It’s Not Just You - The Internet is Dying

[@redbirdriot]

Search is definitely getting worse on KZbin. Too many suggestions for "things you'll like" rather than, y'know, what I was fucking searching for.

[@CanIHasThisName]

Protip: Just under the search bar there are tabs of different types of content. By default, KZbin puts you on "all", as in "all the junk". You want to select video or playlists depending on what you're looking for.

[@kilobytecache6192]

Another tip is to append before or after:2014 or something. It seems to get rid of a lot of the recommended crap.

[@Eight8100]

And for whatever reason the 'People also watched' section loves to promote gorebait/trypophobia thumbnails or gross out images. Feels like those awful dermatology ads you'd see back in 2010.

[@RenaldTremblay]

its awful, esp on my phone.

[@karlschauff7989]

KZbin's search has been utterly worthless for a few years now.

[@jefgirdler7232]

We’re seeing the same crap happen with SEO that we saw when American news and journalism television moved to a ratings model. Informative reporting got put on the back burner in favor of sensationalism, entertainment, and manufactured outrage.

[@IdleWorker]

Welcome to capitalism y’all.

[@gamingbud926]

@@IdleWorker Wasn't the pre-ratings system also capitalism? Stop blaming greed on capitalism. Greedy people will always take advantage of anything they can get, whether or not you have capitalism, socialism, communism, or whatever kind of system you can possibly imagine in order to be as fair as people.

[@hoofhearted4]

@@gamingbud926Right? as if they head of any government or major company isnt greedy to some degree?

[@unknownhours]

@@IdleWorker yeah, we need to get rid of it.

[@kneonspace]

@@gamingbud926All implementations of communism that we have seen have included classism. Now don't get me wrong, (our current implementation of) capitalism is far from perfect and it is becoming more and more evident that we need a replacement but i don't dont think that communism is the solution. full socialism is a utopia that will never happen, and pretty much every time we tried it turned into a dystopia. I will take the welfare states of Europe above that any day. Unfortunately i also don't what is the sollution to capitalism, but it probably involves worker cooperatives capitalism 2.0.

[@thomashenderson3326]

This is what happens when marketing people get to make grown up decisions.

[@custos3249]

Almost like marketing ruins everything.

[@rikuzonex]

@@custos3249 not "almost" its always

[@Cobalt985]

@@custos3249 Marketing is a logical extension of capitalism. That's the problem at the end of the day.

[@91plm]

@@custos3249 it's bad when it's to make you buy useless things you don't need. it's great when it's used with some ethics involved to promote a cause, a cure, a vaccine, to educate people, to inform people etc. that's marketing as well.

[@StarStrider99]

@@Cobalt985 Are you saying the problem with marketing is that it’s an extension of capitalism, or that the problem with capitalism is that marketing is an extension of it?

[@XanothAvaeth]

SEO has been poison since day one and its just getting worse year on year. You don't find what you're looking for, you find what companies want you to see for their own interests.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

SEO is the logical reaction to search engines. The only counter would be for search engines to not disclose what they look for and continually change how they fundamentally work so no one can figure it out.

[@alakani]

​@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 or google could make a smarter AI that can tell when a website is spammy garbage, so that SEO becomes the same thing as just making a good website

[@Roxor128]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 Or to create an open-source search engine that runs locally, where you can adjust its algorithm and parameters yourself, which would prevent "optimisation" because everybody would have a different target.

[@c.augustin]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 This is what search engines actually do - and it makes it even worse to find anything useful.

[@qwertt14]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 which means, it'll ever be sh*t then

[@exriel]

The algorithm is only valuable when nobody knows that the algorithm is there.

[@NubeBuster]

Truth be spoken. I remember back when we didn't know how the algorithm works. Those were the good times

[@StarStrider99]

Great point! It’s kind of like when the source code for a software leaks, and hackers can find vulnerabilities to exploit. When the wrong people understand how a technology works, they’ll use it against everyone else.

[@jamesphillips2285]

"Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".[1] It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who is credited with expressing the core idea of the adage in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom:[2]" -Wiki

[@aiodensghost8645]

​@@NubeBusternow people like me take deliberate notes of what the algorithm will probably do and try to counter/game it

[@Roxor128]

Insecurity by obscurity in a nutshell!

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

The golden age of the internet ended when forums got killed off by five websites that make everybody angry all the time and where you can't find anything. There used to be thousands of forums preserving years or decades of accumulated institutional knowledge about any topic you could imagine, run by and for people who cared about that topic specifically. But this wasn't profitable for the corporations that hijacked the internet, so now we all have to share one big kiddy pool that anybody can piss in at their leisure.

[@3800fiero]

Man you are right about forums. You go on them now and they are all dead. Such a shame.

[@Ragekitt]

couldn't have said it better myself. i miss forums so much. everything is in discord servers now or private facebook groups where there is a hierarchy of users. the internet has become a stale, boring, and hostile environment. a lot of amazing content has become lost throughout the ages. next to the big five, i blame smartphones.

[@xavierayayaell546]

Good and accurate

[@lopwidth7343]

This. Exactly this. Lamers, flamers and spammers was dealt with and useless information was frowned heavily upon and being nuked

[@steveballmersbaldspot2.095]

Yep, and gatekeeping was very much a thing back then as well. So you kept a lot of the Twitter/Tumblr types out.

[@hiddenfromyourview]

Just yesterday, I watched a youtube video that was obviously voiced by AI. Was 95% filler (literally 2 sentence was the entire valuable content). All the comments I could see were bot-generated.

