Reddit used to be a pretty cool thing. And it still has a lot of good information. But I always feel dirty when I do resort to searching Reddit for information.
Aaron Swartz would be appalled.
I feel like Aaron 100% would have backed Lemmy.
(Edit: Not that I or anyone can speak for him, obviously.)
I have never gotten a reliable answer from a quora result. I avoid them like the plague now.
I've only ever seen Quora as a joke, I didn't think people were actually getting good answers there.
Quora is off brand yahoo answers. All of the misinformation and none of the humor
And a vaguely intellectual name, as if knowledgeable people go and post there all the time, when its' actual academic facade is more analogous to stock photo models wearing labcoats and goggles.
I'm pretty sad these days when I see an issue marked as solved, but then when I get to the solution it just says "this comment has been deleted in objection to the API changes and Steve Huffman is a dirty little piss boy". We've lost millions of hours worth of answers because of Reddit 's greed.
The best way to find information on the internet is to give up on Google and use Kagi. Add a question mark at the end of your search and it'll summarize all of the top results for you, directly giving you the answer and saving you tons of time. They include sources if you want to dig deeper.
Only thing holding me back from Kagi is the impossibility of privacy and a credit card associated with my user.
That's understandable, but you're nowhere near private with Google either. They definitely know who you are, even if you never log in. At least with Kagi they're not logging everything and keeping a record of everything you do. They do have an option to enable history, but I have it turned off.
They do have an option to enable history, but I have it turned off.
Actually, that "setting" is there just for show. It can't be turned on. Underneath the setting, it says
Currently this option can not be turned on. Kagi does not save any searches by default. In the future we may add features that will utilize your search history and then we will allow you to enable this.
Any chance they accept gift cards or a temporary Visa you can charge up? If not, that would be a bummer.
For sure. They don't care how the money arrives. Tell them whatever lies you need to tell them as long as the credit card number matches up.
it'll summarize all of the top results for you, directly giving you the answer
This is literally what the Google AI thing that everyone has been mocking does. For example, it suggested gluing cheese onto a pizza because that was a highly up voted comment on the reddit thread that was the top search results.
Except the Kagi one actually works well and doesn't tell you to drink glue.
Tbh I find it hard to believe that it's actually better, knowing how many resources Google probably poured into getting the summaries right already. If the same amount of scrutiny were applied to Kagi's summaries, people would probably find similarly embarrassing answers.
Perhaps, but it has worked well for me. Plus they have features to change your results to forums, listicles, and other formats, rather than having to add qualifiers to the search. You'd think Google's general results would be better too, considering all their resources, but they've been trash for years now. They're more focused on making every penny possible than producing good search results.
Sadly, their CEO is kind of a weirdo. There was a recent post chain on Mastodon I think where a user shared their disappointment with Kagi - had something to do with their not being as privacy-focused as they claimed they are - and the CEO just decided to keep sending unsolicited emails to the OP about this, trying to with them over with phone and video calls
I saw this too. Sadly I don't remember where I saw it.
Bill Gates was a massive dick but people still use Windows.
Steve Jobs was a massive dick but people still use Apple.
Thomas Edison was a massive dick but people still use light bulbs.
People should disassociate creators and their products.
For the record, the real trick is to add "site:reddit.com". But as the site decays over time that will sadly become less useful.
I really think they are going to start requiring logins or the app to view most content. That seems to be what they are going toward with the "unreviewed content" thing.
100%. To be honest I don't even use this "trick" anymore myself because like 60% of the links are inaccessible now.
It's incredibly sad that they destroyed such a great resource, that place was like the Wikipedia of opinions.
For now you can use RedReader to circumvent their app.
old reddit
Reddit makes me feel dirty.
Quora is just plain vomit.
yahoo answers shutdown ruined it all.
This ain't just Google. SEO effectively killed all search engines. As an IT guy who's been googling shit before I was 10, I can't find shit anymore.
The entire internet has become a toxic mess.
Sadly this is how I feel too. Everything is trying to squeeze a dime out of my eyes. Man I don't even buy shit unless I absolutely need it.
As a programmer and system admin, I've been using Google since its inception, too. I can't think of an instance that I've failed to find whatever I'm looking for in recent times. People say what you're saying a lot, so I don't doubt you. It just makes me wonder what it is you guys are searching for because I search for some extremely obscure stuff quite often with no issues. This is all to say, I have a fair share of qualms with Google, but the search engine itself isn't one of them.
