How do you go about researching online given search engine commercialization and "AI" hallucinations? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Do you have some methods to mitigate the downsides of search engines and "AI" summarizers? Besides talking to folks online, what other methods might one use to sift through the internet's vast expanses?

Not that I mind the last option, but for any of us to be able to provide each other novel information that we couldn't otherwise search, it seems like there must be some other way to find info that one hasn't produced or compiled themselves.

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[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Man, back in the day, Google would search for what you typed and nothing else. You could put in whatever words you wanted and it would give you back results with those words and only those words. If you wanted to search only for a literal phrase (where the words you provided appeared consecutively and in the order you gave them) you'd put them in quotes. And Google never strayed from your exact instructions.

Those were good days. I don't think that's a thing any more.

I use DuckDuckGo today, but it sells your info to Microsoft, apparently, so I'm not sure it's really much better than Bing or Google on that score. And the search results are probably objectively worse.

Let's burn the internet to the ground and start over.

[-] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Man, back in the day, Google would search for what you typed and nothing else

You are mixing it up with Altavista. Precision was their way.

Google has always been 'and something else, too'

[-] wahming 1 points 1 year ago

No, there was a time boolean search was honoured

[-] JetpackJackson@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

I use searx.be, I feel like it's better than DDG

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023

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