How do people find good information on the internet these days?
How do people find good information on the internet these days?
It used to be that you would do a search on a relevant subject and get blog posts, forums posts, and maybe a couple of relevant companies offering the product or service. (And if you wanted more information on said company you could give them a call and actually talk to a real person about said service) You could even trust amazon and yelp reviews. Now searches have been completely taken over by Forbes top 10 lists, random affiliate link click through aggregators that copy and paste each others work, review factories that will kill your competitors and boost your product stars, ect.... It seems like the internet has gotten soooo much harder to use, just because you have to wade through all the bullshit. It's no wonder people switch to reddit and lemmy style sites, in a way it mirrors a little what kind of information you used to be able to garner from the internet in it's early days. What do people do these days to find genuine information about products or services?
Extensions help a ton. Some of my favorites:
Block or Highlight Search Engine Results - Does what the name says. When you run a search on Google or DDG or whatever engine you use, and you get a result from a shit website, add it to the filter and you'll never see that trash again. I filter out the following trash: chegg, timesmojo, coursehero, numerade, forbes, instagram, and pinterest. I've only been using this one for a little bit, so I expect that list will grow a LOT, but even with just those removed from my search results, HOLY HELL has the quality of my searches has increased. This one is probably the most relevant to OP's question.
Dictionary Anywhere - For vocab. Double-click any word on the web, and a little text bubble pops up with its definition - works on words in that bubble too, for when you run into shit like "Redundancy: the state of being redundant." -_- double click the "redundant" in the bubble to get a second bubble with a more useful definition. (doesn't happen often, but it's a cool feature, so worth calling out)
Fandom Enhance - For videogames, since every game wiki is on Fandom for some reason. This extension scrubs a LOT of the unnecessary clutter from the page.
Recipe Filter - Works with recipe websites. Scrubs out the 528 page life story from the author and reduces it down to just "Grilled cheese: bread, cheese, butter. Put butter on two pieces of bread. Put a slice of cheese in between. Put it on a griddle at 250 degrees for 2 mins. Flip it over, two more mins. Eat that sum' bitch." ✔
Youtube-shorts block. Youtube shorts NEVER have good content - get that TikTok shit outa here.
uBlock Origin - This one's a HEAVY lifter for taking the trash out of the internet. This will improve both the quality of information on screen by removing a TON of sketchy shit, and make your browsing a lot safer by filtering out malicious links. If you're not already using uBlock and take nothing else from this post, TAKE THIS ONE.
...that's pretty much it on my end, but there's a lot of other useful extensions out there. If anyone else has one to add, by all means let's keep this ball rolling!
Stick to sites you know. If you're looking for a review and you get a hit on a site you don't know there's a better than 50% chance it's just an ad generated site (and frequently these days just the output from chatgpt).
Sucks for lesser known sites that are trying to get noticed, but unless google work out a way of removing the crap from feeds that's the way it is.
Same with youtube.. unless you trust the reviewer, assume it's paid unless there's good evidence otherwise.
Search for reddit/lemmy mentions specifically.. although those can be astroturfed too.. but the comments are generally helpful.
Don’t stick to one channel. Don’t get your news from social media, because social media is an echo chamber.
Use an RSS feed aggregator app to consolidate boring news articles from multiple boring publications. This will give you an even spread.
You will see the same news stories from different news outlets with different spin. You will quickly come to understand various news publishers biases and how extreme they are.
Always go into an article with an understanding of the publishers biases that might be at play.
If you must do the news on social thing… Only use social to discuss stories you already understand to some degree. Or as a place to research the news topic deeper.
For the most part, just use social to hang with your communities… you know… like a social network :)
Mostly Google-fu and a strong Spidey sense of links that look like they'll waste your time.
Type stuff into Google.
Scroll down until you find something that looks like a forum. Random PHPBB boards, Stack Overflow, Reddit, old Experts Exchange topics, etc. Or a wiki page.
If it isn't one of those two things, it's probably AI generated blogspam with a dozen adverts on it.
Back in the day, Wikipedia was so neutral that they had people arguing how to write articles from a non-human POV. Yes, certain articles get political, but that is when the talk page arguments, counter-arguments, and linked ARBICOM evidence pages give you a good lesson on what people think are fact and opinion. I haven't been a editor for a while, is wikipedia not a hotbed of nerds who have to be in alignment with the facts regardless of what current political discourse says is right nowadays?