I think a lot of it is that the content that google returns is mostly ads or clickbait articles that contain no useful information. You can usually find what you are looking for but you have to actually put time and effort into filtering all the bullshit now.
Maybe it is my ad blocker that is filtering this kind of stuff for me. Or maybe the things I look up most often are specific enough that there isn't much bullshit or clickbaity stuff to show. Sure, I'll see the occasional "Sponsored" link. I think my brain just auto-filters those and I don't even take notice. I really don't intend to sound like a Google fanboy - I'm not. I just don't seem to experience this, but hear people say this a lot. The attached screenshot seems like a typical result for something I'd look up, and it's exactly what I'm looking for. In any case, thanks for your perspective. I'm going to try to be more conscious to see if I'm just fooling myself.
I've seen a few people mention exactly what you said, so either it's Google A/B testing some dumb shit, or it's because you haven't been using Google the same way I have in the past. I don't just look for information that is objective, few years back, Google was very good at providing links to articles with steps to do X. Nowadays it always redirects me to sites where words related to X are mentioned the most, rather than providing useful information.
I genuinely can't trust google results to be true and unbiased anymore. Nowadays I use a combination of google results, reddit results, Quorn results, ChatGPT fever dreams, and dead reckoning.
This is the issue though. I subscribed to chatgpt plus hoping it would do the work for me, but chatgpt (although it understands a lot) still fails to tell me what I need by 'browsing the web'. I also tried every other known search engine out there but sadly the results are very similar (ddg, bing). So I feel like I'm trapped in a loop where I can't get out.
Directions unclear. Reddit blocks my work IP for “network security” unless accounts are used to maximize data collection.
I've found that alternative reddit frontends bypass this. That and I believe changing the URL to old reddit.
Of course, this will only work until (if?) Reddit is successful in removing old reddit and preventing third party front-end.
Do you mean New Old Reddit or Old Old Reddit? /hj
No, seriously, they're apparently working on a New New Reddit to replace their half-baked New Old Reddit (and presumably their still-working-perfectly Old Old Reddit).
Yes this is the only reason I still have a Reddit account
Why do you need a Reddit account? Deleted mine, noticed no difference.
They block VPN users most of the time nowadays if you're not logged in.
I like to use drug related subreddits that you can't view without logging in
It's the only reason I bothered patching my former app of choice.
REDLIB.
As asked already, why do you feel the need for an account for this? It changes nothing. You've surely misunderstood something, you keeping an account has absolutely no relation to any of this.
Not OP but every so often when I click on a Reddit link from a search result, Reddit doesn't actually let me read the thread unless I login
I believe it happens on mobile b/c they are trying to force people to use their godforsaken app. Clicking desktop view bypasses the tomfoolery.
Use old.reddit.com
I have never in my life got any useful information out of Quora.
In fact, it's so bad that when I mistakenly click on a Quora link, and I have some time to kill, I read the page to have a solid laugh at all the stupid answers in there that gets promoted.
Came here to say pretty much this. I will add that one time years ago I went back and gave a correct answer after I had found it. The next time I looked it wasn't displayed. At that point I determined that quora was a scam site.
I think you can filter out Quora results using uBlock, but you need to Google it so, good luck haha
Hit the gym. Delete reddit. Lawyer up.
Y'all closing your browser tab at the end? I just leave the tab open, just Incase I need it (or the other 200 tabs I haven't touched in months)
These days, I only ever use Reddit to find answers and to comment in one small community I probably could not live without. I've drastically cut down on my Reddit usage since whole API debacle.
(Don't ask about trying to move that community to Lemmy. Already had someone ask that repeatedly the last time I mentioned this. They've polled their users, and they're not moving.)
Not as useful now that so many of us who left Reddit deleted all of our comments on there. Broke a lot of those question and answer threads.
Just use: https://search.marginalia.nu/ It crawls forums, wikis and other human generated content.
No SEO garbage, scammers or AI. (mostly)
It's still very much an alpha.
Nice find! I will switch.
