Why I’m done with Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#851

Post by jMyles » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 8:37 AM UTC

potta_coffee wrote: post #793

jMyles wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - of course. So the question is: are the other "things that matter" designed to: 1) Inform the user and help the user quickly find facts, narratives, and meaningful content related to the search phrase? 2) Sell things? 3) Promote modes of political control by narrowing the scope of acceptable thought and connection between search phrase and content? We all hope for #1. We all accept #2. But I think that most of…

Try Googling the term "white couple" as an image search - you will be provided with a page of interracial couples, not white couples. Not that I have a problem with interracial couples, my own family is interracial. But it's obvious how Google is attempting to influence the perspectives of it's users.

I just opened up a private tab and did this (and by the way, going in, I was and am already suspicious that Google is in fact using search results to manipulate public opinion, at least some of the time and in an experimental way).

In the top two rows (ie, 8 images), three are from a reddit post about this very controversy.

The remaining five are images of couples. Of these, three are what look to my eyes to be white couples. One is an image of an ethnically Indian couple in an article about not being able to adopt a white child. The other is a photo of two dudes doing a hand symbol together with a caption "black and white couple gesturing with hands."

All of these images seem very relevant to the phrase "white couple."

So, actually, this is a case where Google Image Search gives back perfectly appropriate results, at least for me as of today.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#852

Post by jMyles » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 8:46 AM UTC

intended wrote: post #838

potta_coffee wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Googling the term "white couple" as an image search - you will be provided with a page of interracial couples, not white couples. Not that I have a problem with interracial couples, my own family is interracial. But it's obvious how Google is attempting to influence the perspectives of it's users.

How. For me or anyone to believe this, is a huge ask. Any attempt to algorithmically shape perspectives is crude with today’s state of the art. How precisely would such an algorithm work, while not creating obvious artifacts and errors throughout the search results for all people using the service. And how would it work for people only in the us and not elsewhere?

> For me or anyone to believe this, is a huge ask.

Agreed.

> Any attempt to algorithmically shape perspectives is crude with today’s state of the art.

I suspect that the truth of this statement is very difficult to ascertain at the moment. Reasonable people might dispute both which technologies represent the "state of the art" and also which outcomes represent successfully shaped perspectives.

Although I don't have the data to back up this assertion (and again, I'm not sure such data is cognizable in the current environment), I think that for some reasonable definitions of the above that indeed perspectives can successfully be algorithmically shaped today, though as I said above, I think that this "white couple" nonsense is not a meaningful example.

> How precisely would such an algorithm work, while not creating obvious artifacts and errors throughout the search results for all people using the service.

Again, it may not be clear to anyone, including the authors, precisely how such an algorithm works. That's why A/B (and other) testing is needed.

And I think people in this thread are saying that indeed obvious artifacts are starting to creep up (although again I think that the "white couple" thing is a total misfire and not at all an example - the "gun rights" thing appears to my eyes to be much closer).

> And how would it work for people only in the us and not elsewhere?

Isn't this already at a point of triviality? Doesn't Google already do this all the time? I mean, if you travel outside North America, indeed the Google experience is palpably different from the one in the US.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#853

Post by kmn » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 8:49 AM UTC

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Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#854

Post by cm2187 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 10:22 AM UTC

spronkey wrote: post #849

cm2187 wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have good hopes that pwa+wasm will change that. What killed windows mobile is the lack of apps. In a world where you have performant apps, that are completely os independant, and do not even need to be distributed through a gated store, it makes it a lot easier for a challenger to break through.

Not a chance IMO. One major reason why native apps work is platform integration - both from an HCI perspective as well as a technology one. PWA and WASM will never be able to achieve these things.

I am sure certain apps need that integration but what is the percentage of apps that matter in your opinion?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#855

Post by roryrjb » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:17 AM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #35

brian-armstrong wrote: post #10

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

I switched to Brave - not looking back :)

I really want to use Brave and I've tried it over the course of more than a year, here and there, and every time it crashes when I pin tabs, I haven't checked their bug reports, granted, but how is this not solved by now?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#856

Post by ardy42 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #847

unethical_ban wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search "Free speech" and get "Censorship" would be your stance, then.

Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

> Searching “free speech” and getting an article about limits of free speech around the world would be perfectly reasonable.

Such a result would definitely be odd framing, though. Especially if it was the main infobox and not, say, the seventh result.

For instance, I could see a "soft authoritarian" regime subtly justifying its censorship regime by preferentially surfacing content that makes censorship seem more justified. One way to do that is to encourage the idea that "limits are common" and discourage the idea that "free speech is a natural right," which you can do by changing the search ranking to surface an article like you described.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#857

Post by tengbretson » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

lagadu wrote: post #768

partiallypro wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gun Control" was not what was searched for, it is not up to Google to tip the scales on what ideological conclusion is seen, only what item is searched for with relevant results. They have a moral obligation to be neutral. If you were in Saudi Arabia, searched for "women's rights" and Google switched it to an article on "obedience to your husband," I'm sure you'd have a huge problem with that.

Yes it was. The concept of gun rights cannot exist without the concept of gun control, it's quite literally the same theme. Gun control is what defines which gun rights people have.

> The concept of gun rights cannot exist without the concept of gun control, it's quite literally the same theme.

This is simply not true to the many people out there that believe in natural rights.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#858

Post by partiallypro » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #842

partiallypro wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not saying it's an issue that "right to keep and bear arms" is the top result on Bing/DuckDuckGo...it's that on Google it's not, it's "Gun Control" which is not the top result on Wikipedia nor is it necessarily a related term. The top organic result on Google is a tag page from NPR. How is that even possible for such a popular topic? That's something you'd expect from a rare term.

I know what he said, and I'm saying that the top Google result for Wikipedia was that entry in the organic results. As for everything else you said, it's meaningless.

But the top Wikipedia article (if you use Wiki's own search tool for that term) is not what Google showed...so I don't think you do.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#859

Post by npolet » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

jen729w wrote: post #238

i_am_nomad wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to sound naive, but is there a good reason (or a few) not to use Safari?

It's my daily browser of choice, FWIW, but is no good for development. The React dev tool plugin, for instance, is only available on Chrome & Firefox. I'm trying to switch to Firefox but it certainly doesn't feel as snappy as Chrome when doing dev work. I do like some of the tools though. Still undecided.

This is it. Safari really doesn't compare to chrome/firefox in terms of good developer tools. They are there, but no where near as useful/powerful.

I have noticed a few quirks in Safari that I have to work around. Like not rendering things exactly the same way as chrome/firefox. Bit of a pain, but there is never anything that's really "broken".

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#860

Post by torstenvl » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 8:52 PM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #235

brian-armstrong wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange. I almost exclusively use OSX (El Cap) and haven't had performance issues asides from needing to restart the browser once a month or so. Hopefully they get those problems resolved soon, the browser is super quick when it's working right.

There is a significant (maybe 0.4-0.5 seconds?) lag between the cursor hovering over something and it's hover action (highlight, whatever) taking place. Running my mouse down the list in about:config feels like I'm drunk. This is on a brand new maxed out i7 MacBook Pro.

As a follow-up, I did a complete reinstall of Firefox with a new profile, removed as much cruft as I could (pocket, etc.), upped the content process limit... and I feel like Firefox is much more usable. There's still some lag, but it's more on the order of 0.05 - 0.1 seconds.

Now if I could just get it to be reasonable about search engines...