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A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

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How bad are search results? Let's compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT (danluu.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I do agree that the content farms are frustrating, and I'd like to see more done to combat them. I also agree that discussions happening on locked platforms is net loss for the sharing of information. I think search engines can do more about the former, but not as much about the latter. I think folks like us having discussions on the open can help.

I went ahead and searched "best Linux distro" and the top three results for me was

I then turned on my phones VPN, opened edge (normally use Firefox), went to Google, and repeated the search with the same top three results. I tried to bypass personalization, but might need to use a clean VM with VPN to succeed.

I actually thought all of those results were pretty good from a quick skim.

I will say I have custom DNS filters and plugins that block ads and untrustworthy domains and I can't guarantee that didn't influence my results.

I tried other searches like "best Linux distro" plus "programming" or "gaming" and received similarly helpful results. But I can't tell if I'm in a personalization bubble.