I ask because I’ve been doing a lot of research the last few weeks and Google search has really let me down. I’ve been finding better results on DuckDuckGo and Bing. Is this a recent thing with Google or am I out of the loop? Any other search recommendations?
Edit: In no particular order, some recommended alternatives to Google
SearXNG
Whoogle
Ecosia
Brave
Dogpile
DuckDuckGo
Kagi
Swiss Cows
Qwant
Bing
I’ve heard people mention disinformation age and I wouldn’t be surprised if in 50 years this time period is called that. I imagine it’s at least going to get a bit worse before it gets better.
Disinformation sounds like an intentionality behind it, which in some cases is very much true (Russian sources proven in some cases in order to sow discord).
While the terms late stage capitalism and/or enshittification of the internet may capture how it is oftentimes rather a byproduct of a profit seeking motive - i.e. the disinformation was not the point, it is simply what resulted from the process of chasing profits at all costs not just to be responsible and keep the company going but to make enormous bloated kickbacks to executives and stockholders (at the expense of rather than while feeding forward the product).
It is ironic how the two forms of dis-/misinformation look remarkably similar to one another. Both are forms of destruction and decay, and both result from selfishness and greed, the only difference is whether it comes from an external or internal source, the former wanting to actively destroy while the latter is an even greater degree of malice in not even caring or possibly even noticing the fact that destruction is taking place. Like a zombie apocalypse where they eat and are not even sated as an animal eating would have been, and simply move on to eat again and again and still yet again, entirely unnaturally, according to a level of greed not even physically possible in the past (bc of constraints on stomach size, even if some animals can expand that like a python, yet they still have a limit whereas corporations do not?).
And then you have the whole “who rather than what you know” crowd for whom facts do not even matter so much, being too lazy to consume them personally. Humans are very much herd animals (sheeple) it just is a fact. These will consume the ads, and do not care really what info is fed to them, hence why should a corporation be interested in feeding them high quality info when low quality stuff is received better actually, as well as being significantly cheaper? In fact the users would outright complain if only high quality material were available, bc it is too difficult for them to read. This is an interesting tangent to explore bc it shows how it is not the greed of corporations forcing the misinformation down their users’ throats unwilling, but rather corporations properly fulfilling their duties to both shareholders and a majority of users simultaneously, giving their customers precisely what they wanted, asked for, and demanded as in they go to whoever offers that. Who is really in charge here, if not you and I making decisions - Google or Bing or DDG - every single time we do a search?
Here is an interesting article touching upon some of these thoughts: https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/113196/An-older-article-that-is-taking-on-new-significance-considering.