Technology

It is so ironic that SEO has become the very problem it was invented to fix: all these jokers gaming the system have all but plunged us all back into prehistoric internet times, before search engines appeared and people had to remember which specific sites to go to find information online.

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 :)

Lemmings are going to crucify me for this, but here goes anyway...

site:www.reddit.com

I go on 4chan and insult the product/thing/person that I need info on. Then I wait, rubbing my uhhh hands like a perv behind the tree.

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.

I use Kagi and it's just amazing. Don't have any problems. You can also configure Kagi to prioritize certain sites and remove others you don't care about. Very happy with it.

The bullshit is because Google wants you to visit shitty sites because of ad revenues.

Throw them out of your life.

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.

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 have found some pretty neat information here on Lemmy, specifically talking about Android, Firefox and Linux.

I do better via DuckDuckGo than Google these days.

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.

Try to search for something that has been in the News. Even if that news article is NOT what you want... It's going to be the only thing offered . Over and over and over.

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.

On programming topics, your top search results will be stack overflow followed github followed by sites that scrape stack overflow and then the sites that scrape github. It's great.

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.

Kinda glad that I kept most of my university textbooks and have a bunch of encyclopaedias and shit lying around.