[JohnMakin]

It’s crazy on the web when you point out that google or google products used to be much better in the past someone will come out of nowhere to tell you it’s always been that way

what is this instinct? anyone that’s over the age of 25 would know

[krisoft]

> what is this instinct?

"The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check."

The instinct is about pointing out factual inaccuracies. What they wrote is either correct, or not. If it is not, and someone knows better they can and should point that out.

If you, or some other commenter, have a fuzzy feeling that google is worse than it used to be you are free to write that. You are perfectly entitled to that opinion. But you can't just make up false statements and expect to be unchallenged and unchallengeable on it.

[thaumasiotes]

Except that jkaptur is the one making up false statements, and then providing "citations" that contradict him. I don't think an instinct to point out inaccuracies can explain that. There would have to be inaccuracies to point out first.

[JohnMakin]

If you believe stuff like this isn’t actual astroturfing, you must face that from somewhere there seems to exist a deeply ingrained belief from a subset of extremely vocal and argumentative people that Google is amazing and if it isnt well that’s just how the web is now (ignore the google man behind the curtain that created the modern web in the first place) and if it’s not that well, it’s always been this way (even if it hasn’t).

There is a very strong stance on this site against talking about astroturfing, and I understand it. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out where this general type of sentiment originates. I don’t know any google enthusiasts and am not sure I’ve ever met one. It’s a fairly uncontroversial take on this website and in the tech world that google search has worsened (the degree of which is debateable). Coming out and saying boldly “no it isn’t, you’re lying” is just crazy weird to me and again I’m very curious where that sentiment comes from.

see some of the sibling and aunt/uncle comments in this thread to get at a little of what I’m talking about.

[autoexec]

I was a google fan back when they first started and were just a search engine. Search engines like Yahoo and excite became massively bloated and ad-filled while google was clean and fast.

I wasn't a fan for very long. Google got creepy fast, and at this point their search is becoming useless, but for a short time I really thought that Google is amazing and I was an enthusiast.

[cgriswald]

All I see here is someone making a claim and someone else making a different claim. They may have erroneously intended the claim in opposition, either missing or interpreting differently the 'interspersed' qualifier. Or, alternatively, they may believe when any ads appeared is more meaningful in the context of this discussion.

I think Google search has gone downhill tremendously to the point of near uselessness and have been a Kagi subscriber for awhile, but I don't see astroturf in this instance. Do you have other examples?

[thaumasiotes]

There was a pretty insane comment in this genre a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43951164

> If Google [had been] broken up 20 years ago [...] [e]veryone would still be paying for email.

Some people don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about. But I don't really see that as suggesting they're part of an organized campaign.

[krisoft]

> Except that jkaptur is the one making up false statements, and then providing "citations" that contradict him.

I believe I have covered that case in my comment. Let me quote the relevant part here for you: “What they wrote is either correct, or not. If it is not, and someone knows better they can and should point that out.”

That being said could you help me by pointing out the inaccuracy in jkaptur’s comment? It seems fairly simple and as far as I can see well supported by the source.

[JohnMakin]

Other than the fact the parent comment to this subthread is posting a literal factual innacuracy regarding the history of ads on google - It’s not just one guy’s “fuzzy feeling.” It’s been written about in so many thousands of words over the last two years and is the general sentiment across the tech space. It’s sort of the major reason big companies like chatGPT, and smaller ones like Kagi are trying to swoop in and fill this void. it’s fairly obvious to anyone paying attention.

You can sealion with posts like this all you want but every time someone counters a post like this with ample evidence it gets group downvoted or ignored. You are also making an assertion that you’re free to back with evidence, that google and google products are not noticeably worse than 10 years ago.

here’s one study that says yes, it is bad:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_20...

Since we don’t have a time machine and can’t study the google of 2015 we have to rely on collective memory, don’t we? You proclaiming “it’s always been this way” and saying any assertion otherwise is false is an absolutely unfalsifisble statement. As I said, anyone over 25 knows.

Besides perusing the wealth of writing about this the last two years or so, in which the tech world at large has lamented at how bad search specifically has gotten - we also see market trends where people are increasingly seeking tools like chatGPT and LLM’s as a search replacement. Surely you, a thinking individual, could come to some pretty obvious conclusions as to why that might be, which is that google search has got a lot worse. The language models well known to make up stuff and people still are preferring them because search is somehow even less reliable and definitely more exhausting, and it was not always this way. If it was always this way, why are so many people turning to other tools?

[krisoft]

> Other than the fact the parent comment to this subthread is posting a literal factual innacuracy regarding the history of ads on google

Sounds like it should be very easy to counter their argument then.

For my education could you tell me which part of their message is inaccurate? The “Google was founded in 1998” or the “and you could buy ads on the search results page in 2000.” part?

> You are also making an assertion that you’re free to back with evidence, that google and google products are not noticeably worse than 10 years ago.

I did not make such an assertion. Where in my comment do you think i’m making that assertion?

> You proclaiming “it’s always been this way”

I’m sorry but who are you quoting? Did you perhaps misclicked which comment you wanted to respond to?

[h2zizzle]

Many people who post here are, were, or would like to be Googlers. Maybe not so much astroturfing ao much as a kind of corporate hasbara (though maybe both).

[thaumasiotes]

> Maybe not so much astroturfing as much as a kind of corporate hasbara

What's the difference? In astroturfing, someone pays people to form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do some kind of activism.

In hasbara, the government of Israel pays people to not form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do various kinds of pro-Israel and pro-Jew activism. This looks like astroturfing with the major vulnerability of the no-external-support claim shored up.

[h2zizzle]

Fair. The main difference is that people here don't like it when you call it astroturfing.