Why is Google Search self-destructing? Are we approaching the end of the era of universal digital information?
1 2018-05-27 by torkarl
SS: I use google search frequently. Most of it for work and education - not conspiracy. I have noticed a striking and rapid deterioration in the results I am getting over the last month or so.
Example: I use google to search Stackoverflow.com to help me remember how the muck around and program up web servers, etc. The details are intense, and unless you do it every day you forget. So I used to get 3 whole pages about this detailed type of stuff, but now I get complete junk - a few bad hits and then a bunch of totally unrelated business ads, etc.
But it's not just this particular use case - I find all my searches bring back a listing that is just seriously inferior to what I have come to expect, across the board!
This has already been discussed in an earlier post, but I think it warrants more attention. We have seen how the so-called "fake flag shooters" somehow precipitated huge changes to Youtube searches. Now we have more changes that are supposed to be the result of the European Union's GDPR law. And on another front, we have seen how closely manipulated Wikipedia can be. It just feels like something bigger is happening. Your thoughts on this?
Here's the post that blew up 5 days ago here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/8ky8kr/has_anyone_else_noticed_that_google_search_has/
Here's a bit about losing google search features (Image Search):
https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/7xwo0i/google_search_removes_view_image_button_and/
and
Here's a post that gets to how critical stackoverflow is:
56 comments
1 balefire 2018-05-27
"they don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em"
1 Diplomatt_ 2018-05-27
Part of me wants de la Rocha back and part of me is glad he got away clean
1 Gdfi 2018-05-27
I have noticed this too. Almost impossible to find search results that were easy to access just a few months ago. I guess I'll start using duck duck go and hope they improve their service.
1 KEKtheKid 2018-05-27
Because Google no longer cares about freedom of information and is participating in censorship.
1 Zap_Powerz 2018-05-27
*government
1 Vladie 2018-05-27
I agree, it further convinces me that we're on the cusp of radical change. They let us have our fun for a couple of decades, and now they're taking complete control of what people see on the internet platforms they have monopolised, perhaps in preparation for controlling the narratives of the events that lead to this change.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
Yes - that is what I thought. Just wish we could see a clearer picture, and especially how to fight against it.
The strange part is, ideologically, virtually none of the actual programmers who made all this work as well as it did for the last couple decades would agree to voluntarily screw over the entire planet with a crippled search capability.
1 OT-GOD-IS-DEMIURGE 2018-05-27
dont forget google remove the phrase "dont be evil" from their site
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
And a bunch of engineers quit because Google decided to work with the Pentagon killing drones
https://interestingengineering.com/google-employees-quit-in-protest-over-pentagon-drone-ai-project
And they are censoring and putting fake ass snopes at the top of any political research
R.I.P. Google 2018
1 Hermaphrotitties 2018-05-27
Monopoly is maximizing its revenue, they are rewarded by making us look at the maximum amount of ads.
1 martini-meow 2018-05-27
on image searches, right-click & view image - for me that seems to open the original page's image file.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
when i right-click (chrome), i dont see any [view image] choice. "Open image in new tab" seems to get to original.
But apparently reverse-searches cannot be done now...
1 martini-meow 2018-05-27
try tineye.com for reverse searches.
1 mjbmitch 2018-05-27
Google recently lost a lawsuit to some Canadian company that made some claim of features integral to Google Images. Now we can't open directly up to the images.
1 darkstar7646 2018-05-27
Especially if Net Neutrality is not re-enforced through law, then, yes...
The age of universal information is going to die, and intentionally so.
1 Romek_himself 2018-05-27
just dont use google ...
1 D0mm0n 2018-05-27
They don't think people will stop using them. I'm people are so darn stupid these days, they may well be right.
1 Lord_Augastus 2018-05-27
Because google is a company, they want profits. Dont worry, eventually socialism will win, and world gov will make most information free like wikipedia but on a larger scale. Atm google being a private entity needs to make search pay for itself. I hate google atm, i search and most of it doesnt even conform to my search terms!
1 RedditHelpsEnslaveUs 2018-05-27
You've been swallowing globalist propaganda and ignoring the fact that information doesn't flow while under tyranny.