[@TheYoutubeUser69]

its so annoying and off putting i barely watch anything that hasnt a face attached to it I know

[@sihamhamda47]

Kyle Hill has done an awesome coverage about this and the dangerous hazard that are carried with those "AI generated video spam" trend Basically those are the automated channels that post the content EVERY DAY without stopping, and with the power of AI it could auto switch the topic based on the current popular trends without needing efforts from real human, thus they could easily "hack" the algorithm and rack millions of views. It has been protested by a lot of actual creators who spend days or even weeks to make a single video, because those AI generated videos are diverting most of the potential viewers from the legit creators out there

[@SlavTiger]

How much fucking hard drive space and electricity does this shit waste? How many good videos go completely buried? What's the fucking point anymore?

[@hiddenfromyourview]

@@SlavTiger Probably the better question to ask is "What value is being provided?" And the answer to that, for at least this video, is "Zero". Therefore, when you come across videos like I've described here, feel free to thumbs-down and report the video for spam. Because it is.

[@greatwavefan397]

Source?

[@goxy287]

Internet is less and less an actual valuable part of people's lives these days and more a cesspool of noise and algorithms and retention sites

[@Tater2018]

The internet was the utopia people 100s years ago that people desired. Unlimited knowledge of everything, no barriers to resources you need, etc. Then, the lowest of the low got ahold of the gift and turn it into a curse.

[@acutelilmint8035]

Sadly. Al; good things get destroyed by opportunist

[@MellowWater]

@@Tater2018 100 years ago?

[@peeepeeepooopooo]

@@Tater2018 biggest sites now exist for wxmen and gangbangers to post their face and loot

[@JBBost]

I feel like I'm never heard in any comments section and that the only time I have real contact, it's a person attacking me for some reason. Like, legit, on top of the social isolation that is epidemic at the moment, what should be the one place we can escape is drowned out by noise

[@Goodbrew84]

I hate that when I search on youtube, it gives me 3 results then a massive amount of side categories that aren't search results like, "Watch again" "also for you" "people also watched". JUST GIVE ME MY GD SEARCH RESULTS!!!!!

[@averyw.3939]

If you click on "filters" at the top right then click "video" under "type" it won't include all the nonsense. You have to do it every time and it's stupid that you have to do it at all, but it works.

[@MrHowardMoon]

I know it sounds bad, but I searched for "fun jokes" about a specific people on Google and got three ADL results. When I searched for "fun jokes" about others, I got results. It's all a weapon.

[@chaorrottai]

@@averyw.3939 They removed it, the closest option to that I see is relevance, which give me 5 results and the rest is spam

[@scottcmiller]

Dead Internet Theory is quickly becoming a reality.

[@jerichaux9219]

Dead Internet theory has nothing to do with this.

[@Visstnok]

@@jerichaux9219 It has _everything_ to do with this.

[@qwertt14]

@@jerichaux9219what does it have to do then, smartpants?

[@Xeshiraz]

Devil is winning. For now.

[@SL4RK]

neeva was promising and had its own engine. unlike the duck, it was still still lost to the experience of the late 2000s and early 2010s, but it was much better than the current rubbish, but unfortunately they failed.

[@AC3handle]

Rossmann has noted that good parts and things you could get on Amazon 10 years ago, have become crap, and the feedback stuff at the bottom is heavily gamed. He did a video showing how crimped wires he put together with home depot parts, stayed together when pulled. a set he made with stuff bought off amazon, came apart at the first pull He tested some car fuses. Ran 6 amps through a 2 amp fuse, took 20 min to get back it, still going, then ran it at 8 amps. Still no blow.

[@Herfinnur]

Oh dear, I better go check on all my repairs ☹️

[@chadkrause6574]

He just bought the cheapest stuff and expected good results. Everyone knows you can get better, more expensive tooling that will work better

[@AC3handle]

@@chadkrause6574 how TF are you supposed to KNOW what's good and what's bad? This isn't limited to just chinese knock offs.

[@chadkrause6574]

@@AC3handle if the name sounds like it’s a Chinese name trying to be English, then it’s bad

[@AndrejaKostic]

@@chadkrause6574 It's a bit more complicated than that... The core of the issue is that there are classes of products, where "normal" end users aren't actually qualified to review them, because they don't have the knowledge or don't have the equipment to find out if a product is actually good or bad, and fuses are one such type of product. Price in itself is also not an indicator. In some other fields, such as say USB cables, Ethernet cables, DVI cables, Display Port cables, or HDMI cables we've seen manufacturers which shift their priorities resulting in products which might on the outside look "good" or "premium", have very good unboxing experience and so on, but internally, electrically, are often a disaster. However, if the product is just good enough to work, then it's going to get five star reviews and satisfied customers, and nobody is going to bother to check if the cable even conforms to the standards (and even if it doesn't, it might get re-labeled, I've seen HDMI cables marked as "digital video cables" on packaging), if the connections to internal shielding are proper and so on.

[@TheSimba86]

google got caught substituting what you are actually searching for with similar results but with ads that pay better. you search for shoes it changes it to "nike shoes" on the back end.

[@katrinabryce]

Or, more often, I search for Nike Shoes, and I get shown Chinese knock-offs instead.

[@SlavTiger]

I genuinely cannot use google as a search engine anymore. I can never and I mean NEVER find what I am after.

[@nizzan91]

I noticed the beginning of radical decline in internet quality at around 2017ish. It went from the fastest way of getting good information to still being the fastest but very annoying and much slower at the same thing. I really think will get to the point where search engines will be unusable and you will have to directly go to sites you know.

[@Blackwing2345635]

Back to the good old days

[@OtherDalfite]

The T presidency really cemented the death of the internet. I'm not saying it's his fault, no. It was the weaponization of the internet that has driven people from it and plunged it into the current cesspool it is.

[@banksuvladimir]

@@Blackwing2345635that would actually be nice. Then the Sooners and gen alpha can get the good old internet experience, but with better tech

[@RedWolfenstein]

notice thats when the censorship began in earnest

[@BManStan1991]

I noticed this as well and I'm convinced this occurred as a result of the 2016 election. It seems all of tech companies banned together to collectively "nerf" their platforms and websites in order to "protect" us from finding "dangerous" information. Whether you agree with this statement or not, I'm not trying to be political. This just seems to be what happened, hence why it all began around 2017. It was a response to the election of 16.