Instead of reddit you can use stackexchange but in the end you don't get your answer
not only that but we get a fresh look at why we were wrong and shouldn't have asked the question in the first place
Reddit used to be really cool for actual niche advice without getting slapped with advertising. I tried to buy a certain kind of laptop, all the results were ads that contained those words, not what I was looking for. Heaven forbid I want pants that fit a certain body type or anything specific. Sometimes there are still older posts but…eh.
I still have a Reddit account but I stopped posting anything to it a couple of years ago. I only use it for a few niche things I can't find anywhere else, like r/SamsungWatchFaces
This is the way.
I deleted a year ago and can count on one hand the number of times I've used reddit since.
I don't think using it for Google counts at all anymore because that's Google's fault. I occasionally look at r/beermoney for ideas but that's it. Haven't looked at the front page in a year.
There is a disenshittified version of google out there, for now at least: udm14.com.
Every time I've used it, it's for info on a home improvement project. Being that my browser blocks ads, they get nothing from my interactions.
I'm using Qwant, which is the French government search engine, pretty good!
I hate that google has become a verb
I agree.
I hate to tell you that it's been a verb for nearly two decades now?
And i have been hating it all this time!
Recently i heard someone tell me that they just googled 'lower decks' on amazon prime...
Google the company doesn't deserve to be a verb
Just go straight to Wikipedia.
For local information, such as what is the best inexpensive insurance in your city, for example, Wiki can't answer.
wikivoyage
I’ve had more luck with local facebook groups or word of mouth than the internet, for this stuff, in the recent years. This and some group chats are pretty much the only reasons I still have a Meta account…
Is Quora good now?
Has it ever been?
Not that I can recall.
when Yahoo answers existed, yes (i think).
No.
Hard to tell when the bar has lowered so far.
Lol no I think quota is beyond redemption.
So this is not really google's fault then but rather while people were using it to find answers in links, they expected shitty SEO and LLM written articles to not mess with the results.
Google doesn’t want you to find answers. They could improve this. They want repeated searches and more time spent on each Google page to increase eyes on their ads.
Reddit used to be a pretty cool thing. And it still has a lot of good information. But I always feel dirty when I do resort to searching Reddit for information.
Aaron Swartz would be appalled.
I feel like Aaron 100% would have backed Lemmy.
(Edit: Not that I or anyone can speak for him, obviously.)
I have never gotten a reliable answer from a quora result. I avoid them like the plague now.
I've only ever seen Quora as a joke, I didn't think people were actually getting good answers there.
Quora is off brand yahoo answers. All of the misinformation and none of the humor
And a vaguely intellectual name, as if knowledgeable people go and post there all the time, when its' actual academic facade is more analogous to stock photo models wearing labcoats and goggles.
I'm pretty sad these days when I see an issue marked as solved, but then when I get to the solution it just says "this comment has been deleted in objection to the API changes and Steve Huffman is a dirty little piss boy". We've lost millions of hours worth of answers because of Reddit 's greed.
The best way to find information on the internet is to give up on Google and use Kagi. Add a question mark at the end of your search and it'll summarize all of the top results for you, directly giving you the answer and saving you tons of time. They include sources if you want to dig deeper.
Only thing holding me back from Kagi is the impossibility of privacy and a credit card associated with my user.
That's understandable, but you're nowhere near private with Google either. They definitely know who you are, even if you never log in. At least with Kagi they're not logging everything and keeping a record of everything you do. They do have an option to enable history, but I have it turned off.
Actually, that "setting" is there just for show. It can't be turned on. Underneath the setting, it says
Any chance they accept gift cards or a temporary Visa you can charge up? If not, that would be a bummer.
For sure. They don't care how the money arrives. Tell them whatever lies you need to tell them as long as the credit card number matches up.
This is literally what the Google AI thing that everyone has been mocking does. For example, it suggested gluing cheese onto a pizza because that was a highly up voted comment on the reddit thread that was the top search results.
Except the Kagi one actually works well and doesn't tell you to drink glue.
Tbh I find it hard to believe that it's actually better, knowing how many resources Google probably poured into getting the summaries right already. If the same amount of scrutiny were applied to Kagi's summaries, people would probably find similarly embarrassing answers.
Perhaps, but it has worked well for me. Plus they have features to change your results to forums, listicles, and other formats, rather than having to add qualifiers to the search. You'd think Google's general results would be better too, considering all their resources, but they've been trash for years now. They're more focused on making every penny possible than producing good search results.
