not so surprising when read about what a dump google ads has become: https://www.propublica.org/article/google-display-ads-piracy...
Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
181–190 of 242 posts
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#182The malvertisement thing has become real bad. The other day I had a problem so I used chrome, where I unfortunately hadn't installed an add blocker yet. I searched for my bank (I know, I should have put the URL in directly, but I was being lazy since it was a new chrome install and I didn't have the url in my history yet). I hit the first link, logged in (my password manager would have saved me here, but again it was…
And you are young enough and tech-savvy enough to know about all these mechanisms, you made a mistake because you were in a hurry or distracted. Think of how many people (older and/or not technically proficient) fall in this same trap everyday. Since ads are paid for (and an invoice is made for the payment), google could well verify the id of the people placing the ad and the correspondence with the "real" organizati…
The "I'm behind 7 proxies" meme gained sentience by now.
The "real" credit card was stolen in a similar practice from another user. The phone number was entered by my grandma. The address verification was submitted someone fooled in a previous stint.
You can't block, detect nor prosecute these people. Google could only try to protect "PayPal" searches but for the rest of them it's going to be a feat. Let's not make it sound like a computer could just tell that all of these are obvious scams. To a computer there's little difference between mybank.tld and mybankverified.tld. Domain age has plenty of false positives and negatives too.
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.
YouTube search is even worse. They could do so much to filter the results. But they don't. They don't even give you a full page of results. The give you half a dozen and go "Meh. Search is hard. Here is some completely unrelated videos you might like."
I think this is intentional. Those videos for me (unrelated videos to my search) are usually recommended videos and it feels like they are placed there to get you to engage.
When I use search on NewPipe, I get _much_ better results, and those unrelated videos don't show up, presumably because those searches don't use a Google account. I get much better results when I search on NewPipe, and have found some great videos from the normal YouTube frontend search
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used DDG which was slightly better; but for a couple of months, I've switched to kagi, and it's been a revelation. It's much better than both, it's google from 15 years ago. Drawback is that unlimited searches needs a subscription (10$/months). But I personally think it worth for the time and focus gains.
Have you done a side by side against Neeva? I've been on Neeva for long enough that it's not worth testing against competitors; it's very good, but I'm always interested in how well others compare.
I haven’t but I will a try!
In the last years the only that I found equivalent was cliqz, that unfortunately closed 2 or 3 years ago and which I still regret.
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#185Everyone should be using a package manager / store to get software, or from the official site.
If they're not available, then get the vendor to publish them there. Winget / Choco / Scoop or even Windows Store. Same with whatever people use on Linux distros.
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep hearing about adding reddit to one's search queries, but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant? Reddit is kind of like that effect that people say about popular journalism; for the things that you're an expert on, they always get it wrong, but for things you know nothing about, they have a way of sounding right. Reddit is very much like that for me; if I know nothing ab…
There’s a lot of useful stuff on Reddit but you do have to be careful as “upvoted” stuff is sometimes wrong and “downvoted” stuff is sometimes right. My bigger issue with it is that volunteer-mods are often power-hungry and ban people who they disagree with or who hurt their feelings. Reddit is a social experiment, and the result is humans are still trash to each other when they’re anonymous.
I have a suspicion that the "volunteer-mods" on the big Reddits, like the Wikipedia admins, are infiltrated by people paid by interested parties to represent their interests on those popular web sites. In the case of Wikipedia, I recall a story about how one of their admins was a woman in Canada who was a former British intelligence agent with whatever the British equivalent of the CIA is called. If governments and NGOs can infiltrate Wikipedia to do things that are specifically against its rules, they can infiltrate Reddit and probably have.
Most people are too busy to have the time to be an online moderator and those who have the time typically don't have the political skills to get appointed as a moderator of a large online community. That's why the best way to hire a good mod for your online community is to make it a paid position and to randomly monitor them for evidence of bias and/or abuse of power.
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#187Took me a while to understand what "using Google to download software" means. Was there a hidden functionality I wasn't aware of? Turns out, what they mean is "don't use Google to search for software you wish to download".
>Turns out, what they mean is "don't use Google to search for software you wish to download". I think the reality is more like "when you search for software on Google do not use links in the ads that you get at top of the results". Though of course there may well be "normal" results leading to shady sites, the issue talked about is related to advertisement results.
This is funny, I was confused in a different way, as I typically check the URLs to make sure I'm not getting scammed, and I have not noticed an influx whatsoever.
Then I read this and realized I have not seen those google search ads in years unless I'm setting up a new machine. I always found the 8 ads before results to be absolutely evil and now its causing real damage.
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you assume the posts on reddit are at all organic? Big brands 100% astroturf on reddit.
If you read the conversation threads, you can pretty easily pick out astroturfing. Plus, do your own research of course. I don't exclusively use reddit for this sort of research... if I'm looking for outdoor gear I will browse outdoor gear forums for people's thoughts. Cycling, same thing... etc. You look for a consensus to be formed before making your own opinion. My point was default google search results are now u…
>If you read the conversation threads, you can pretty easily pick out astroturfing.
How do you know that?
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#189Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…
> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.
> The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.
I'd argue that Google incentivized the web to change in a way in order to better exploit/profit from Google, and that's led to a net negative experience for Google users (who then leave, causing problems for Google).
Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's sad that Google finds it more important to take profits from ads linking to malware downloads than to protect users from harms. I guess the only way that's going to happen is if governments step up and make Google liable for harm caused by ads. I've seen it happen myself with my father. He gets served malware and phishing ads at the top of searches on his iPad for completely innocuous searches like "Apple Canada…
Could it be that the device is already infected with malware-injecting things?
No, I checked for that multiple times as I was around when that happened. It was an ad served up directly by Google that lead to a phishing website and phone numbers on it. His filter bubble is very different from mine, and it's clear that the peddlers of malware and scams use ad targeting to hit the elderly with ads that try to take advantage of them. This is a major downside of ad targeting: they're more effective for both good and bad purposes.
Ads really should be less ephemeral than they are. Sometimes I see an ad I'm interested in but miss it before clicking a link at which point it's gone after hitting the back button. Similarly, if an ad is for a scam, there needs to be a way to go back, find it, and then flag it.