[@nisterror]

Yeah I noticed the worsening of search results a while back. I used to be able to find really good info on car repairs, but now most search are irrelevant or plain take you to Amazon garbage links.

[@davidgoodnow269]

I searched for _thermal tape_ because of frozen plumbing pipes. Google gave me top results of nothing but _electrical_ tape, _duct tape,_ and _Scotch_ tape. Google fail.

[@wildgunman6430]

Have you tried using duckduckgo?

[@Xtrems]

Google literally disabled the feature where you can put stuff in quotation marks if you want an exact match. It's ridiculous

[@p0358]

Meh, it still works for the most part, at least for me...

[@SL4RK]

Not yet for me, but it only works with the word, not the full query

[@elliottvader2377]

I was wondering how that happened

[@steel5897]

It works until their algorithm decides it shouldn't and that what you REALLY wanted was

[@borisyeltsin6606]

It still works, I use this feature every day, google's own documentation mentions it along with several other advanced query parameters worth checking out

[@youdontknowme5969]

I noticed this starting in October. Search results suddenly became frustrating. Heck, one search, that had absolutely nothing to do with [American] football (but was on a Sunday very likely during a game), somehow got twisted enough that it still threw results at me about football and football merch. News flash: I *can't **_stand_* football. I promptly gave up and went back to watching cat videos...

[@Notsram77]

you just wrote football four times. Now you've gone and done it

[@natelevy1040]

Targeted ads for the next 6 months: we heard you're looking for football merchandise.

[@derrekvanee4567]

Duckduckgo or the Linux crowd sourced search packages as good as it can get right now. *Arch btw*

[@ShinigamiDa]

Lol

[@plaguis1391]

Only in October? This has been going on for YEARS at this point.

[@iviaverick52]

This is a result of the internet becoming nothing but a massive marketing machine. The internet is no longer about entertainment or information, it's about pushing ads.

[@lartrak]

I have a library and information science background, it's funny how people say the field would die because of the internet. We've been saying for years finding information when there's so much of it and so many bad actors is an even bigger challenge than when everything was hard copy.

[@heinzketchup4558]

A year ago i would have laughed at you. But now after trying to learn how to fix certain stuff and my car and having a real hard time to find any valuable information, i must agree. I rather spend 30€ on a hardcopy service manual than scrolling through endless waste info, AI crap and Ads via Google now.

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

The best case scenarios would be digital libraries.

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

Really the marketing guy was right, user-generated content will necessarily involve tons of spam. Moderated, i.e authoritative content i.e libraries and book authors and publishers is where the nugget of good information is.

[@plazasta]

Unironically, as someone who's learning programming in school, I'm starting to look at libraries for information instead of the internet, cause online tutorials never provide enough information to actually be useful

[@finadoggie]

so where do ebooks and digital libraries/curated databases fall into this?

[@jonfr]

The internet has not had a good economic crises and a lot of bankruptcies in a while. A much needed process to clean out a lot of trash.

[@SL4RK]

new dot bubble

[@SL4RK]

I think we're in for a repeat soon. "bubble" 1999-2000 but this time it will be caused by the decline of the advertising market.

[@SL4RK]

I think we're in for a repeat soon. "bubble" 1999-2000

[@9852323]

Hopefully. Ads have basically ruined the internet.

[@steveballmersbaldspot2.095]

Yeah we do, but like other comments have stated it should be focused on ads/marketing firms.

[@mrembeh1848]

The problem is that Google tries to guess what you are searching instead of giving you the results what you are searching for.

[@ea_naseer]

Ehhh... to give you something I have to figure out what you want.

[@Mernom]

The experiment showed that the issue is not just in google.

[@teru797]

@@Mernom yandex is best

[@JBBost]

All language is just guessing at what you mean. No matter how precise you make the language, there's still a margin of error the recipient understands the message -- this is signal-to-noise and it applies heavily here

[@V0ID_beats]

​@@JBBost but google does this deliberately..they could predict my search very accurately back in the day but now it is just crap

[@GeorgeJFW]

All this AI generated garbage content is plugging up KZbin the golden age of the internet is dead

[@androiduberalles]

And we can't know if a video sucks because the dislike button is gone.

[@teru797]

dont blame AI generated stuff. its youtube censorship that killed the golden age

[@SpeedyJuiceMan]

​@@teru797 He said the golden age of the Internet, not youtube. With the internet filled with AI it'll be impossible to tell what is made by a human being or a machine. Which considering the purpose of the internet is suppose to connect people, that's a bit of a problem.

[@plebisMaximus]

It ended already around the time forums died and big social platforms sucked up all users.

[@TheJudge_Carls_Junior_Rep]

@@androiduberallesthat’s if you use mobile or don’t use extensions on pc that give you dislikes and all types of useful features

[@sjoervanderploeg4340]

The quality of search results has been going down the drain since 2016 orso, but even before that as well. Especially if you are looking for help with a specific problem, you are more likely to find completely clueless people that do not even have the same problem.

[@c0d3warrior]

That's just bulletin boards like they always have been though. 😂

[@FailBucketFilms]

I worked as a Marketing Coordinator back in 2022. My role focused heavily on Google Ads and SEO. I saw this first-hand every day. I hate using search engines now and have seen a huge decline in that short year. Glad I don't deal with that shit anymore.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

You mean: You helped cause this.

[@ItsRayful]

@@halfsourlizard9319 yeah, and you caused child work and slavery in china because you bought shoes...

[@halfsourlizard9319]

@@ItsRayful Children doing something useful is something that I support. Also, I'm a gecko; I don't wear shoes.

[@MachineManGabb]

Thanks for contributing to ruining the internet

[@zacharylavoie6889]

This has been my experience. Search engines are getting worse and worse.