1 Lord_Augastus 2018-05-27
Tyranny takes many forms.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
Meanwhile everybody can look up Social Contract and be directed to Social Media and Contract Law, but miss the bit about Rousseau and the French Revolution. Bad planning, global socialism...
1 Lord_Augastus 2018-05-27
Those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
1 swordofdamocles42 2018-05-27
yep, youtube is being self destructed too... age of information has passed we are heading back to the censorship age. (again)
1 whatdidusaybro 2018-05-27
we've always been in censorship age .. they just needed a couple decades to figure out this internet thing
1 phyrros 2018-05-27
I rather hurts that someone who seems to be working in the industry gets the basic stuff wrong.
a) Images: The ability to view images is still there - you just have to view them in context (e.g. on a getty server)
b) GDPR law: It is really, really funny if a complain about google getting worse due to less information (e.g. from trackers) is answered with duckduckgo which is hampered by not using tracker information at all ;)
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
In the 2nd post I linked, that information (Getty) is processed.
DDG is an unknown. I wish someone would make a comparison of current searches to see if DDG does a better job.
1 phyrros 2018-05-27
Which was the whole point why getty went to court to force google to change the display of images. Altough We can be pretty sure that google also processes the searches and views ;)
Google does such an fantastic job partly because it is basically the biggest aggregator of personal data worldwide. DDG, while not being an unknown, simply lacks the amount of information about your last searches.
Any fair comparison between the two has to be run from anonymized machines. There will always be a tradeoff between accuracy (of search) and privacy.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
You mean "used to do such a fantastic job". The whole point of my post and several confirmation comments here, is that now it seems to do a piss poor job.
Possibly, but I proposed a use case where the main search target was stackoverflow to find the same snippet of code 1,000 other coders are also trying to find, and had no problem before a few weeks ago. The issue of what I look at online, or ate this morning, or how old I am, simply does not matter to the efficiency of the search. Only that I am some kind of knowledge worker looking for some information.
1 phyrros 2018-05-27
Well, I don't have problems finding my code snippets ;)
Then you know how difficult the problem is..
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
You seem to want to be superior regardless of the space being explored. That puts you in good company - most skilled coders I have met are like that.
But the problem is we are not talking about the things your superiority applies to. We are collecting a number of warning signals and wondering what they might mean.
If the lights in your house start blinking on and off, at random, you might suspect something is seriously wrong whether you are an electrician or not. And you might immediately allocate two possibilities to explore - is the phenomenon occurring because the wiring in your house is bad, or is the electric supply system being disrupted. To gauge that, you might walk over to your neighbors houses and ask them.
If a good many stated that they were seeing the same phenomenon with their lights, you wouldn't insist that they should check their wiring. The wiring is clearly not what's wrong. The supply is what's wrong.
Can you add any information about that problem space in this case?
1 phyrros 2018-05-27
Using the lights example: I you presume that the electricity company is fixing your voltage and therefore the rooms are now dimmer you will find a lot of biased responses.
And I don't feel superior I'm simply unnerved by what I see as attention distracting "conspiracies", in this example:
We know for quite a while (basically since bot farms were a thing) that it is actually not that difficult to skewer google search results. The last US presidential election was furthermore a showcase of how mighty filter bubbles can be. We know that google censors (DCMA) and we know that google places "their" advertisments first.
You see worse results while searching stackexchange which is probably one of the areas where an advertisment selling search engine will always shine because it is hard to find a reason why google should degrade their search results and yet you jump from a technical problem straight to a political one. Why?
In both threads i presented possibilities why search results could degrade depending on a chaneg of data on the user, and ignoring the very real possibility of it being a technical error of some kind (hard to say as there is no verifyable data except the impression of a few users) i can throw two more into the fray:
a) A deep learning neural network went astray. b) google will push for a code sharing plattfrom soon.
But, unless you can provide me verifyable data I can just guess about what the problem is and I'm unwilling to present a solution before teh problem is even defined - what you did by seeing a conspiracy behind it.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
I actually thought about that factor when I entered it. But given that some 50% of posts could be considered as distractions, this one seemed worthwhile.
