Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 655 points – Scientists Explain Why ‘Doing Your Own Research’ Leads to Believing Conspiracies
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Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine::Researchers found that people searching misinformation online risk falling into “data voids” that increase belief in conspiracies.

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Outside of tech circles pretty much nobody seems to have noticed how bad google search has become over the least years - unfortunately there's no single search engine that's "general purpose good", like google used to be.

It's somewhat ironic that nowadays using metasearch engines often makes sense again - for those too young to remember, that was the default way of searching in the mid to late 90s, until google came along with consistently good search results.

Just yesterday I was stuck in a game and decided to look up some guides. The results were basically Steam discussions and websites ripping off the answers posted there verbatim into articles.

The worst thing is that this was still one of the better search results, because at least it wasn't full of the usual AI-generated drivel.

I used Google back then and started using Kagi recently. The results I get remind me of how Google used to be.

The only downside is it's a paid service, but it's worth it for me personally

I've heard people talk about it on radio in a non tech show so I think people do realise it...

I assume the problem with kagi is the price, which is hard to swallow as we have get used to free products?

When google put their censoring in overdrive, I believe around 2016, I was out. I changed to duckduckgo, but then they also started to censor, so now i'm using Qwant. Been using it for a while. It's pretty decent.

unfortunately there's no single search engine that's "general purpose good", like google used to be.

Google's popularity was essentially its own downfall, as people began "optimizing" their websites to manipulate the algorithm, and the people writing legitimately to help others pay no attention to the algorithm.