[@mattfm101]

I reckon thats on purpose, try unknown seach engines and you'll see theyre better.

[@GrimpakTheMook]

@@mattfm101 DuckDuckGo?

[@ArawnOfAnnwn]

@@GrimpakTheMook Also affected. DDG is for privacy, not accuracy or efficiency. No search engine can promise that.

[@BananaPhoPhilly]

Brave is ok. Definitely better than google at this point

[@melchiorsomers9512]

​@@GrimpakTheMookDDG is awful for finding what you are looking for

[@retro_88yota]

youtube has also completely ruined search. if I search something, I get 3 videos of what I am looking for. then 5 videos of "people also watched" then 3 videos of "channels new to you" then 3 more videos relevant to the search, then 3 videos of "previously watched"

[@user-lv6rn9cf8m]

Also region locked content and everything. Internet peaked like 20 years ago. Now it's been hijacked by people who shouldn't be anywhere near the important decisions.

[@PWingert1966]

I spoke to a friend about someone needing an ambulance with my phone on the table and now I am getting adverts for discount ambulance services (I am in Canada and the ambulances are paid through through provincial OHIP services)

[@jonathandickey1]

I have a friend who sells bathroom remodeling and voice conversations between me and my wife about her job have caused a fuckton of bathroom remodel ads to appear as targeted ads. This is the first time I've ever typed it. Safe to assume my microphone is compromised.

[@Metsfan1986]

It's so in front of you that they aren't ashamed to hide it anymore. I'll be on a phone call with my friend and we'll be talking and then one of us opens you YT app and it shows what we're taking about. We always have a good laugh when it happens, but both know that it's bad long term. The sad part of many don't notice it because they don't know..

[@qcriverrat]

I was in a room watching the Superbowl a few weeks ago and an advertisement for a movie staring a somewhat obscure actor came up. Within 2-3 minutes there was a suggested Facebook reel of this actor in his first, most iconic cameo appearance in a television series from 15+ years ago. Didn't even mention the guy or talk about the guy when the movie advertisement happened.

[@Trident2]

This was supposed to be a conspiracy theory but I don't care what they say. I believe it is real and it has happened to me and my friends many times to ignore it anymore!

[@mariobosnjak99]

I remember when i was in Netherlands googling anything was a waste of time as their google throws up a good dozen ads on the first page and then completely unrelated search results to what was googled. Meanwhile, in Croatia, no matter what language i use in my google search i get a max of 3 ads(rarely) and relevant search results no matter how obscure or niche the search is

[@AndrejaKostic]

I had the same experience when searching from Germany.

[@NeonGreenT]

So you guys are saying I can just switch top level domain and have my 10yr long lost google back ?

[@AndrejaKostic]

@@NeonGreenT No, you need VPN. The version of Google you get depends not on the TLD, but where results of Google's geolocation show you are.

[@adrianmillard6598]

Wikipedia asked me for a donation this year because I donated the last few years. I ignored it. This year I wanted to skip donating. THEY SENT ME 4 EMAILS asking for money. Finally I had to email them to tell them to f'ing leave me alone!

[@Gregorius421]

Pushy beggars. Wikimedia is drenched in money, that it's wasting on unproductive projects, conferences and funneling it to companies of relatives. Maintenance costs are a penny compared to that. Donations go to someone's pocket or party. It's a corrupt company and a toxic workplace, anyone who has value on the job market leaves as soon as they can.

[@Saint_Wolf_]

For years I used this sign making website to make my mom's pharmacy "We're closed for vacation", I'd Google "sign making online" and eventually it'd show up (3rd, maybe 4th result) now? It's basically memory holed, I can't find it and I doubt it's because it doesn't exist anymore. I swear marketing and engagement experts are the worse, yesterday I looked for a song, I wanted a cover and then **BOOM** a political news YT channel I follow shows up, like dude, keep on f-ing topic for more than 4 search results, I'll go watch that later, I already have KZbin premium and I'm using it.

[@polarpenguin3]

I donate like $25 every year to Wikipedia. They were instrumental in me getting my college degree. Finding reliable resources for complex astronomy and physics phenomena outside long-winded and overly verbose textbooks was near impossible at the time. Made studying so much more efficient.

[@FreshMedlar]

I did donate in the past too, but now they are politically biased, they declared it themselves. And only an extremely small percentage of the donations goes to the site. Most go to the founders. Look it up

[@HYDRAdude]

And every penny of that went to the CEO's bonus, nice job.

[@dannymitchell6131]

You're going to be pissed when you find out what the government pays them to tow the line. I was.

[@HavenMonahan]

As great of a resource as Wikipedia is, be wary that your donations don't just go to maintaining the site and related operations. The wikimedia endowment is managed by and intertwined with the Tides Foundation which is an organization that's very political/partisan. To give you an idea, Wikimedia recently started a $5mil fund to advance "racial equity". Even if you agree with such causes, it should be concerning that they're misleading ppl about what their donations are used for.

[@AfrinonM]

@HYDRAdude citation needed

[@KQKQ23]

Me, looking up an article for mountain bike shocks. “The 30 best mountain bike shocks of 2023” Literally just a list of random shocks with their descriptions copy and pasted with an affiliate link next to the price. Yes thank you review site I really feel enlightened now

[@MrEricmopar]

Yeah, even 15 years ago, Mountain Bike Review was bought off, and people like Tony Ellsworth had justly deserved bad reviews, explaining how bad the Joker frame etc actually were, removed from the site. Same with Specialized etc. Review sites are totally bought off now. Another example is my mother's 2018 Hyundai Sonata. Car and Driver flat out lied and claimed it had grossly excessive body roll and no rear leg room. I'm over 6 foot tall and with the front seats all the say back, the 2018 Sonata has huge amounts of leg room. Also, it's one of the best handling stock sedans I've ever driven and I used to do four wheel drift etc when I was younger. Car and Driver and other review sites, flat out lie, and bring up problems in a model that were fixed over a decade before etc etc.