Exactly. That's essentially the mission of the conspiracy sub - to basically over-react to possible major, or at least interesting movements in society which appear to be shrouded and mysterious. Again I thought this qualified. And it's why I pushed for your higher level analysis.
Thank you. These are exactly what I was wanting - both very intriguing possibilities. I think you wanted to avoid jumping to conclusions. But I want to create such a list quickly (see above) almost as a type of documentation. If the problem goes away tomorrow, I'd apologize for wasting your time, but then maybe it comes back... Seems like conditions inside this sub vary consistently, and it seems worth our while to think about why that's happening.
Unless of course someone spills something of interest.
1 supercubansandwich 2018-05-27
I have noticed the exact same thing. Even non conspiracy content results are getting worse. I find my self going to DuckDuckGo more and more and the results are consistently better. And for those who don’t know, they claim not to collect any data about you.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
If what I'm seeing continues, I will follow your advise.
But when you have used cloud infrastructure enabled by google a decade ago for just about all work-related functionality, it hurts to pull out.
Remember the war between Microsoft Office functions and Google?
Here's the classic ad pitting the two approaches: [[OMG!!! I cannot find an iconic meme video on Google - I switched to DDG and got it but it has "Video No Longer Available"!!! This is our history - that ad campaign was the funniest tech campaign in 2012. Somebody please find it.]]
Here's what I found: http://bgr.com/2012/02/21/microsoft-launches-no-holds-barred-anti-google-campaign-video/
1 ThatClownFromIt 2018-05-27
Censorship, aside, it's trying so hard to be convenient that it goes back to being inconvenient. It's still better to use searching for Reddit than the actual Reddit search function.
1 MrDonutSlayer 2018-05-27
DuckDuckGo is all I use these days. Highly recommend this search engine, as they do claim to not store any data from you at all and the search results are great.
1 JakeElwoodDim5th 2018-05-27
Why was Eric Schmidt in North Korea a couple of years ago? Why did he quit recently? And suddenly google is self-destructing?
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
OK I read thru the article. There's nothing there that makes a clear statement of any connection to "google self-destructing" so would you please elaborate on your theory here?
Obviously Schmidt has acted as some kind of techno-ambassador and the fact he was dissed by the current admin for the trip just means he's plausibly deniable.
1 vznio 2018-05-27
I do the same kind of work as you and I have absolutely, 100% noticed this.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
OK - so why doesn't this blow up in the half dozen big reddit subs aimed at programmers and fellow-techies?
You would think that this would immediately generate a fire storm.
Is it the normie vs. conspiratard caste system?
1 vznio 2018-05-27
I honestly don’t think people in the west, specifically the United States, are concerned enough about censorship / totalitarianism because they think it won’t happen in the United States. It’s never happened in the United States so they think it’ll always stay that way. More importantly, they don’t know how to read the signs. The metaphorical frog in a pot of water of which the temperature is slowly being turned up until the point of no return is more applicable now than ever. But, honestly, in regards to this discussion... I have no idea. I think people trust these large corporations (including the government, which is also a corporation) way too much. If a company acts cool and hip people don’t care what the company does behind the scenes. This much was evident during Obama’s presidency when everyone loved him because he was highly relatable on talk shows.. yet, they didn’t question anything he did he was “cool”. How have we devolved from the 1960s to where we are now? It’s very sad.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
I like your "large-scale" view of us as frogs in boiling water.
But there must be a better explanation for the "small-scale" view. How would google think something this obvious would not hurt their bottom line?
1 vznio 2018-05-27
I’m just as confused as you are. I have no idea. Maybe people just haven’t noticed yet? I noticed it within the last week the most.
1 EncryptedOrgasms 2018-05-27
Stop using Google. You don't need Gmail, Google Search, Google Docs or most of the shit they fucking make anyways. Use alternatives.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
I know there are lots of alternatives - any healthy economy has multiple competitors waiting to devour a wounded wildebeest.
But this issue is not primarily about privacy. It's about functionality. Something made the great google algorithm to utterly choke.