I think it's becoming a lost art ... but basically, you need to go by reputation. Pick well known sites that you trust, compare what they say about the subject, don't even base your opinion on just one random blog article or tweet / reddit / lemmy post.
For some, Wikipedia is trustworthy since it (usually) cites its sources and has a pretty good track record, while for others it's not to be trusted, cause anyone can edit it. In the end it's up to you what you trust. Another example: The CDC (in the US) can be considered trustworthy for health information, being an official government agency, but many also don't trust it as it has become more politicised and so, biased. Again, you decide what to trust, and always consult at least two trusted sources, more is better.
For product reviews, I simply don't pay much attention to the star rating, but instead, read the actual reviews, and sort them chronologically so I read the most recent ones. Check that they are actually reviewing the product / service you think they are, as there are ways to get good reviews then "switch" the product listing (amazon) and other similar tricks. Check if it seems plausible, level-headed, or if it's just someone being angry, or likely fake. Like I said, it's an art, not a science. Sometimes, you have to actually buy the product / service and judge for yourself, then compare your experience with the reviews, and you'll learn to tell the truthful reviews from the fake or unreliable.
I use SearXNG to search for things, with custom redirects and block lists.
If I want a genuine human opinion on a topic, I add "site:reddit.com" to the search. Hopefully someday there will be a good way to parse the fediverse for info.
I just search ddg and get my results. I don't get those affiliates, top 10 lists, or whatever you're talking about. I just get good results, and if I don't then I try using Google.
Another tip that basically works with all search engines. Mark a word in "quotes" to have results require that word in the page. Helps you narrow results down if you need something specific.
You’re asking about a pretty tough problem, and I don’t have the silver bullet for that one. However, I do have some tools that might help you out a bit. None of these tools are 100% reliable, so take everything with a grain of salt.
Fakespot and reviewmeta can help weeding out some of the junk reviews.
When I have a lot of text to go through, I just dump all of it on chatGPT or Bing and ask for a summary. It’s a language model after all, so it should be pretty good at this sort of thing. A horse won’t plow a field all by itself, but if you’re there to steer it, it will get the job done faster than you would.
When I’m looking for a good book to read, I’ll usually use the reviews of goodreads. Just skip all the 5-star reviews, because they are usually written by people who aren’t competent at reviewing books. Take all the the 1-4 star reviews dump them on your favorite LLM and let it look for frequently reoccurring complaints.
There's an interesting blog post on this subject (likely someone posted it already): https://dkb.blog/p/google-search-is-dying
I find it to be very agreeable. Search is dying and I don't agree that appending "site:reddit.com" is any kind of permanent solution, just a workaround that will also break.
Through Cunningham's Law.
I let people smarter than me on Lemmy and in chat rooms tell me wtf is going on in ways I can understand. If I need that info for a paper, I can always just say something stupid and get like 50 people correcting me with accurate info and sources. 🤷🏻♂️
Wiki
I follow some reviewers on YouTube, Project Farm is a great one.
Keep a log of anything you do successfully find that you may need later.
I’ve started bookmarking anything I do find genuinely useful as there’s a chance that the a similar search would yield different results that wouldn’t help at all.
I’ve also installed archivebox on one of my home lab pcs to grab a snapshot of any sites and pages that I want to keep (you never know if you’ll go back and it’s gone).
Retaining good information for yourself is just as important on the web now given all the bot spam and affiliate laden shit out there that Google and Bing seem to be promoting these days.
If I want a useful ad, I just wait on instagram to spy on me and actually give me good local ads that are useful
First rule for me, don't seek information to platforms and sources that are filtered by someone else
Permanently Deleted
The internet used to be about people sharing what they know for free to help others and it became a WINNER TAKE ALL kind of internet. There are no blog, article, reviews, that are not fake anymore, you can buy each one of these services, even search results can be bought. Google, Duckduckgo, Bing, Kagi, are all the same shit different smell, the results are not relevant anymore, the only thing that makes them different is the browser extension you run to block the spyware, tracking, and surveillance on your every click, data that gets sold by your ISP, Social media, and every site you visit, not unless you are blocking that info between your browser and the site you visit - which is doable with a lot of browser extensions.