[@24allix]

@@MrEricmopar Pinkbike fell off a cliff when it got bought by Outside. The site had some semblance of soul & respectability but now....? I was there when mtbr died, pinkbikes not as bad but its a shell of its former self

[@J_3_P_O]

Would LTT consider creating written transcripts of all their product analysis and comparison reviews? This would be an excellent searchable online resource!

[@reahreic7698]

As it is I always append LTT to my tech searches.

[@stitchfinger7678]

That's a pretty good idea

[@Montisaquadeis]

Pretty sure that is part of their goals for LABS once they get it up and fully running

[@johnmoore1495]

Anyone else been seeing the blatantly obvious scam ads on KZbin of celebrity deep fakes claiming they’re going to give you something for free? Jennifer Aniston is apparently giving away a ton of MacBooks lol

[@quikgold513]

Also late night show ads are cropping up. Hinting at another ad apocalypse.

[@johnmoore1495]

@@quikgold513 I don’t get why KZbin allows it, like are they not paying even 1 person to vet the ads? You can’t allow blatant scams on your website.

[@steveballmersbaldspot2.095]

Tons of fake Elon ads for me.

[@calumjjarvis]

The fake game ads are the most annoying.

[@medraut6599]

Julia Roberts is on natural yoga techniques that works better than viagra ad.

[@alistairblaire6001]

The most shocking part of this is that they paid $6 million just in payment processing. According to their website it's 4% of their gross donations. Lately I've been trying to be conscientious of card processing fees for the local shops I go to and it's like yeah no wonder the owners get friendly when you pull out cash instead of a card.

[@Blackwing2345635]

Depends on country. Cash collection costs money too, sometimes overhead is on par with cards.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

Cash still exists?!?!

[@Tekkerue]

The internet is dying in so many ways. KZbin is becoming nearly unusable anymore with its constant shadow blocking of legit comments while still allowing spambots through.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

Confused by the use of 'anymore' in that sentence; is that some odd dialect thing?

[@thenightwatchman1598]

exactly this. it doesent have anything to do with foul or violent language anymore. i got my comment scrubbed simply for mentioning george orwell, IN A REPLY, how is that for insidious. Rumble has promise. but economies of scale is a bitch of a mountain to climb.

[@Erowens98]

Yeah, probably 75% of my comments are removed. No matter what im actually commenting.

[@dammitcooper]

Even on KZbin this is happening. Recently making any specific searches, will see a few of what I am looking for with shortly after it's show me nothing relevant.

[@BennyOcean]

1:46 "authoritative sources" is code for "establishment approved sources". Assuming that the "authorities" are telling the truth is fine as long as you can assume they have no motive to lie, or to bend the truth to fit an agenda. What we've seen in recent years is that just because someone has a certain university degree or a certain job title doesn't mean that they're honest and doesn't mean that they're ethical. In other words: bad people can get fancy degrees and important jobs, and good people can be incentivized to lie for their employers.

[@silvy7394]

I noticed that a few weeks ago when I was trying to look up the cell chemistry characteristics of a certain battery online. Almost no matter what I did it would give me irrelevant results that was NOT what I was looking for. Sometimes completely unrelated.

[@musaran2]

They drive you to what is popular. That is where the money is for them.

[@leathernluv]

I was telling people around the year 2k that SEO would kill search engine results.

[@ZealothPL]

Seo is a convenient smokescreen for search engines being bad faith

[@Blackwing2345635]

​@@ZealothPLit is not exactly a smokescreen though. Bad faith is one problem and it is on search engines and those who pays, SEO - another one and it is on those, whose result you are seeing. It would be a smokescreen, if it wasn't really a problem, but it is and even "good faith" search engine will inevitably suffer from it

[@sephondranzer]

I was complaining about this at work, investigator at the time. No point fighting it, crooks win with this big time and that was the point.

[@Rexhunterj]

You mean the Rich and Wealthy get away with it all again while we the people suffer. One day the dams will burst.

[@SlavTiger]

not even with the value of currency dropping YOY, a dollar gained at the top has become a percentage lost of a dollar's value.

[@heyspookyboogie644]

Haven’t used Google in like 10 years cause the results got so bad. Amazed how many people think this is a recent thing.

[@1111Tactical]

What do you use?

[@CanIHasThisName]

It was a very gradual process and many people instinctively learned how to change their queries to get what they need. And for most people 10 years is far too long ago to remember what it was like back then.

[@krim7]

For years, it has been a slow, gradual decline in quality. Since the AI revolution, Google’s results have plummeted in quality

[@heyspookyboogie644]

@@1111Tactical duck duck go. Not because it’s meaningfully better at finding things but just to give Google less data on me.

[@AbcIHateYou3]

Been using Brave Search recently and its decent enough as a Google replacement, though it's also pushing AI now. I heard DDG just pulled from Bing but I don't know how true that is. @@heyspookyboogie644

[@Blarnix]

“Here’s how to partition your drive using our unnecessary software that we’re shilling instead of just doing it in one command!”

[@HarakiriRock]

Nailed it.

[@orehcele]

Because instead of trying to give the user the best possible result they’re trying to sell crap to them

[@box420]

Have you ever noticed how many copy/past article reviews there are? There are like 20 websites, all with the same exact same article

[@Luzgar]

The companies behind the 2 most popular search engines are going all in on generative AI that replaces search engines in some cases. So are they ok with it being worse to push us toward AI ?

