AI is like sex. I don't mind it, heck in the right situation I'm quite partial to it. However, if you keep trying to sneak it on me while I sleep, keep trying to slip it into agreements, keep involving people i didnt consent to being involved etc. The whole thing takes on a very ugly vibe. In fact I'm going to grow to be quite hostile toward it. Consent matters, not that I'd expect that lesson to land within silicon valley, second most rapey place in the USA after LA.
DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
341–350 of 556 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#342My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they hate AI being pushed so hard. One was just messaging me this morning about alternatives to Google search and maps. He ended up downloading DuckDuckGo. If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.
For what it’s worth, you don’t need to even download DDG. I just set it as my homepage on my iOS safari.
You have to set it to lite.duckduckgo.com (or noai.duckduckgo.com) or you still get AI crap from DDG too.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#343You know what is crazy, that this whole bullshit "MDC" garbage "API" that websites and stuff like Outlook have is stuff that they could have had by having SIMPLER settings in their services, they obfuscate them like hell then they give the "solution" simple API to agents so that THEY can easily use their services, but not humans.
It's so disgusting, I hate this industry.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#344Neither Google nor Kagi has an .onion address. Unlike DDG
Not sure what you use for search, but it could be better ;)
http://kagi2pv5bdcxxqla5itjzje2cgdccuwept5ub6patvmvn3qgmgjd6...
(from https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/accessing-via-tor...)
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they hate AI being pushed so hard. My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they have fear of missing out on AI :(
> because they have fear of missing out on AI That's been my experience too, both with friends and coworkers. It would seem that the negative sentiment around AI is largely an internet phenomenon. I've yet to run into a hardcore "AI skeptic" irl. People seem either neutral, or enthusiastic about it.
This goes for most tech topics. Not long ago tech sites had users who were aware that their preferences as a tech person were different than the average person.
Then it became so common to be a techy person and surround yourself with other techy people that it was easy to fall into a bubble and not realize it. When all of your news websites, coworkers, social media feeds, and friends in the group chat all think the same thing it feels like everyone in the world agrees with you.
You see it whenever social media topics come up. On Hacker News there’s never ending confusion about how Facebook continues to exist because the common refrain is “nobody uses Facebook any more”. Leave the tech bubble, though, and Facebook has a massive number of active users and activity. Whenever I mention this it gets doubted, denied, or even dismissed as lies from Meta trying to inflate their stock price. The dismissals always come from people who proudly deleted their Facebook account ten years ago and therefore have no idea what happens on Facebook, of course.
One of my favorite comment sections this year was when a lot of people were recounting how their aunt or cousin or grandma used Facebook and actually enjoyed it, which attracted comments saying they must be a rare outlier. It just goes too much against the bubble consensus that everyone hates Facebook and has a bad time when they use it.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been my issue with DuckDuckGo from the start... it needs to be something a little more catchy and that rolls off the tongue. Saying "I'll DuckDuckGo it" feels so clunky. As small of a gripe as it sounds like, it really does matter.
But none of Google's alternative sound any better. I'll bing it. I'll brave it. I'll ecosia it. I'll kagi it. I'll startpage it. I'll yandex it. Okay "I'll brave it" does sound fine, especially in our brave new world, but it's still ambiguous when speaking it.
Kagi's -> 'fetch it' (dog mascot play)
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#347So a tiny fraction of people left Google to DDG? Seems like they both win.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#348[dead]
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Surely the last time after handing out carrots long enough to kill all competition, they switched from carrots to sticks, that sucks; but look? now they started giving out carrots again!! It will be such a sad day when no more carrots"
“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 public and distributed seeds and allowed everyone to breed them so that we could all find better varieties for the common good! They still seem to be eating well."
(I see your very practical point, but I do think making the locally suboptimal choice in the hope of better long-term outcomes is a valid philosophical position.)
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Search is not the golden goose. Ads are. If search was the golden goose, they wouldn't be trying so hard to replace it with AI. Just because Google used to do search as their main point of business does not mean that holds true today. Holding on to the false premise will only add to your confusion about their decisions.
Ads in Search make up a significant percentage of their revenue. It is also the gateway that gets people into the Google ecosystem. Ads make the money, but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. It’s so ubiquitous people don’t even think about it or notice it anymore. I’m always surprised by how much people are still searching for stuff as we’ve moved from the o…
> but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there.
I've found it hilarious that every single search engine does the same thing. You can do it even in Apple's App Store too. (Not seeing the scam I'm talking about? Search a few more times, it'll hit) How does anyone see this as anything but a scam? User clicks the ad? Get paid. User clicks the search result? No pay. Either way, the user gets the same experience. But why the fuck should any company pay for an ad when the user explicitly searched for their product? It's metric hacking. I mean what's their next move? Down rank the explicit result? When making more money requires degrading the product you know we've fucked up