1 binauralbeatz 2018-05-27
When I google the phrase "Reddit Conspiracy" on my work computer, the only results I get are sites "debunking" and ridiculing this sub and conspiracy theories in general.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
Yes - we all saw that happen about the end of April 2018 - conspiracy theories just got axed left and right - supposedly triggered by the Florida and similar shootings which conspiracy nuts(*) consistently question.
But it's much worse when the entire tech work force is fucked like this...
1 remington_smooth 2018-05-27
Maybe it’s because they are switching it over to an AI backend and it has to learn.
I just saw a video where a google guy was demonstrating AI for calling up a business and making a reservation for a hair cut. It was impressive but makes me wonder if they polish up the video and only show the successful example out of the hundreds or thousands on unsuccessful attempts.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
This is interesting. Are you suggesting that while improving one aspect of search (voice) they have "accidentally" tanked the formerly efficient text-based search.
If something like that did happen, I suppose the google-hive would hide the problem, acting like nothing happened (no announcement etc) and wait until their engineers could get the two versions synced up properly.
Oh for a google technician to break ranks and visit our humble discussion...
1 PDX_Rainbows 2018-05-27
It isn't just you, it's all of us. Ever since SJWs took over Google, advanced search results quality went from okay to poor. Used to be when advanced search was mind blowingly amazing. Hasn't been that way in years.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
I would almost say that back in the day I worshiped Map-Reduce because of the obvious superiority of google's methodology and data capabilities. How has it come to this abortion?
1 pauljs75 2018-05-27
Politics and promoting things that would bring in ad revenue has tainted the algorithm. I don't think it's too much more than that.
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
OK. But what about the very real possibility that these changes will actually destroy their ad revenue as users flee?
If you were a consultant, is this the path you would advise? Disappoint your advanced users and play politics with the rest?
1 pauljs75 2018-05-27
My attitude for stuff like this is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (Because how particularly annoying it is on the user end to see stuff changed around for no real purpose, or ending up de-featured.)
So yeah, it's not really a good idea.
But you see how company management changes with PC or SJW types calling the shots and such. And the guys to go against the grain on that seem to get fired. Thus policy pushes politics and implements into the code, even though it's not really the best thing to be doing.
1 AddEdaddy 2018-05-27
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/google-sued-bias-claims-conservative-employees-1073061
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
Your article is an interesting read - we absorbed that "white programmer" meme when the google employee wrote the famous memo that delighted the alt-right. But how does the (currently inflammatory) issue of male logic-capacity pertain to this issue of loss of functionality in the search engine?
1 AddEdaddy 2018-05-27
Just that google is a liberal owned corporation and has it's own agenda
1 torkarl 2018-05-27
This is interesting. Are you suggesting that while improving one aspect of search (voice) they have "accidentally" tanked the formerly efficient text-based search.
If something like that did happen, I suppose the google-hive would hide the problem, acting like nothing happened (no announcement etc) and wait until their engineers could get the two versions synced up properly.
Oh for a google technician to break ranks and visit our humble discussion...
1 phyrros 2018-05-27
Using the lights example: I you presume that the electricity company is fixing your voltage and therefore the rooms are now dimmer you will find a lot of biased responses.
And I don't feel superior I'm simply unnerved by what I see as attention distracting "conspiracies", in this example:
We know for quite a while (basically since bot farms were a thing) that it is actually not that difficult to skewer google search results. The last US presidential election was furthermore a showcase of how mighty filter bubbles can be. We know that google censors (DCMA) and we know that google places "their" advertisments first.
You see worse results while searching stackexchange which is probably one of the areas where an advertisment selling search engine will always shine because it is hard to find a reason why google should degrade their search results and yet you jump from a technical problem straight to a political one. Why?
In both threads i presented possibilities why search results could degrade depending on a chaneg of data on the user, and ignoring the very real possibility of it being a technical error of some kind (hard to say as there is no verifyable data except the impression of a few users) i can throw two more into the fray:
a) A deep learning neural network went astray. b) google will push for a code sharing plattfrom soon.
But, unless you can provide me verifyable data I can just guess about what the problem is and I'm unwilling to present a solution before teh problem is even defined - what you did by seeing a conspiracy behind it.