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[–] 178 points 2 months ago* (24 children)

Yeah you can't. So you are going to have to use something else. I found that duck duck go allows you to turn AI off.

I use it now. On Firefox.

I realize it's a shit post. I'm just commenting a fyi for people who might want an answer.

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  • [–] 35 points 2 months ago (13 children)

    I use it now. On Firefox.

    This is how it’s done.

    I haven’t googled anything in years.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    So what verb do we start using then? Duckling? Ask Jeeving? Yandexing?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    DuckDuckGo now has their own browser that blows FF out of the water.

    Edit: Chromium, don’t bother.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    If its chromium then don't bother, let's not forget how Google tried to take over the Internet through chromium browsers

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    On iOS a few years ago, I prefered it to FF or Safari.

    However, its "tracker protection" is questionable sometimes. They will list Google or Meta as enabled on site "to prevent breakage", but do not give user an option to still disable it.

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  • [–] 123 points 2 months ago (19 children)

    I've learned that if I absolutely have to use Google for something (which is very rare), appending a curse word with the minus symbol (i.e. "-fuck" or "-shit") completely bypasses the ai mode since its designed to not engage with curse words, and the minus tells the search engine portion to disregard this word in the search results.

    It's not perfect, but it makes me feel a little better, y'know?

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  • [–] 51 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    Well that won't help me find scat porn at all then!

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    Bing is better for porn anyways

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Mostly only porn, their video search/player for porn sites is far superior to google's

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    Nah, yandex is the best. Especially if you want to bypass or get paywalled content. It's a Russian search engine

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Ok, haven't tried that. Bing is better than Google, yandex might be better I don't know

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    A fellow man of culture.

    Wanna see the whole scene? Bing both actresses names and turn on adblock, maybe double wrap that adblock.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    double wrap that adblock

    Do you mean using 2 adblockers? I suggest to not do it because they will be in conflict and actually block less stuff, if you want to block even more stuff i suggest to use a DNS-level tracker/adblocker

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    Yeah there was a long period of time when all you have to do is search "Imgur" and you get a ton of gonewild posts (and creepy Russian photos of femme children but we don't talk about the normalisation of softcore CSAM in some areas). Interesting algorithm they have.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 months ago

    More like "you can't"

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  • [–] 26 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Not only has AI made traditional Googling more difficult, but it's also just clogging up the search results no matter what search engine you choose...

    Also, I miss Pinterest.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago

    Switch search engine

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  • [+] 18 points 2 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    For me so far, convenience on mobile when looking up information on physical places and business. I get the phone number, address, and hours of operation without clicking a link.

    As I'm transitioning to using Ecosia, that's what I find myself going back to Google search for most frequently. I tried switching to clicking links on Ecosia to find a phone number to call, and quickly came to the conclusion the websites are enshittified also, or at least ridiculous to navigate and find useful information. On at least one occasion already Google has had the phone number listed at the top of Search for an organization that just didn't have a phone number provided from themselves anywhere online. (Okay, maybe they had it on their Facebook page, but I'm trying to improve my user experience not soil it).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    i still use Google for speed testing bc it works better than ookla

    is there a good alternative that I'll feel good about using?

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  • [–] 29 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    https://udm14.com/ I automatically type "14" in the address bar now and choose it from the dropdown menu.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Why not just make it so you search in that as the default instead of typing 14?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I probably should. I have a searXng instance as default, but their results are never as good as udm14, so I got used to just going there.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago

    They installed an app on Android recently and it's just called Google but really it's their AI app. You can uninstall it. Who knows if it'll reinstall itself...

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Is there a link to this page, so we can all use the "I have the same question" button?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago
    [–] 4 points 2 months ago
    [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    The only other way that I personally know on how to get around the google AI is when you search something at the end of the search type (-AI) that seems to work well.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    just put &udm=14 at the end of the url pr make your default search engine :

    https://www.google.com/search?q=%25s&udm=14

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago
    [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    The search modifier NOT seems to still work (for now), if you can't use anything else

    https://www.google.com/search?q=test+-womp

    https://www.googleguide.com/minus_operator.html

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Google's core ranking algorithm and traditional results list rely heavily on AI and machine learning models, completely separate from generative summaries or AI overviews.

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