Sadly, their CEO is kind of a weirdo. There was a recent post chain on Mastodon I think where a user shared their disappointment with Kagi - had something to do with their not being as privacy-focused as they claimed they are - and the CEO just decided to keep sending unsolicited emails to the OP about this, trying to with them over with phone and video calls
I saw this too. Sadly I don't remember where I saw it.
Bill Gates was a massive dick but people still use Windows.
Steve Jobs was a massive dick but people still use Apple.
Thomas Edison was a massive dick but people still use light bulbs.
People should disassociate creators and their products.
For the record, the real trick is to add "site:reddit.com". But as the site decays over time that will sadly become less useful.
I really think they are going to start requiring logins or the app to view most content. That seems to be what they are going toward with the "unreviewed content" thing.
100%. To be honest I don't even use this "trick" anymore myself because like 60% of the links are inaccessible now.
It's incredibly sad that they destroyed such a great resource, that place was like the Wikipedia of opinions.
For now you can use RedReader to circumvent their app.
old reddit
Reddit makes me feel dirty.
Quora is just plain vomit.
yahoo answers shutdown ruined it all.
This ain't just Google. SEO effectively killed all search engines. As an IT guy who's been googling shit before I was 10, I can't find shit anymore.
The entire internet has become a toxic mess.
Sadly this is how I feel too. Everything is trying to squeeze a dime out of my eyes. Man I don't even buy shit unless I absolutely need it.
As a programmer and system admin, I've been using Google since its inception, too. I can't think of an instance that I've failed to find whatever I'm looking for in recent times. People say what you're saying a lot, so I don't doubt you. It just makes me wonder what it is you guys are searching for because I search for some extremely obscure stuff quite often with no issues. This is all to say, I have a fair share of qualms with Google, but the search engine itself isn't one of them.
I think a lot of it is that the content that google returns is mostly ads or clickbait articles that contain no useful information. You can usually find what you are looking for but you have to actually put time and effort into filtering all the bullshit now.
Maybe it is my ad blocker that is filtering this kind of stuff for me. Or maybe the things I look up most often are specific enough that there isn't much bullshit or clickbaity stuff to show. Sure, I'll see the occasional "Sponsored" link. I think my brain just auto-filters those and I don't even take notice. I really don't intend to sound like a Google fanboy - I'm not. I just don't seem to experience this, but hear people say this a lot. The attached screenshot seems like a typical result for something I'd look up, and it's exactly what I'm looking for. In any case, thanks for your perspective. I'm going to try to be more conscious to see if I'm just fooling myself.
I've seen a few people mention exactly what you said, so either it's Google A/B testing some dumb shit, or it's because you haven't been using Google the same way I have in the past. I don't just look for information that is objective, few years back, Google was very good at providing links to articles with steps to do X. Nowadays it always redirects me to sites where words related to X are mentioned the most, rather than providing useful information.
I genuinely can't trust google results to be true and unbiased anymore. Nowadays I use a combination of google results, reddit results, Quorn results, ChatGPT fever dreams, and dead reckoning.
This is the issue though. I subscribed to chatgpt plus hoping it would do the work for me, but chatgpt (although it understands a lot) still fails to tell me what I need by 'browsing the web'. I also tried every other known search engine out there but sadly the results are very similar (ddg, bing). So I feel like I'm trapped in a loop where I can't get out.
Directions unclear. Reddit blocks my work IP for “network security” unless accounts are used to maximize data collection.
I've found that alternative reddit frontends bypass this. That and I believe changing the URL to old reddit.
Of course, this will only work until (if?) Reddit is successful in removing old reddit and preventing third party front-end.
Do you mean New Old Reddit or Old Old Reddit? /hj
No, seriously, they're apparently working on a New New Reddit to replace their half-baked New Old Reddit (and presumably their still-working-perfectly Old Old Reddit).
Yes this is the only reason I still have a Reddit account
Why do you need a Reddit account? Deleted mine, noticed no difference.
They block VPN users most of the time nowadays if you're not logged in.
Fuck their little "network security" bullshit!
That's weird considering they still run an Onion site: https://www.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion/
I like to use drug related subreddits that you can't view without logging in
It's the only reason I bothered patching my former app of choice.
