In the case of YouTube, only after a few results they become completely unrelated to my search.
Yes. I have regularly been using DDG, but would wind up using google sometimes anyway. Now I’m actively forces 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?
It also feels like some pages in top results didn’t even exist before I made the search. They are filled with generic babble about the subject without ever going to details or conclusions. Dribble that no human would ever write
I’ve been using Ecosia since Google turned to absolute dogshit because of SEO and sponsored links. Now I don’t even use search engines anymore, I just ask an LLM immediately and tell it to link its sources so I can verify for myself
So basically Reddit
Yes. It’s becoming shittier everyday.
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.
Yes! I’ve been ‘degoogling’ for a while. Shifted email, searching, shopping etc elsewhere.
However, Cory Doctorow (‘Enshittification’) points out that even if you’re the advertiser or business customer, you’re the product. They get screwed as well. Companies that are too big to care are extracting value from everyone. The policy decisions that allowed them to get that way were made in living memory by named individuals, and can be reversed.
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.
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
I’m annoyed that YT got rid of the search by newest first option. At least Rumble has it still
That feeling when you’re trying to browse through a creator you like’s page for videos you haven’t seen yet, but you have to scroll past the dozens and dozens of things you’ve already watched, which each take time to load their thumbnails, making the task drag on for ages.
Yeah, the recommended videos is completely broken. It used to be good.
Rumble, which hosts ‘truth’ social’s cloud services…
Either this or YT. The gaming side of Rumble is fairly normal and apolitical with decent comment and views. I really with someone would buy Rumble out and make it into a normal video hosting site instead of all this MAGA propaganda.
Peertube is so divided that it’s nearly impossible to find or post. Bitchute sucks and is filled with view bots, reposters (myself included), and 0.1% of users that comment. Odysee is a pain in the butt to use as a video site. Why do I need points to comment on a video? Also not a lot of traction on it. TikTok if you enjoy being banned or censored for pro-LGBTQ+ anti-China, or too fat, not to mention that it’s spyware.
I might have missed a couple, but we’re screwed as uploaders.
Use duckduckgo and turn off ai results. Problem solved.
no-ai duckduckgo is one url away:
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
Search has been becoming smarter for years (decades?) by now.
The problem is that search has been made to work with the “you know what I mean” factor… fixing spelling mistakes, considering different tenses or forms of words, including related words…
Search became more friendly to the average non-technical user, but it became harder for users who know/knew how to search for exactly what they want.
Other factors include…
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where websites try to appear for as many searches as possible, occasionally regardless of relevance
- Monetization of search, where people with SEO and a lot of money pay to be included in as many “relevant” searches as possible
- AI incorporated into search by trying to find additional relevant pages
- Search engines being reluctant to return zero (or few) results and padding the results with other things you “might be interested in”
- Also, search trying to use what you “might be interested in” based on what they know about you/your account/your IP address/your location based on your IP range.
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
Yes
It’s all monetization directed, no matter what. Boolean search is gone.
What bugs me — and Apple Music is guilty of this too — is when I search for an indie or eastern song and it only shows popular results from the west.
Marvis Pro, a feature rich front end for Apple Music, knows my favourite musicians or bands are ONE OK ROCK, Enya, and Nightwish. I don’t want American Top 40 trash. But it still pushes that stuff.
Yup. I had this exact thought YESTERDAY, when I did a search for the name of a GitHub project I needed to read up on (I forget which project), with a couple keywords, and the GitHub page wasn’t even IN the top results. Later, I was doing a search for a quoted phrase, which of course is supposed to guarantee that the phrase appears, verbatim, in the results, and found that NONE of the results contained that phrase.
And no, I wasn’t looking at the AI results, I’ve got those removed with a plugin.
I was trying to find an anklet, obviously size matters if it’s intended to fit my body and I put “eight inch anklet” in quotes along with a few other adjectives and it flat out ignored it and gave me mostly 9” because that’s the standard size of an anklet… wtf is even the point
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!
If I need to go find something to make a service useable that’s my sign to not use the service.
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.
Nice list, appreciate it! Unlock Origin seems to still work on Firefox too.
Thanks, I don’t see any of those fixing the functionality that youtube broke, but the effort is appreciated. The one that shows the upload time only says you can use it while watching the video, but that time is shown in the text blurb if you click “more…”. And it makes a network request, of course. I’m using firefox so ublock origin still works for blocking ads.
