It’s getting a bit ridiculous out here. I’m using DuckDuckGo but since it aggregates its search from other sources, it’s also gotten bad recently. Is there a search out there that blocks domains that spam AI? Extra points if there’s something like Ublock Origin that filters things based on a community-made list.

Edit: I’m aware of Kagi but it’s pretty expensive and I’m not a fan that they, too, host their own AI tools.

  • @[email protected]
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    543 days ago

    Search is eventually going to be so enshitified that the way to actually find out things is going to fall back on “ask someone you trust who knows things you don’t”. At least by that point those trustworthy people should be better informed than in the past…

    • @[email protected]
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      23 days ago

      Looks super cool. Too bad they don’t have a way to add custom SearX instances other than modifying and building the extension yourself.

  • NutWrench
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    233 days ago

    I think the best way to make the Internet less sh*tty is to get away from Google search.

    I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not google ranked ones.

    https://search.inetol.net/

    It’s also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:

    https://searx.space/

    • @[email protected]
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      83 days ago

      I selfhost it on my laptop, pretty easy, and I always have it just the way I want it. Still pushing shit uphill with the AI crap, but better than any one search engine (it amalgamates many). Relevant to OP I have a large block list enabled, but it’s very much a moving target.

    • @[email protected]
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      83 days ago

      I’ve had good luck as a back up to Duck Duck Go with Mojeek. It’s so old school, it doesn’t always know what you want, but I sometimes want that.

      • @[email protected]
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        53 days ago

        I’ve found Mojeek to be a bit hit and miss; but one thing I really appreciate is that they actually do the indexing and searching themselves (whereas pretty much every other search site uses Bing or Google behind the scenes). So although Mojeek may not be ideal, they are at least making an effort to be independent.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 days ago

      Oh damn. That was like a proper internet 2.0 kinda experience. A feller could get used to that.

  • @[email protected]
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    233 days ago

    Kagi! You can block websites so they don’t show up. It’ll also flag websites that contain a lot of spam or ads.

    • @[email protected]
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      3 days ago

      Kagi lets you blacklist individual domains yourself, but I think what OP is asking is “is there a search engine that identifies and blacklists AI generated content itself”.

      I think that the answer is probably that yes, probably all search engines try to block spam websites of any sort, AI-generated or no, and will do so all the time, or at least downrank them. Trying to present relevant, useful material at the top of the results is basically the business that search engines are in.

      Now, do any do so to a level sufficient to fully eliminate them? I’d guess not. SEO spammers have been trying to pollute top results with their hits for about as long as search engines have been around, and trying to cheaply bulk-generate content that looks like something that the user might want is just the latest form this takes. My guess is that that’ll be a cat-and-mouse game for some time to come.

  • @[email protected]
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    153 days ago

    Man, i was looking up info about arrow rests for recurve/olympic archery yesterday and stumbled on a website that use some sort of AI fever dream for their images.

    One kinda looked like a violins neckbrace (i don’t know what those things are called) with some strings attached, but it looked like it should look like a thing but after closer inspection it was actually nothing sensible.

    I think we’ve all seen those images that look like a room filled with itema but when you look at a specific item your mind figures out it’s just weird shapes and colors.

    What a nightmare that was.

  • @[email protected]
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    203 days ago

    Have you given Kagi an actual shake? If you are not interested in saving preferences longer term, you can keep cycling through free accounts. Now more than ever, it is a breath of fresh air. If I want a quick AI answer without scrolling through some ad-ridden web page, I just put a “?” at the end of my query. If not, I have no AI garbage on my results.

    • CubitOom
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      13 days ago

      I love kagi but I don’t think it actively filters out ai generated content.

      I know when searching for pictures you can disable AI generated images.

      I think the hard part for a search engine is that unless there is some kind of identifying mark on the content, how do they know that an ai didn’t write a top 10 list of pastebin alternatives?

      • @[email protected]
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        13 days ago

        It’s not immune to it. If you are looking for something highly specific you will get slob for sure. To give an actual example, a buddy of mine told me that the walls of your house act like a sponge when you have the outer walls insulated but not the basement walls on the outside, at least against water. So I went looking on kagi for stuff to back that up (not that I didn’t believe him, I just wanted to know more). A lot of the results were completely ai generated crap websites. There were good and somewhat relevant results, but in the end I gave up (also because we got confirmation that it’s done on our house, so it became irrelevant).

  • @[email protected]
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    133 days ago

    Unless I need something recent whenever I search I update the results to dates from like 1999 to 2021. Filters out a lot of unnecessary crap.

  • @[email protected]
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    93 days ago

    I’m actually using searxng and just blocking any website with blatantly written AI shitcontent.

      • Elvith Ma'for
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        63 days ago

        I just host my own searxng instance. Bonus: I get to tweak the config to my liking.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 days ago

        I’m using Startpage too, but I have a feeling that the search result quality had a massive drop lately.

        • L3ft_F13ld!
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          13 days ago

          They use Google and Bing for their results last I checked. So, if those two get worse then Startpage will too.

          • @[email protected]
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            23 days ago

            I don’t know. Maybe Google is actively limiting results for Startpage. When I don’t find what I’m looking for in Startpage I switch to Google and boom, adequate search result. I refuse to permanently go back to Google though.

            • L3ft_F13ld!
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              23 days ago

              Could be that. Could also be the fact that Google adjusts results based on their profile of you, giving different results from Startpage.