Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
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Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.
And that sucks! I'm sorry. But I have to ask: If Google frustrates you… maybe switch away? There *are* no-AI alternatives!:
- Kagi is an AI-infected search engine, but they offer a "custom CSS" feature (see next post) you can use to remove the AI.
And *this* is the time to get out. Before Google takes the search you're used to away completely: https://aftermath.site/google-search-ai-changes/
@mcc The both of those are AI companies
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@whitequark @mcc and, I, for one, judge the shit out of them
@ryanc @whitequark The non-English-speaking communities stayed on X to a much larger extent for various reasons.
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Totally agree. Everybody thinks they personally are immune (just as so many people on Xitter or watching Fox News think they're immune to the cognitive impact of continually floating in the sea propaganda and disinfo) ... but I was really struck by the comment from a researcher in the study about AI autocorrect suggestions swaying people's attitudes:
"In every experiment, the researchers found that participants’ views shifted in the direction of the AI bias. The biggest surprise, Naaman said, was that mitigation measures did not work.
“We told people before, and after, to be careful, that the AI is going to be (or was) biased, and nothing helped,” Naaman said. “Their attitudes about the issues still shifted.”"
@jdp23 @mcc @ireneista As a translator, I've found the same thing. The effort required to turn AI output into your own voice is greater than the effort of just using your own voice in the first place. You either pass off AI as your own work, which is disingenuous and risky, or you actually do the work.
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@mcc The both of those are AI companies
@ariarhythmic My immediate goal is to put myself and others in a situation where they aren't exposed to genAI. Obviously not patronizing companies with genAI in their lineup at all would be better, but the only zero genAI developers I know of with search engines are marginalia and searxng. Those are cool projects, but I don't think they're in complete enough states that if someone recommends them as Google alternatives people will stop using Google. Even mojeek and startpage have genAI products.
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@mcc My turn, what do you think of Waterfox private search?
this one is not free.
@f4grx this is the first im hearing of it. What is their data source?
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@ilsk Google also has you log in when you use it…
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@ariarhythmic My immediate goal is to put myself and others in a situation where they aren't exposed to genAI. Obviously not patronizing companies with genAI in their lineup at all would be better, but the only zero genAI developers I know of with search engines are marginalia and searxng. Those are cool projects, but I don't think they're in complete enough states that if someone recommends them as Google alternatives people will stop using Google. Even mojeek and startpage have genAI products.
@ariarhythmic …okay I've only just found out this morning Waterfox also has a paid search engine. I do not know where their data comes from and I haven't evaluated its quality.
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@ariarhythmic My immediate goal is to put myself and others in a situation where they aren't exposed to genAI. Obviously not patronizing companies with genAI in their lineup at all would be better, but the only zero genAI developers I know of with search engines are marginalia and searxng. Those are cool projects, but I don't think they're in complete enough states that if someone recommends them as Google alternatives people will stop using Google. Even mojeek and startpage have genAI products.
@mcc That's fair, i suppose, though unlike duckduckgo Startpage does not have AI overviews by default AFAIK
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@f4grx this is the first im hearing of it. What is their data source?
@mcc no idea.
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@mcc That's fair, i suppose, though unlike duckduckgo Startpage does not have AI overviews by default AFAIK
@ariarhythmic neither does noai.duckduckgo. and i did boost the startpage recommendations (i wish that if you had a thread and you boosted replies to a thread, that services like mastodon or bluesky would display those prominently when reading the thraed)
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@ariarhythmic neither does noai.duckduckgo. and i did boost the startpage recommendations (i wish that if you had a thread and you boosted replies to a thread, that services like mastodon or bluesky would display those prominently when reading the thraed)
@mcc noai.duckduckgo.com is not the default option. the default is a search with AI overviews, and there's also a "yesai" subdomain.
Startpage as a project isn't nearly as deep in AI psychosis as duckduckgo, that's my point.
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@mcc noai.duckduckgo.com is not the default option. the default is a search with AI overviews, and there's also a "yesai" subdomain.
Startpage as a project isn't nearly as deep in AI psychosis as duckduckgo, that's my point.
@ariarhythmic If we're getting into that level of detail though, a lot of people have warned me over the last 24 hours that Startpage is showing multiple signs of going out of business very soon…
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(From a followers-only subthread. Response to an example of a way Google got worse since I ditched it a year ago.)
Okay one more "search without the AI" option I've just learned about, and unlike Kagi/DDG this one's even from a no-AI company:
Similar to how Waterfox repackages Firefox without the genAI, this takes Google and repackages it without the genAI. It costs money, but the money supports Waterfox, so that's… good?
Also since this is Mastodon I should probably mention SearXNG and https://marginalia-search.com/ ( here as @marginalia ), both open source. Marginalia looks promising.
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@ariarhythmic If we're getting into that level of detail though, a lot of people have warned me over the last 24 hours that Startpage is showing multiple signs of going out of business very soon…
@mcc huh? That's unfortunate if so...
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@mcc huh? That's unfortunate if so...
@ariarhythmic it seems to be all rumors, but among the rumors the worrying one is they supposedly (nobody gave me a cite) asked Waterfox to remove them as an offered search option… which… uh… https://critter.cafe/@luxliquida/116608972035022687
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Okay one more "search without the AI" option I've just learned about, and unlike Kagi/DDG this one's even from a no-AI company:
Similar to how Waterfox repackages Firefox without the genAI, this takes Google and repackages it without the genAI. It costs money, but the money supports Waterfox, so that's… good?
Also since this is Mastodon I should probably mention SearXNG and https://marginalia-search.com/ ( here as @marginalia ), both open source. Marginalia looks promising.
@mcc@mastodon.social @marginalia@mastodon.social extremely interested in search that doesn't suck and isn't kagi, because kagi needs competition. will probably switch to waterfox
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Okay one more "search without the AI" option I've just learned about, and unlike Kagi/DDG this one's even from a no-AI company:
Similar to how Waterfox repackages Firefox without the genAI, this takes Google and repackages it without the genAI. It costs money, but the money supports Waterfox, so that's… good?
Also since this is Mastodon I should probably mention SearXNG and https://marginalia-search.com/ ( here as @marginalia ), both open source. Marginalia looks promising.
@mcc @marginalia
This is cool. I didn't know about this. -
My steps to configure Kagi as a genAI-free search engine:
In settings
- Disable General->"Keyboard Shortcuts"
- Click Appearance->"Custom CSS" and paste in the text from https://codeberg.org/zerodogg/kagi-no-ai/src/branch/main/kagi-no-ai.css
- Disable Search->AI->"Auto Quick Answer"What's nice about this is it's bound to your account, so it "works everywhere". You don't have to use a particular browser, you don't have to set up plugins on all your machines.
I've been using Kagi this way for about a year—results seem just as good as Google
@mcc wait why are you disabling keyboard shortcuts? (I don't have that option anyway so just curious)
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