REDLIB.
As asked already, why do you feel the need for an account for this? It changes nothing. You've surely misunderstood something, you keeping an account has absolutely no relation to any of this.
Not OP but every so often when I click on a Reddit link from a search result, Reddit doesn't actually let me read the thread unless I login
I believe it happens on mobile b/c they are trying to force people to use their godforsaken app. Clicking desktop view bypasses the tomfoolery.
Use old.reddit.com
I have never in my life got any useful information out of Quora.
In fact, it's so bad that when I mistakenly click on a Quora link, and I have some time to kill, I read the page to have a solid laugh at all the stupid answers in there that gets promoted.
Came here to say pretty much this. I will add that one time years ago I went back and gave a correct answer after I had found it. The next time I looked it wasn't displayed. At that point I determined that quora was a scam site.
I think you can filter out Quora results using uBlock, but you need to Google it so, good luck haha
Hit the gym. Delete reddit. Lawyer up.
Y'all closing your browser tab at the end? I just leave the tab open, just Incase I need it (or the other 200 tabs I haven't touched in months)
These days, I only ever use Reddit to find answers and to comment in one small community I probably could not live without. I've drastically cut down on my Reddit usage since whole API debacle.
(Don't ask about trying to move that community to Lemmy. Already had someone ask that repeatedly the last time I mentioned this. They've polled their users, and they're not moving.)
Not as useful now that so many of us who left Reddit deleted all of our comments on there. Broke a lot of those question and answer threads.
Just use: https://search.marginalia.nu/ It crawls forums, wikis and other human generated content.
No SEO garbage, scammers or AI. (mostly) It's still very much an alpha.
Nice find! I will switch.
Instead of reddit you can use stackexchange but in the end you don't get your answer
not only that but we get a fresh look at why we were wrong and shouldn't have asked the question in the first place
Reddit used to be really cool for actual niche advice without getting slapped with advertising. I tried to buy a certain kind of laptop, all the results were ads that contained those words, not what I was looking for. Heaven forbid I want pants that fit a certain body type or anything specific. Sometimes there are still older posts but…eh.
I still have a Reddit account but I stopped posting anything to it a couple of years ago. I only use it for a few niche things I can't find anywhere else, like r/SamsungWatchFaces
This is the way.
I deleted a year ago and can count on one hand the number of times I've used reddit since.
I don't think using it for Google counts at all anymore because that's Google's fault. I occasionally look at r/beermoney for ideas but that's it. Haven't looked at the front page in a year.
There is a disenshittified version of google out there, for now at least: udm14.com.
Every time I've used it, it's for info on a home improvement project. Being that my browser blocks ads, they get nothing from my interactions.
I'm using Qwant, which is the French government search engine, pretty good!
I hate that google has become a verb
I agree.
I hate to tell you that it's been a verb for nearly two decades now?
And i have been hating it all this time!
Recently i heard someone tell me that they just googled 'lower decks' on amazon prime...
Google the company doesn't deserve to be a verb
Just go straight to Wikipedia.
For local information, such as what is the best inexpensive insurance in your city, for example, Wiki can't answer.
wikivoyage
I’ve had more luck with local facebook groups or word of mouth than the internet, for this stuff, in the recent years. This and some group chats are pretty much the only reasons I still have a Meta account…
Is Quora good now?
Has it ever been?
Not that I can recall.
when Yahoo answers existed, yes (i think).
No.
Hard to tell when the bar has lowered so far.
Lol no I think quota is beyond redemption.
So this is not really google's fault then but rather while people were using it to find answers in links, they expected shitty SEO and LLM written articles to not mess with the results.
Google doesn’t want you to find answers. They could improve this. They want repeated searches and more time spent on each Google page to increase eyes on their ads.
That is certainly one of the conclusions in The Man Who Killed Google Search.
Ha, reddit is just where people pretend to know things and make confident answers, but it's barely a step above ChatGPT in accuracy
I mean... It's 100% the same here on Lemmy as well
um, it's a bummer the screenshot didn't mention lemmy then?
did you just make this obnoxious comment to demonstrate your own point or???
posts of twitter and tells us to use quora
This is Bluesky!
Same smelly shit.
I think quora is worse then reddit both are bad tho the answers are really really bad
Quora is AWFUL.
Agree