[@K8_u-u]

It really doesn’t replace search engines, they have a different use case generally, they are just ham fisting a replacement

[@sihamhamda47]

Not only in search engine, they also started using AI in their own advertising services as well

[@FireStormOOO_]

Or they've looked at the landscape, realized there's almost no signal left that can be reliably picked up by a non-AI search engine, any they do use will be picked up by SEO in months, and they're planning their retreat because they're out of options. AI doesn't have to be perfect to destroy the model of the traditional search engine. You can adversarially train generative AI specifically on an SEO goal (write content that ranks as high as possible on google for these terms) and the only way forward is going to involve an equally or more capable AI model somewhere in the chain to catch the BS.

[@K8_u-u]

Did my comment get deleted 😭

[@derrekvanee4567]

Except generative AI is what makes take search results. *no AI exists yet, ask the three stages of AI intelligence. We stage one still.*

[@Luzgar]

Can we go back, please ?! When did creating something new stopped being about making something better ?

[@personzorz]

About 4.3 billion years ago when the very first virus nucleated out of the early biosphere

[@Luzgar]

@@personzorz Sounds about right

[@SlavTiger]

When greed became law

[@peeepeeepooopooo]

Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers

[@qwertt14]

@@SlavTigeryep, it's called capitalism

[@SlavTiger]

Everything has gone to shit, i get the same websites all the fucking time, cant find what i actually want, games have turned into ass tier gambling for skins with minimal actual quality, we're losing repairability, losing ownership, losing access to parts and info, losing all but extremely promoted samey bull on the web, honestly I've grown to despise the entire tech industry, and I used to absolutely love it until the nepotism and corruption began to infest and ruin literally everything. KZbin will suggest the same previously watched crap a million times and no amount of "not interested and ive already seen/don't like this video" will prevent it from coming back again and again. I don't have any interest in opening my wallet when all and I mean ALL of the options are to get metaphorically bent by the seller/provider. Ive even had a third party phone illegally locked to my carrier repeatedly, and only an ftc report got it resolved, and even then only temporarily. To summarize in three words: it's all ruined.

[@SlavTiger]

And antitrust and consumer protection is a fucking joke of a concept with the ones making the decisions basically paid off to give a favorable verdict to xyz conglomerate to do whatever, always fining a fraction of a percent of the money made from violations, making it less of a punishment and more of a fee to perform whatever the executives want. They wonder why consumer trust is basically gone, but they don't look back at the mountain of cracks they chipped in their own bridges along the way. There's only so much you can fool a person before they get wise and realize the only way to win the game is not to play, and tin foil hat time, but i think education is getting harder to access on purpose, keep people outraged at whatever nonsense so they don't get wise to the utter scam our lives have become. If it isn't "fuck you i got mine," it's take your breadcrumbs and be greatful. But the funny thing is the global economy has been tumultuous because of the same crap that's turned away consumers to begin with. We own nothing, it breaks easy or doesnt work without xyz, we don't make enough, and eventually the cash flow stops, and the value of a dollar or kroner or whatever goes down, a dollar earned becomes a percent buying power loss, and nothing is actually gained at the top or the bottom, both echelons lose. What's the fucking point buying anything when it's not worth it in the first place? What's the point getting the latest anything when it's actively worse than the previous AND we're struggling to stay stable on rent or food? Honestly i blame a combination of croneyism, nepotism, corruption, and incompetence on all fronts globally. We've poisoned ourselves economically, and it's widespread. Somebody, seriously, anybody try and NOT find the myriad of examples proving this shit, it's visable in nearly every trend how people's priorities change when quality of life goes down. Why do we even have these wars? Scarcity, scarcity we caused with throwaway craptronics, planned obsolescence, need I go on. I wish i could see things differently, but it seems idiotic to claim we haven't all fucked over ourselves and each other by aspiring for unsustainable infinite growth models.

[@OnkyoGrady]

Search results have gotten much less useful, as the results pages are far too monetized and/or gamed by semi relevant sites. It might just be in my mind, but I feel like this dovetails with the decline in product quality on shopping sites (at least in immediate search results). Basically what I'm saying is I find myself going to page 3 results to get what I want more and more nowadays.

[@addghvsdxvbhgdxcbbgdxvbvcddd]

the enshitification continues

[@Luzgar]

Wikipedia having money on hand is reassuring.

[@wallaceman105]

Seriously. I remember back when teachers would loose their minds if we used Wikipedia for information, and now to see it as basically the pillar of reliability for the internet is quite incredible.

[@kuro_emiya]

which is terrible considering how easy it is to manipulate and change the pages, there's plenty of stuff on wiki that is straight up fake and hasn't been changed for years.

[@igameidoresearchtoo6511]

Its still not reliable at all, plenty of huge mistakes in some critical articles (including locked ones) and in some subjects like chemistry the mistakes can be very dangerous. and unfortunately because it is indeed the only real way to quickly find information on certain topics it has become a source for misinformation when people quote wrong information from wikipedia. to be clear I am not saying wikipedia is all bullshit, no, I'm saying it just fails to be a reliable enough source to completely rely on, which means that the search for a reliable source every time is not over.@@wallaceman105

[@jolioding_2253]

@@kuro_emiya this may be true for certain topics where someones opinion on a matter can influence the way they present a topic (social sciences/topics) but the wikipedia articles on hard sciences are almost always correct in what they write, though sometimes i wish they would go deeper into detail. Both my physics and my maths professors said that if a very sterile explanation is sought after, wikipedia is a good source for formulae.

[@hillbillysamurai]

Wikipedia is shit

[@Darkness251]

Its at a point that you only find crap searching with them. Except when you write exactly what you need and know it. Otherwise it shows you random stuff sometimes not even remotely connected to what you searched for

[@dragon1130]

*reads title* Oh thank gods... I'm not the only one dying.

[@sunla]

😥 You uhhh... Are you okay?

[@halfsourlizard9319]

Everyone's either dead or dying; just some are dying faster than others.❤

[@SongShiyu]

I swear whenever i want to find something, my search result is flooded with ads and market products which just turns me off.

