this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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If anyone isn't familiar with this here's the Wired article
I figured this out when I searched for my gaming web page on itch.io, and it wouldn't come up. But then I went to duckduckgo and did the search, and every game I've made was in the search result. Pretty scummy if you ask me. Needless to say I changed all my browsers to duckduckgo instead of google.
By browsers do you mean search engines in the browsers? I use DDG for search. Firefox is king, browsers wise.
Yes, I meant search engine. I also use Firefox as well :)
I thought DDG was some kind of front end for Google search. How wrong am I, and if I'm right, does this mean it's the Google search in, e.g., Chrome browser that's doing this? Otherwise how would DDG be avoiding it?
I thought it was Bing? I’m not sure lol. I’ve noticed the drop in Google searches quality lately and switched to DDG.
Seems much better now imo.
You are correct. Bing.
I could be completely wrong, may the gods of the Internet forgive me.
Everytime I try to google anything that might be remotely related to a product every result will be a store.
I'd never have assumed that they just replaced my query but in hindsight it's kinda obvious
Yeah I noticed they got very shopping oriented in the last year or so, but I didn't anticipate this. Yikes.
Dude, it's blatantly obvious to the user. Idk why they think they're being clever, but when I search for "Pioneer SC71 user manual" (a home theater amp), and all it shows me are cheap car stereos listings from Walmart and Amazon (with affiliate tracking of course), I know they're not showing me what I'm looking for. It's a worthless service for anything except products and heavily filtered news (they only show what aligns with their agenda). I went from totally loving Google, to not when using them anymore. They're a disease.
That's clever as fuck. And ridiculous. And crazy evil.
It's not that clever.
Is that why no one figured out out until now?
We've suspected they were ignoring our terms for years now, and had hard proof they were ignoring our search operators. There are hundreds of Reddit threads discussing it. But people noticing or not isn't what would make it clever. Some bullshit executive suggesting they serve whatever is most profitable doesn't seem clever to me, it seems greedy, hostile, and short sighted. What would be really clever is figuring out how to still give people what they're looking for, and still increase their income.
Wow, that's peak enshittification.
Article removed because it doesn't meet their editorial standards.
How did they uncover and confirm this?
The information provided in the public hearings.