In the case of YouTube, only after a few results they become completely unrelated to my search.
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
What you’re seeing is called ‘enshittification’. In this particular example, in 2019, Prabhakar Raghavan – the ex-McKinsey, ex-Yahoo MBA who ran ad revenue for Google – came up with an ingenious solution: just make search worse. If you have to run multiple searches to find what you’re looking for, that creates multiple chances to show you an ad. No really. This is real. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Why do people put up with this? You can find out more about enshittification here:
Short explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE
Longer explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZaoWpQ-3Zs
Enshittification is a modern way of saying late stage capitalism. As long as we submit to capital and reject collectivism this will always be the course
No. I don’t use it.
Yes. I have regularly been using DDG, but would wind up using google sometimes anyway. Now I’m actively forced 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?
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.
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.
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
Yep. And to think we lost Songza to Google Music. To YouTube music. To YouTube.
Use something else like Kagi or duckduckgo
month on month, everything gets worse and more noise to filter out. Can’t be the only one with this sentiment.
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
It’s on purpose. The longer you scroll, the longer you’re on the platform. That’s higher engagement numbers and is used to expose you to/negotiate higher prices from advertisements.
They want you to give up on search and ask their AI
I honestly think this is one of the reasons AI is so popular with people. We didn’t notice because we have been using ddg, and adblocks. But searching for things in google, and finding any decent sites that’s related and not shoving down ads all over the screen is hard to find.
Then people found something where they just search/ask things and get answers without any of the hassle. If you don’t care about the source, or want to check multiple views then you have what you want. Specially because I think lot of people seem to use google to just find what they already have bias towards.
I use AIs exactly as you’re describing, but I ask for sources, which they’re “ok” for.
They’re bad at it too but in a way that make them useful to then extract the keywords google would expect (i.e, the response doesn’t necessarily make sense, but at least I have some resources to form a question google can answer), while google doesn’t seem to be able to give me proper results when I search by using words other than the exact matching keywords
Ironically, I’d spend more time on YouTube if I could find something I’d actually enjoy watching. If I find myself scrolling on end without finding anything good, I turn off the TV and go do something else.
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.
It’s been bad for a few years already but it is getting worse. A good chunk of the internet isn’t indexing anymore (places which require logins to get the content), and those that are largely exist to earn from the advertising, not to be helpful.
There’s actually an opportunity for a disruptive force here. If you can be better at search than Google, you could steal users. But duckduckgo and related are mostly trying to be old Google rather than better Google.
Mojeek is an interesting alternative. Not brilliant, but at least it IS an alternative
Yes! It’s very hard to find alternatives to social media sites through google. Get choked in dozens of whiny blogs of ‘social media isn’t what it used to be’ articles instead. Had to find duck duck go on yahoo then find alternative social media sites on duck duck go.
I wonder what would happen if we all just signed off for the rest of the year.
