"The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check."
The instinct is about pointing out factual inaccuracies. What they wrote is either correct, or not. If it is not, and someone knows better they can and should point that out.
If you, or some other commenter, have a fuzzy feeling that google is worse than it used to be you are free to write that. You are perfectly entitled to that opinion. But you can't just make up false statements and expect to be unchallenged and unchallengeable on it.
There is a very strong stance on this site against talking about astroturfing, and I understand it. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out where this general type of sentiment originates. I don’t know any google enthusiasts and am not sure I’ve ever met one. It’s a fairly uncontroversial take on this website and in the tech world that google search has worsened (the degree of which is debateable). Coming out and saying boldly “no it isn’t, you’re lying” is just crazy weird to me and again I’m very curious where that sentiment comes from.
see some of the sibling and aunt/uncle comments in this thread to get at a little of what I’m talking about.
I wasn't a fan for very long. Google got creepy fast, and at this point their search is becoming useless, but for a short time I really thought that Google is amazing and I was an enthusiast.
I think Google search has gone downhill tremendously to the point of near uselessness and have been a Kagi subscriber for awhile, but I don't see astroturf in this instance. Do you have other examples?
> If Google [had been] broken up 20 years ago [...] [e]veryone would still be paying for email.
Some people don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about. But I don't really see that as suggesting they're part of an organized campaign.
I believe I have covered that case in my comment. Let me quote the relevant part here for you: “What they wrote is either correct, or not. If it is not, and someone knows better they can and should point that out.”
That being said could you help me by pointing out the inaccuracy in jkaptur’s comment? It seems fairly simple and as far as I can see well supported by the source.
You can sealion with posts like this all you want but every time someone counters a post like this with ample evidence it gets group downvoted or ignored. You are also making an assertion that you’re free to back with evidence, that google and google products are not noticeably worse than 10 years ago.
here’s one study that says yes, it is bad:
https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_20...
Since we don’t have a time machine and can’t study the google of 2015 we have to rely on collective memory, don’t we? You proclaiming “it’s always been this way” and saying any assertion otherwise is false is an absolutely unfalsifisble statement. As I said, anyone over 25 knows.
Besides perusing the wealth of writing about this the last two years or so, in which the tech world at large has lamented at how bad search specifically has gotten - we also see market trends where people are increasingly seeking tools like chatGPT and LLM’s as a search replacement. Surely you, a thinking individual, could come to some pretty obvious conclusions as to why that might be, which is that google search has got a lot worse. The language models well known to make up stuff and people still are preferring them because search is somehow even less reliable and definitely more exhausting, and it was not always this way. If it was always this way, why are so many people turning to other tools?
Sounds like it should be very easy to counter their argument then.
For my education could you tell me which part of their message is inaccurate? The “Google was founded in 1998” or the “and you could buy ads on the search results page in 2000.” part?
> You are also making an assertion that you’re free to back with evidence, that google and google products are not noticeably worse than 10 years ago.
I did not make such an assertion. Where in my comment do you think i’m making that assertion?
> You proclaiming “it’s always been this way”
I’m sorry but who are you quoting? Did you perhaps misclicked which comment you wanted to respond to?
