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mayormcskeeze t1_j6jylgy wrote

It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

In just a few years "googling" something has gone from a sure fire way to find valuable information to a complete waste of time because everything has been choked out by garbage pages probably written by AI.

Edit: getting a lot of pushback on this comment. Obviously I was being hyperbolic calling the internet "useless." Its obviously useful and there amazing things happening on/with it.

So let me expand on what I meant in a less sarcastic way. While there is awesome stuff from personal communication to science breakthroughs to amazing open source projects that provide a wealth of utility and information, for many of us our basic day-to-day experience with the internet has gotten shittier and shittier.

Yes, you can pop over to r/internetisbeautiful and see some mindblowing applications, but wanna find a recipe? Fuck you it's all garbage. Email? Endless spam and bullshit. Social media? "Influencers" shoving products at you. YouTube? Dominated by the gutter trash that pushes the algorithm. Retail? Good luck finding something decent in the cesspool of fake shit that is Amazon. Customer service? Complete scam.

Do any of these obstacles ruin the underlying application? No. You can eventually sift through the crap and get to the recipe. You eventually sift through the crap and find the bedsheets you want. You can eventually sift through the crap and find your real emails.

But for those of us who grew up pre-internet and experienced a short period before all of thr ads, the data theft, the spam, the scams, the crap, and ENDLESS oppressive monetization, this version of the internet feels very disappointing.

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Bierculles t1_j6k6nnk wrote

Or google just trying to push products, Google search has been incredibly bad for a few years now.

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fuck_all_you_people t1_j6k7mcj wrote

Fake sites created by other companies to fake rank best products and game the algorithm by putting their products first. Google should penalize people that game the spiders by making fake ratings websites and websites that explain basic shit and then refer [company x]

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RedOrchestra137 t1_j6kvmq9 wrote

it's probably partly a consequence of the internet becoming more accessible over the years, so you'll have a larger share of idiots ruining stuff for others. like all these services trying to make setting up your own brand as easy as possible, and i'm just thinking please no we don't need more of these obnoxious assholes shoving their mediocre lifestyle in everyone's faces.

i think if you can set up decent scum filters that get rid of the sludge and slime, you can be left with a pretty clear and pure bit of online content, but it becomes harder to do as people just keep pouring bucket loads of garbage into the pond

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draculamilktoast t1_j6kddw6 wrote

> It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

Yeah you can only use it for entertainment, employment, education, socializing, communication, research, file transfer, commerce, distributed supercomputing, telepresence and controlling teapots. Completely useless. What we really need is a series of pneumatic tubes! The tubes could contain actual cats, none of this digital nonsense that doesn't even exist.

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Dwarfdeaths t1_j6kuybu wrote

Lol I've semi-seriously thought about a system of (pneumatic? electromagnetic?) tubes to take on the increasingly large role of home delivery services. Instead of trucks and cars with humans manually delivering small packages, food, etc., we could just create a standardized tube system. Anything below a certain size can be shipped via tube, and only the big stuff requires an over-the-road solution. Then the only questions are how big should the envelope be and how much would it cost to install?

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draculamilktoast t1_j6m7e55 wrote

A drone flying a package home to you doesn't require expensive infrastructure and can theoretically carry a package of any size. The real advantage to a tube system might be in speed and maybe requiring less energy per delivery but plumbers are not rich for no reason.

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Dwarfdeaths t1_j6mh5th wrote

I'd think plumbing is way more complicated than a package system. Plumbing deals with a variety of pipe sizes, terminal devices, hydrodynamics, chemistry, etc. all meticulously integrated into your building. A package system just has to get a single type of object to the general vicinity of your building, and that object won't deposit limescale or grease over time. I think a better analogy is internet infrastructure.

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suffaluffapussycat t1_j6kkoo3 wrote

But we use the internet to watch movies, listen to music, do banking, communicate with people, check the weather, read books, map trips, buy stuff, sell stuff, trade stocks, look up information, book travel, track fitness, etc. etc. right?

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khamelean t1_j6kh8mm wrote

The greatest repository of human knowledge ever known is “useless”…

Ok. You are definitely doing something wrong…

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FrostedJakes t1_j6krcxq wrote

Depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for legitimate information regarding things that have been researched and studied, Google Scholar is a great option.

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quick_dudley t1_j6l4ksq wrote

IMO a lot of the problems with social media in one way or another stem from each platform being run for profit by a particular organisation. During that big Facebook outage I got into this p2p social network called Scuttlebutt and it has a completely different set of problems.

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AgoraiosBum t1_j6l4xtr wrote

Gotta disagree on recipes; I find plenty of good recipes on line including some sites that I now trust significantly.

But often the best thing to do is look up 3 recipes for the same dish, see what they have in common, what is different, and choose what you want to do with that info, based on the flavors you like.

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Goldbatt1 t1_j6kp2r8 wrote

I feel like this is where the ai comes and helps us out a little bit more. The ai would help to sparse the information quickly to find good sources within the organized mess that is the internet.

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Eggplantosaur t1_j6ks519 wrote

>It really is a shame how completely useless the internet has become.

Get over yourself. The internet is a fantastic resource

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