Sorry for venting but this last week I have had several situations come up where I needed to do product research and I have been blown away with how hard it has become to do that now. It has been getting worse for years but in the last 12 months it has gotten dramatically worse.
Many thousands of “sites” have popped up that are nothing but AI garbage with Amazon links in them.
They are also good at SEO. In one of my searches, the top 20 results from DDG were AI generated.
Finding sites with real information is very difficult. Not only because of these sites but many sites that were once trusted have been purchased and replaced with AI generated or extreme low effort human generated content.
I have come across some similar issues with this too. Depending on what I’m looking for I sometimes have to resort to peer-to-peer file sharing to find books or studies related to the topic.
Or if up to date isn’t as important I have to try and search for pages pre 2022 or possibly 2023
One of my latest searches via Google had a result with an AI answer at the beginning which was 100% false. More and more the results are complete garbage.
I find the internet, for research, is a miserable dried up heartbreaking frustrating place to seek information and it didn’t used to be a decade ago. It is truly run by and this level of mediocrity is stunning. About half hour it takes just to parse reliable info a human wrote.
Source quality is so poor in the top 50 results I find myself on pages 3, 4, 5 for valid stuff.
Internet search is a wretched experience anymore. Demeaning, sad. I concur with you Mr Dalto 1000% emphatically.
It’s got to go the other way, right?
EDIT: and articles/sites duplicate each other word for word and steal each other’s AI drivel so in your first 10 results you might find 3 duplicates. algorithms.
The internet isn’t for the People anymore its now for Data Mining. Its only going to get worse as the AI wars progress. Many search’s are now favoring A.I more than likely do to pay offs and the fact that they all want their A.I to be THE A.I. So unfortunately for us who use to love the internet and the vast amount of knowledge at our finger tips it has turned into a Big Brother Corporate Sponsored Subscription Data Mining Service.
The closest I have been to discovering what the old internet was like is using the Wiby search engine. It’s a search engine specifically indexed to various hobby websites or back when people used to make their own personal website just to share knowledge and their interests, some very old pages are from the 90s but still maintained, or even modern basic personal websites. Opened my eyes a bit at least as someone who never saw or used the internet like this.
Sometimes there are websites that are jewels of information that modern search engines will never show you. There are many older websites so not necessarily up to date depending on what it is but it showed me closer to what the web was like since I wasn’t on the web back then, mostly by using the “surprise me” button on the main page.
I’ve seen this exact type of website structure for various things like shampoos, tools, brushes, etc.
Always put me off with the Amazon links and odd things that were “wrote” on them. And as you say I see the exact same lists and text across multiple websites with the same amazon links too.
It’s an “arms race”. As a human you have to start a query in an AI search tool that links out answers/explanations most of the time now. Starting with a raw search-engine query is rough.
you could asked me about.. was into very similar research was in the need for a new filter for water turtles aquarium
I can 100% relay to the issue.. i remember time before the “AI-Outburst” when google add-words and stuff just started.. i was able to search item and stuff i needed for my business, also if i do not find something on the first run i could wait a week and i would get a mail with exactly the offer i was searching for.
But now? searching for a spare part for stuff is almost impossible.. you got results generated on the run i think, titled with something you exactly searching for showing a pricetag you would agree.. and when you click you are redirected to something completely garbage or unrelated.. even searches on shop websites themself are never bring up the items you are searching for.
Next step is that an AI controlled Production Plant somewhere is getting your search request and simple start producing something AI generated that looks like exactly that item you are searching for, indeed without any real function, and sending it directly without even asking.. you only got mail:
Hey dear joe your XY-Thing is ready for shipping here is the shipping number ..
I have been saying the same thing recently. I am tired of all the AI crap out there. I was in the market for a new bag to carry all my work stuff in while I commute and I just wanted video reviews odmf some bags I was looking at…from humans who have used the bags. And so many videos on YouTube were just AI crap regurgitating the specs from the websites.
Google is also trying to spin the story how everything is “fine.” But even they say how people are now asking more detailed questions. No crap we don’t want AI. And Google said sites with “authentic voices and first-hand perspectives are thriving.” Imagine that. We want useful information from other humans. What a concept
It’s not new, but the acceleration is now vastly higher. Early beginnings were just people spamming - moving up to simple scripts and bots that killed Yahoo Answers, but later on it destroyed Quora very quickly, a massive proportion of questions are AI generated, and many answers too… and now websites.
In a world where de-politicisation is becoming an increasing threat, this is a superb tool for the likes of Trump, Elon and the others… but it really is becoming so much tougher than ever before to get through to anything real.
I use Startpage, it’s a Google proxy, I have the search power of Google without the profiling and shitty links at the top of the list. Startpage may not be the best regarding privacy, but they at least respect the GDPR.
Despite knowing that youtube consits of commercials down to the bone, I find myself more frequently on youtube for product reviews/research than on search engines. But AI plague is everywhere.
and this level of mediocrity is stunning. About half hour it takes just to parse reliable info a human wrote.
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