[@GameCyborgCh]

5:50 less text than you'd think, if I recall correctly you can put entirety of English Articles (without pictures and it's only the latest version, so no past versions) is like 19 Gigabytes compressed or 86 GB uncompressed.

[@ggwp638BC]

I miss the times when machines were taking jobs like mining and factories that while necessary were menial and overall bad for people. Now they are taking office jobs, art, writing, journalism, gaming, music, content creation... And leaving us the menial tasks.

[@gfys756]

In other words, you were glad for blue collar people to lose their jobs, but now that white collars are being replaced, it's a bad thing...😂🤦🏿‍♂️

[@ggwp638BC]

@@gfys756 I have nothing against blue collar jobs and those are jobs that need to be done, but yes, I prefer if people DON'T HAVE to work in jobs that offer a significant health and safety risk. It would be far more beneficial in every sense if more people could do office jobs than more people in coal mines. This shouldn't be controversial.

[@jonathanhoward1499]

No. Oonly for averageonkeys

[@gcKukie]

Back in my day you could search the internet uphill both ways.

[@NaudVanDalen]

If you're planning to donate to Wikipedia along with other people, pool the money together and donate it at once to reduce their donation processing expenses.

[@Visstnok]

Or just let those activist hacks pay for their own servers.

[@somelokyguy6466]

Or just don't donate at all. Before the pandemic they spent more money on corporate holidays than actual running costs and the only reason their 2020-2021 financial report lists a huge surplus was because the pandemic prevented them from partying with your money.

[@41-Haiku]

Wikipedia is absolutely flush with cash. They do not need more donations.

[@1337Jogi]

@@somelokyguy6466 I never did donate but I would rather give them 100$ than buying a new iPhone for 50 bucks - well apart from beeing able to resell with profits ofc.... Truthfully I would rather use my money to start a fire than let that horrible company get anything out of me. I think in tech despite all their shortcommings Wiki is far up the list compared to most tech companies

[@RusticRonnie]

That is a great idea… I should start a charity company and collect donations for them and hold onto it for the next 10 years only to donate after being caught red handed online

[@c0d3warrior]

I love the "then we don't disagree"-handshake, been at that point with friends way more than once myself. 😂

[@L3thalBones]

Interesting topic. Do you think we will ever get to a point where the internet is so cluttered with spam and virtual garbage that we have to start fresh or wipe the internet clean?

[@Herfinnur]

Search results have been so useless that I've been wondering whether the *useful* internet maybe has shrunk so much that there simply isn't the amount of information out there that there used to be

[@traplover6357]

SEOs getting worse due to generative AI for articles, titles, etc. is wild ☠️

[@covle9180]

I always wonder wth are 400 people doing to keep Wikipedia up? After a 30 engineers in a few locations and a bunch of moderators and a handful of devs, what are the other 300 doing?

[@krookedliptv9852]

I run into the same issue when it comes to finding information on games. Like recipes for stuff in crafting games is a big one that I've noticed.

[@islaymassive1530]

Shoutout to Steve from GN for making a good writen website

[@MemelordSupreme]

It sucks so much because it's not even just products. I have searched for content made years ago, even knowing where the site is and know google has served (and crawled) the content in the past years ago are now nowhere to be found. Like it doesn't even exist anymore even. It's insane.

[@Anna_Rae]

I hate how many websites tell me to update my drivers or disable windows defender to fix a video game issue lol. The most unhelpful help ive ever gotten is from SEO spam

[@abdoeldaly6922]

I've noticed this from mid 2019, and search results get worse every few months since them.

[@michaelkaster5058]

My favorite is not getting the company's website that sells the product listed at the top or even on the first page of results. Yay progress.

[@lazarusblackwell6988]

When you get real about life you figure out that only money matters in life. Not spirituality. Not truth. Not creativity. Not art. Nothing. JUST MONEY.

[@Waitwhat469]

The algorithm being a black box that users feel distanced too is part of the issue to me. It's a cat and mouse game, but each one wants to be the big cat instead of working with people to make it better.

[@Roxor128]

Yeah. We need an open-source search engine that you can run on your own machine and tweak to your liking. YaCy was a good first step, but didn't get anywhere near enough work to become actually useful.

[@canadianguy1955]

Even on youtube. I search something and the vast majority of the stuff they show me has literally nothing to do with the thing I have searched. It's making youtube an annoying mess.

[@thenightwatchman1598]

its like the internet has dementia. everything is regressing to how i was in the early 2000s were you stumbled upoun what you wanted by complete accident.

[@kennyoffhenny]

I love how relieved & happy Linus is at 3:27 when Luke basically acknowledges how much work Linus & the team puts into creating quality videos

[@RaithUK]

It's funny, as the internet is getting ever worse and search results are getting ever worse and social media turns every thing toxic i am finding my entire family are slowly moving back away from internet and tech...

[@invaderjoshua6280]

If you don't type a specific website name in with your search your not getting what you want.

[@nunoaguiar2525]

It's not just product searches, it's every search in general. I'm searching from something, developer stuff for example, and some results have nothing to do with what I searched. And those results aren't ads or anything, it's articles or tutorials of something not related but have one key word in common.

[@Bllksem]

I've found that to find good information I have to find it on forums or on youtube. Especially if it's a niche topic you can forget about finding something good just off of google. It's always been good practise to go through a lot of sources regardless of what you're researching, but now you have to filter through so much more junk. 3:30 Videos are a lot of the time just summaries, articles always used to be more in depth, but with the ai generated junk it's become almost impossible to find good articles on some topics.

[@kissadev.]

According to what I have already seen on youtube the US is dying, europe is dying, the cinema is dying, music is dying, books are dying, the TV is dying, China is doomed, Japan is doomed, capitalism is dying, socialism is doomed, videogames are dying, Dubai is dying, the planet is dying, animais are dying and now the intrnet is dying. I think that the only thing that is not dying is the radio.

[@davidrucker11387]

AI being pushed is when I started noticing my search results and even navigation getting worse!