Have good filters for all the crap and use search engines with modifiers. What’s a subject or thing you’ve struggled to research so I can see if I have the same issue?
I don't that why I'm scrolling Lemmy or another social media late in night.
I use Kagi.com as a search engine.
Interesting, was the timing and community chosen for this query better than mine a couple days ago? Regardless, this post provides me more responses to a similar question to sort through, so no complaints here!
I used to frequent searchlores.org and fravia.com back in the day, they were a treasure trove of specialised web search and data mining techniques.
UNSW maintain a mirror of the old websites, last updated 14 years ago, worth a look if you have some time on your hands.
This is exactly the reason I've been considering if it's possibly the time to start and launch a brand new search engine, especially now subscription based systems are so common.
With at the core a pledge to not record and/or share any user data or interaction and supported by a subscription service for who wants to pay and really oldschool tier selfhosted "sidebar" ads for the rest.
None of this "insert ads into content" shite.
For the algo, also far more oldschool "less intelligent", where keywords and content matter (backed by a curation of good/bad sites) and options for users to report sites, that will then be re-curated.
For adding sites, allow subscribers to suggest sites that then get listed to other subscribers (or if it grows large enough to support employees, subscribers AND employees) for validation.
If a site is then later found to be questionable, everyone that suggested and validated it can get a negative validation score, which will be used for future reference when selecting users to validate new sites.
Something like they get +1 for every validation they do.
But -1 for 1 bad validation, -11 for 2, -31 for 3, -61 for 4, -101 for 5, etc, so if they validate 100 sites and validate 5 incorrectly, they are no longer allowed to validate new sites.
And for validation, once there are enough subscribers, you take 100+ random subscribers, of which 50% needs to respond to validate and if 90% of responders validate positively, it passes. If less than 90% validate positively, it goes for manual review by the administration.
Etc etc.
I use Google, Yandex, Reddit, Lemmy, and Chat GPT
There's a lot of competition and a big overload of data. That makes searching for stuff really hard. Don't know the solution...
I use www.presearch.com
I haven't used this yet but Brave search Goggles feature let's you set filters on your searches.
I dread buying new things that I don't know much about now. On the flip side that has saved me so much money :)
I'm just trying asking multiple people who seem to be knowledgeable on the topic to see if I can get people to volunteer their recommendations.
I know there's some "type of purpose" behind SEO but I can't help but mentally categorize in the same realm as:
- As the weird aisle of vehicular additives
- That creepy dusty Chinese remedy store
- As sold on TV products
- Conceptually stupid Butt lift Cream
They have entire teams of people who get certified in Google ad sense, analytics, hubspot etc. To supposedly make you rich or increase ROI by 1% or whatever but why not just build a good website with solid code and have good content.
If SEO didn't exist the actual companies behind search engines would need to work harder to do, what they do. But instead they train other with stupid little temporary certifications and send out little SEO trolls to plant tracking codes everywhere. Just Seems leechy and redundant.
Then they change an algorithm and screw over the very little trolls they sent out.
Really if you think about it SEO specialists work for the Search Engine Companies for free they are really just Optimizing the Search Engine. Programming and content is what really Optimizes the website.
By hey its just my opinion guys not saying I'm correct. Regardless... I'm ready for the anger from a lieutenant SEO magic master to come and riddle me with their monkey logic.
people are gave some good answers.
it boils down to various large sites.
wikipedia(app) and reddit(app) are my top.
often time i just bang out a search and pinpoint the answer and trash the rest.
[deleted] stackexchanges and ycomb are some other popular sites.
quora used to seem attractive but information is questionable and the whole experience is trash.gemini,bookmarks,chatgpt are some others. also libgen .
I have researchers and journal rss's on feedly
I’ve switched over to a paid search engine, kagi.com. There are no ads and the results are better than DDG.
i dont
Quora (https://www.quora.com) is marketed as "A place to share knowledge and better understand the world".. You can ask questions and get them answered by experts, or you can find questions already answered by experts..
I started paying for a search engine called Kagi. Google and the other free search engines are completely fucking worthless these days.
When a topic is hard to find, I use Perplexity.ai
The AI is pretty good at summarizing,and giving you multiple links with the reason why it is relevant.
But it is pretty slow, so only good if regular searches don't find what you are looking for.
Just use a chatbot, it works like a charm. I personally use bing chat's api to get good information.