Tell HN: Delete Google

3 points by sourcecodeplz 3 days ago | 10 comments

OMG

i just had an older relative contact me because he wants to buy a retirement house in the country-side but google tells him all the places he searches are susceptible to flooding.

you see, if ONLY ONCE, it rained too hard in the last 50 years, wouldn't you know it, google knows it, and will tell you the place you want to move to will get flooded?!

i tried explaining to my relative that the result he got from google was an A.I. generated text, not real. but he wouldn't believe me. you know why?

because he got so used to google in the past decade, it helped a lot with information. correct information. real facts. facts that google got from the first results and made into the snippet we all know.

now that snippet is no more, but it looks exactly the same but it is not actually the same. it is made up info.

imagine all the non-savvy users that depend on google for information, now they get an A.I. answer that WILL ALMOST ALWAYS have something to say about ANYTHING.

it doesn't matter if you ask stupid questions, google will tell you "great questions".

Google, how could you be so careless with your HUGE userbase? there are old, young, naive, etc, people depending on you and what do you do? feed them misinformation

rant over sorry

theandrewbailey 3 days ago |

I stopped using Google search after the Snowden leaks, moved off Gmail about five years ago, and started using GrapheneOS over a year ago. I barely use anything Google anymore.

x______________ 3 days ago | |

De-anythinging from the average Joe uses gives you a more unique online fingerprint.

Do you own an ISP and an AS? Hardware to connect with? They'll get you if they want.

theandrewbailey 3 days ago | | |

Because that wasn't the point. (Moving away from big tech in general was the point.) Way to be defeatist though.

bill_mcgonigle 3 days ago |

It's in its awkward teenage years stage now.

Pretty soon the AI will tell your father things that are more difficult to disprove and it will be done the same way "news" and Wikipedia do it - telling you how to feel before telling you what happened, reporting only part of the story, and not covering most happenings at all.

Now is the time to teach your circle psyop avoidance skills. Or build an honest competitor (if it were allowed to exist - Marc says only three will be permitted to exist).

gus_massa 3 days ago |

Do you know the area? Here in Argentina there is a "scam" to build apartments in areas that may get flooded from time to time (like once 10 or 20 years) and sell them to people that lives in other areas. Or sometimes it's the goverment of the county/provincr/federal that builds it to give people cheap homes to get votes. When it floods 20 years later everyone puts a picachu face.

It's something like building and rebuilding the area after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

al_borland 3 days ago |

> google will tell you "great questions"

The needless ego stroking of these AI chatbots drives me up the wall. Not all my questions are insightful and good questions. They are often obvious follow-ups from a contradiction in a previous reply.

The Kagi Assistant used to not do this, and now it does it on nearly every response.

> Google, how could you be so careless with your HUGE userbase?

Based on some of the things Apple said around the Siri delay, I think this is part of why they didn’t release an anything major. Of course, now they’re releasing a repackaged version of Gemini, so I guess the market has said it cares about AI more than accuracy. Either that, or it’s a tactic to blame shift when things do go bad.

bicepjai 3 days ago |

Only thing I cannot move pass is YouTube :(

x______________ 3 days ago |

> i tried explaining to my relative that the result he got from google was an A.I. generated text

Maybe I tried explaining the wrong thing EG: showing real information that you found* from a website proving the location is not prone to flooding, rather than gaslighting them on their efforts and AI usage.

*Past results are not indicative of future performance.

sourcecodeplz 3 days ago |

this is so enraging, Europe wake up! sue these irresponsible fucks