[@razor6202]

Every time I try to find info on anything it's a dead end. Articles that don't tell me anything of value are always on the top and finding anything of value has become so fucking hard. I was good at finding what I need but that has become super tedious, finding things now takes super long. Hate it.

[@SupportSquirrel]

A lot more "Log In" walls, especially on news sites. Why should I have to log in to view a news article on a news network (Fox, NBC, CNN)? Evidently I do, though. I assume by putting up that wall they are also messing with search results as well and I have a feeling they are only putting enough in the headline and/or first articles to generate clicks and not produce ACCURATE results.

[@solominded]

Especially when news companies do not pay for air time like any other channel. I shouldn't have to pay for news when the citizens subsidize those companies in the first place.

[@arcadealchemist]

the problem is THERE IS NOTHING NEW being shared and attention is slipping

[@davidmurphy9151]

The average max PC article from the 90s was better than any video on the same topic on youtube.

[@qwertt14]

unfortunately these aren't up to date anymore

[@Sibernethy]

We could all take lessons from 90s-era internet where if you had no search engine, just copy-paste or type the website URL and go there directly. It can be advertised the old-school way and oftentimes, they came on a business card or some kind of physical medium. CDs often had autorun menus that gave you the link to go to their website. Perhaps we should start doing that again if we want to escape the search engine overlords.

[@42seven]

or just hop from links page to links page or other's websites

[@TeleviseGuy]

AI copilots are the type of necessity you need when AI text becomes widely used to hijack SEO

[@derrekvanee4567]

Welcome to years ago. *Done a Google search since 2017?*

[@fmccloud]

My fear that advertising an SEO will creep into AI search results and we’ll be back to where we are now.

[@MrIndiemusic101]

Its legitimately awful now. My partner was thinking that she needed to go to a hospital the other day luckily for something that didn't seem too serious initially to require an ambulance. I tried looking up hospital wait times in my area so I could drive her to a place that could see her as soon as possible and nothing useful came up in the search results. It was all irrelevant web sites. I used to be able search this info easily either google would post a summary showing the current wait times or the top result would be a link to my local health authority that would display that info. None of that was popping up to the top. It was only news articles talking about hospital wait times.

[@DOGbackwardz]

The exact same content as written and graphed is often superior. Particularly in the tech space. Have you guys never listened to Steve ramble through the 20 slides as he compares the fps of the Nvidia Asus ROG Strix+ 4080 super at 145 frames per second to the AMD Powercolor Red Devil 7900 xtx at 144 frames per second.

[@Tabako-san]

Many fanfiction and pirating sites also live solely off donations, lots of people either due to passion or maintaining a good value service in their eyes are willing to spend on websites if they have provide either.

[@David_Quinn_Photography]

I was recently looking for a written review on an older Canon EF camera and I just could not find one I had to go to KZbin and watch a few review videos on the camera in 2020-23 and sure they did answer my question but I didn't want to watch a 30 min+ video I just wanted specs, some photos, and to see if it was worth the money for a backup camera.

[@nerdyneighbor]

Marketer here. Been in the SEO space for over 6 years. I think you see a great division in the kind of content. For years, written has been transitioning away from blogs to tutorials and reviews. It's now transitioning from tutorials and reviews to resources and wikis. Search Engines will eventually select for that. The information pipeline almost always starts with video now. Written searches are for forums, wikis, and documentation.

[@smulGIANT]

I was just talking about this, I have been having to outsource to A.I. due to how hard it has been finding things that were so easy before.

[@olozzob64]

Lately at least in my searches sometimes fake sites are shown first that the real site

[@foogee5403]

I think the internet has become less crawlable too, like, everything is lazy loaded, useful information like dates are omitted, etc. Thak youtube comment sections for example, can you even search them? They're just mountains of information sitting in databases that can't be utilized because the only way of getting to them is to just keep on scrolling. Same for twitter. Discord is a total disaster, the amount of information that would have been in forums 15 years ago, now sitting in small often not really known servers that isn't really searchable... I don't really know where this is going, since the internet has become such an important resource.

[@Sonicstillpoint83]

3:50 I’m glad to see someone with vision bring up the pervasive ad garbage on the Internet, which almost prevents the visually impaired or blind from even using it, without having to kill the web browser process and start over hoping you don’t find more results like the one that locked up your browser.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

This!

[@SlavTiger]

how about the entire fucking screen being covered on mobile? id like some content with my ads

[@chillinoutmaxin4630]

The internet started dying in late 00's / early 10's when everyone started using it.

[@frogmatt33]

So Linus - you've never read a scientific paper? You know, the ones where you have to flip back and fourth from the glossary every 7th word... that sort of thing? I'm still looking for the KZbin Video on the effects of habitat fragmentation on threatened species. I'm afraid most would be extinct by the time it came out.

[@ChippTheFox]

On the apple topic, if I'm assuming correctly you're referring to the blood oxygen monitor, fun fact, I know the person who literally made it, they're a furry, and they're taking apple for everything they've got. I'm insanely proud people are actually telling Apple they can't just steal stuff and sell it others.

[@ClundXIII]

Hosting of the Wikipedia Website itself is only a fraction of the expenses of Wikipedia. They are paying for a lot of stuff that could be classified as "activism". So asking for money "to keep the Website running" is really misleading.

[@Narfanator]

Got off the LMG bandwagon for a few months and this is my first clip since, and that whole disagreement ending in a handshake was exactly what I needed to see to make sure LMG (and WAN show) is still what it was! Thanks for continuing to be solid in this chaotic world.

[@derrekvanee4567]

A lot of the good ol days are long gone. They do make have the odd good one like this though.

[@Google_Does_Evil_Now]

Google has gotten worse though. Because even if you search for specific detailed words Google will struggle. There's no way that Google is genuinely searching by keywords anymore. Google is sales first, search is second or third priority.