DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

Post by pelotron » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

codewench wrote: post #456

fhd2 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One fascinating thing about LLMs is the degree of evangelism it inspires in some. You can explain some of that with paid micro influencers, people invested in the success of AI, consultants looking for workshop opportunities and all that, but I know enough people with no skin in the game at all, that turned into very vocal advocates. I think to some degree, that effect is also at play here. CEOs, product managers etc…

You also have to consider a ( I would argue large ) percentage of those evangelists are simply lying for financial gain. They see profit, or at least reduced costs, and quite simply don't give a shit about customer experience or anything like that.

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:07 PM UTC

LtWorf wrote: post #449

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has been downloaded >1 billion times on the Android PlayStore. AI is incredibly popular. People have all sorts of concerns about how AI will change society, but that's precisely because it's so useful for so many things. If it were useless or just a fad, there would be no reason to worry.

The startup where I worked had 1 million downloads (which is much less), but how many of those were using it daily vs trying it for 30 minutes and forgetting about it? Less than 10% in our case :)

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

yummybrainz wrote: post #349

qwerpy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Someone’s handing out free carrots but it may be sticks someday so I’m gonna be mad about it today and grow my own carrots. That’ll show ‘em! My neighbor’s roasted carrots sure do smell good though.”

"I took their free carrots and now several years later, their carrots are a global ~monoculture that have been modified to grow faster but taste much worse. I don't like their carrots anymore but most other carrots are grown by small-scale local farms and can't be bought for cheap because the farmers never managed to get competitive economies of scale." "I wish I'd supported the crazy folks who did carrot science in…

Post by somewhatgoated » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

lukashoff wrote: post #484

data-ottawa wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI product rollouts in the last two years have been some of the most aggressive and user hostile product rollouts in my entire life. All conventions and user centricity go out the window with AI feature launches lately. If you look at examples from the last week it’s stuff like posthogs opt-out training, Copilot training, or Google’s antigravity chat-app switch. I’ve had the worst customer experiences of my life…

One of the recent rollouts that really grind my gears was Spotify rolling out LLM explanations of songs. Which is the most useful wasteful piece of sh*t ever. Why would I want to get a theory of what is 174bpm and other random crap. It is insane, and I hate modernity and every single modern product that just shoves random LLM crap at you and pretend they are not AI-enabled.

Post by cassianoleal » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

1718627440 wrote: post #463

cassianoleal wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t un-sell data though. Sure you may ask nicely that the buyer doesn’t use it and deletes it, but at that point the cat’s out of the bag.

In praxis, yes especially if it has already left the jurisdiction. Disregarding that, laws don't apply to the first processing party only. If you keep data, that you got informed are not consented to anymore, it is the same as if you keep selling fenced goods.