profiteers, I do have criticisms even of countries that I think are doing better than the US) because there's a presumption built into the system that if left unchecked, the forces of greed will violate the liberties of the populace. Its not a coincidence that the only countries that faced major Y2K bug issues were the UK and the US. Germany, Nordic countries, and Benelux countries all ALSO faced this bug, but in those countries the consequences for fucking up banking data was fines. In the US and UK, the consequences were someone might sue in civil court. Much less scary for banking institutions so they continuously acted like the problem was someone else's problem until the last minute.
My point is this: regulations work. We have case studies in other countries that they work. We don't implement them not because they don't work but because they require long view systems change and the political system we live in doesn't encourage thinking long term. Political funding efforts encourage thinking of policy in 2-6 year terms instead of the actual 30 year time frames it requires to plan them. Its much easier to pull a quick grift with political power weakening the overall system than it is to FIX the system. It incentivizes corruption. THAT is the issue that needs addressing and one we should really be trying to assess what the Benelux countries are doing so well
Regulation would certainly help, considering the USA has basically given up on it. They don't even try.
Google: "Hey, do not be evil."
Google years later: "Can I has all the profits and personal data?”
Google after that: " I am the Lizard Queen!"
Facebook (Lizard king) 🤝 Google (Lizard Queen) ?
Scammers were already paying Bing and Google to have their sites above real ones.
And now they're paying to have google and bing have their AI to show scam websites above real ones.
The same assholes riding a new horse and as usual everyone wants to blame the horse.
Way to go killing the golden goose there Google
I…. Don’t really get why they think this is better. Google search was good…. Other companies can copy AI technology anyway. AI is really just predicting words and wasn’t designed for search, but their old algorithm was.
Whyyyyyy
Google hasn't understood the internet for a long time. They created an excellent search algorithm by treating the internet as a single information system that warranted analysis and indexing for convenient traversal.
These days that's not... Something they're interested in anymore. The goal is to collect user data for targeting advertising and resale. Their core product is still the search bar, sure, but that's just a hook to reel you in. They'll attach whatever buzzword to it it takes to keep it in the zeitgeist. "Ai" is hot right now so that's the buzzword.
I don't get the impression technical competency is something Google values anymore...
My theory is that Google wants to move towards vector symbolic representations for pages in search rather than page caching. It would make index storage and retrival orders of magnitude cheaper for them if they can design a scheme that works well.
Google hasn't been dogfooding in a long time have they? I wonder what products Googlers use.
So it's working as intended?
Also it doesn't know shit about combos in super double dragon.
In a move that suprise la no one....
Hell's attorneys are seriously lacking. I've been waiting for them to sue Google for DMCA violations 🤣.
I have it on and use it just to see how terrible it is tbh, I get a laugh at how inaccurate it is every time 😂