In the case of YouTube, only after a few results they become completely unrelated to my search.
What you’re seeing is called ‘enshittification’. In this particular example, in 2019, Prabhakar Raghavan – the ex-McKinsey, ex-Yahoo MBA who ran ad revenue for Google – came up with an ingenious solution: just make search worse. If you have to run multiple searches to find what you’re looking for, that creates multiple chances to show you an ad. No really. This is real. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Why do people put up with this? You can find out more about enshittification here:
Short explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE
Longer explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaoWpQ-3Zs
Enshittification is a modern way of saying late stage capitalism. As long as we submit to capital and reject collectivism this will always be the course
Not on YouTube since most things I search for are on the 1st few videos. For google, yes. ive stopped using it and primarily use ddg
Yes. I have regularly been using DDG, but would wind up using google sometimes anyway. Now I’m actively forced to use other engines because google is now a monetized results server and will return zero or no relevant results in favor or sponsored or monetized results.
DDG is worse though—so much of the time all I get are pages that were created by an LLM to be search engine optimized. Hollow language and a table of contents just so they can tell me how long to cook rice
Yet another on the endless list of reasons why capitalism is bad for humanity.
Doesn’t mean capitalism is bad. Google has a search monoply, there are plenty of other search engines but how can they compete.
If a guy starts a wildfire to get hired as a fireman because he needs to feed his family then capitalism is bad. There are a lot of examples. Maybe you’re saying it’s not capitalism, but human nature?
No. I don’t use it.
It’s so bad. I keep searching topics on YouTube and getting 3-4 results before YouTube starts recommending videos based on past searches or past watched videos. Like, excuse me YouTube, what the fuck? You search what I tell you to search.
All the categories seems wildly divorced from what’s actually in them and half the time the category only suggests two videos… to me it feels like YouTube decides what you watch, today your suggestions are 90% old music videos, tomorrow a bunch of random machining videos, next day fail videos, rinse and repeat - obviously it’s based on your interests not mine but I’m sure everyone is having the same shitty experience
I will say that YT is brilliant and seems to know that when I have a buzz on late at night I want to listen to 80s MTV videos. I listen to one song and then YT is like “here is a playlist with every song you ever searched for from that era.”
Both have been prioritising “engagement” over “results” because it allows them to advertise to you more.
In case you didn’t realise, if the product is free, you’re the product and both have been doing an amazing job out of extracting value from your eyeballs.
Unsurprisingly, they’re both owned by the same company.
The “results” portion they got rid of is credibility of the results based on cross linking i.e. people linking to useful resources. It was the thing that made Google the best search engine.
Noe they prioritise what sell the most ads as the top priority.
I wonder what would happen if we all just signed off for the rest of the year.
I use DDG, but search quality on google is unmatched
In match in what sense? Because google has become nigh useless to me. I’m relying hard on LLMs to provide links because google never gives me any relevant response anymore – and I’m not even talking about sponsored content here, which makes things worse in some cases
Google positions user created (reddit, discourse, other forums) higher than random articles in most cases.
Also google seems to be favoring official docs
Google is still the first thing that I check, it’s just not as consistent as it used to be in delivering any meaningful results
Use something else like Kagi or duckduckgo
Yes! It’s very hard to find alternatives to social media sites through google. Get choked in dozens of whiny blogs of ‘social media isn’t what it used to be’ articles instead. Had to find duck duck go on yahoo then find alternative social media sites on duck duck go.
It’s on purpose. The longer you scroll, the longer you’re on the platform. That’s higher engagement numbers and is used to expose you to/negotiate higher prices from advertisements.
They want you to give up on search and ask their AI
I honestly think this is one of the reasons AI is so popular with people. We didn’t notice because we have been using ddg, and adblocks. But searching for things in google, and finding any decent sites that’s related and not shoving down ads all over the screen is hard to find.
Then people found something where they just search/ask things and get answers without any of the hassle. If you don’t care about the source, or want to check multiple views then you have what you want. Specially because I think lot of people seem to use google to just find what they already have bias towards.
I use AIs exactly as you’re describing, but I ask for sources, which they’re “ok” for.
They’re bad at it too but in a way that make them useful to then extract the keywords google would expect (i.e, the response doesn’t necessarily make sense, but at least I have some resources to form a question google can answer), while google doesn’t seem to be able to give me proper results when I search by using words other than the exact matching keywords
Dunno about Google but Youtube seems to be making some things harder on purpose, like seeing the date of a video or showing search results in chronological order.
Extensions are your friend. I’ve had to install several just to make YouTube useable!
I’d be interested to know if there’s a way to fix this issue with extensions. Do you mean browser extensions? I use a browser sometimes and newpipe sometimes.
Using a browser and ublock origin, I find viewing youtube to work ok except for the occasional age gated video that I can’t view without a google account. What’s stopped working is search ordering and seeing timestamps. Like old comments might get labelled “2 years ago” with mouse-over no longer showing the actual date/time. It’s not shown in the unrendered HTML in any obvious way either.
Not commnenting on the efficacy of the following for everyone, but they help me:
Disable Autoplay for YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/disable-autoplay-for-yout/dinkeiniijmpjehejhedbciaedblhnnk?pli=1
Return YouTube Dislike https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/return-youtube-dislike/gebbhagfogifgggkldgodflihgfeippi
U-Block Origin, obviously (still works fully on Brave Browser) https://ublockorigin.com/
Untrap for YouTube (Block YouTube Shorts & Remove Recommendations) https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/untrap-for-youtube-—-bloc/enboaomnljigfhfjfoalacienlhjlfil
YouTube Channel Blocker https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-channel-blocker/ghpibapiigafgbaolopljimengkfjofk
YouTube Upload Time https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-upload-time/nenoecmaibjcahoahnmeinahlapheblg
YTBlock - Block any content from YouTube https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ytblock-block-any-content/nedcanggplmbbgmlpcjiafgjcpdimpea
Some of these probably cross over in what they do, but I can’t be arsed delving into the nooks and crannies of them, so long as they do the job for me.
That is why I’ve started using Deepseek as a replacement for searches, the proven tract record and successes of the Communist Party of China to improve people’s lives make tech out of China OVERWHELMINGLY more trust worthy then tech out of the blood soaked Capitalist Imperialist threat to all humanity that is the US ruling class (and those who currently serve them) (and the US itself for as long as it hasn’t yet overthrown the Capitalists (basically the Billionaires, and now also a F**king Trillionare.)) (it’s almost like I’m writing code lol, I should try to make my writing style more consistent or something)
I like your spirit, but you went just a little overboard with the rant. I’m saying this just in case you are in doubt about why you are being downvoted, because I get downvoted often and I always get left wondering why it happened. Cheers.
Don’t worry about it, most Liberals (note Conservatives are also Liberals) have been fed lies their entire lives to demonize countries like China, and also many people (not just Liberals) have a hard time separating the misuse of a tool from the tool itself (Capitalists use AI against humanity) and so for these two reasons I was already expecting to get down voted, but it is perfectly fine as I do not take it personally, when a challenge comes to a persons world view, a common defensive reaction is to lash out in some way.
I just love how YouTube has a “show unwatched” button in its search that usually shows me videos I have watched multiple times.
