Hard to overstate how enshittified and botshitted Google Maps has become. Went looking for my local locksmith on Gmaps. Maps shows 20+ fake locksmith referral scam outlets and doesn't even register the real locksmith, despite it being fully visible in Street View.
Instead, a red pin on the shop identifies it as a fake locksmith scammer. The real locksmith - which has been there SINCE 1942 (!!) and is a verified merchant - doesn't even show up.
Google has been promising to clean up locksmith scams since the early 2010s, and has completely failed.
A company that can't figure this out - but still has $80b for a stock buyback! - does not deserve the 90% market share in search it spends $26b/year to maintain.
@pluralistic I just had similar fun finding a local plumber. Many fake addresses until Infound one where street view shows an actual plumbing company.
Weirdly the actually local one I found doesn't advertise online, has a broken website and mostly deals with bigger clients. But they came and fixed my kitchen sink anyway, and promise to send me an invoice for the quoted amount eventually.
@moz@pluralistic As a web developer, I have often found that home services businesses are too busy to bother with updated websites. I once worked with a top tier house painter who didn't want a website because he got jobs via referrals. Also, many companies see the Google search preview to be enough of a digital calling card.
@pluralistic Someone here is currently writing about this - the locksmiths are a huge, organized scam, and the operations sprawl through multiple countries and I don't know what else I'm allowed to say about it rn.
@pluralistic the sad thing with gmaps vs a community managed system like openstreetmaps is that gmaps is theoretically moderated, managed, "cleaned" by a dedicated, professional team. Sigh. A nearby street has had a typo on gmaps for years and they don't care.
@mbpaz@pluralistic But Google Maps does allow anyone to add random features like a rock, or a place in the middle of a field where they launched a drone from, name it whatever they want, and put it onto the map
@trantion@pluralistic Google Maps even allows bar owners to create a beach right in front of their bar (and within walking distance of the actual beach, already in maps with almost the same name).
Wonderful, isn't it? Snap your fingers and whoa, a new beach.
@Dnmrules@pluralistic the idea of a "sponsored" route hurts me. You should at least get rewarded somehow for it (assuming its existence is allowed), instead you end up spending more for the privilege of it.
@pluralistic I would use any other map application using https://OpenStreetMap.org — a thriving community of volunteers submitting and vetting to its Open Data
@pluralistic I had a similar problem two years ago when I tried searching Google for a plumber. The place I called didn't seem to be a plumber, but when I hung up a plumber spontaneously called me back and tried to high pressure sell me on their services. They came out and then demanded a big payment for a "quote" and I told them to bugger off. No idea if they would have done the service or not even, but it seemed way too scammy.
@pluralistic The Commonwealth of Virginia had this issue. Fly by night so-called "Israeli Locksmiths". These guys would do auto/residential lockouts with deadblows/prybars and charge hundreds for a grade 3 lockset. The state responded with training/ licensing req's & (edit: unclear, law older?) made unlicensed possession of picks prima facie intent to commit burglary. Let me tell you, it's an odd thing to be the only one taking the class just to practice a hobby. It seemed effective.
@pluralistic recently I went to a Dr apt, I was kinda in a hurry so I said the address via voice and went with it.
I ended up at a farm barn outside of town. There is nothing obvious to indicate why it happened, no common street or town names. The Dr office notes it is a common occurrence.
@pluralistic@AnnaAnthro At the other end of spectrum, you have my street, which Google Maps is convinced it and the next street over are a single road. It’s been 20+ years of mixups with mail and deliveries, with the residents of both streets and the town hall repeatedly trying to get Google Maps to correct this mistake.
Somehow only Google Maps can’t figure this one out. All other services list both streets accurately. Of course, 90% of delivery people use Google Maps so… 😬
Smallish town with only so many delivery folk. You'd think their working knowledge of the area would eventually override the one-block map error, so they'd know what street they were on. Hmm
@gfkdsgn@bougiewonderland@pluralistic@AnnaAnthro Thanks for the heads up! The location wasn't noted on Openstreetmap (our provider of locations) so we just added it, should be on our map automagically updated soon. (you'll see an icon there, the red basket is for 'retail' in general)
Delivery folk never read notes attached to orders and/or just can't accept that their phone is wrong as we stand 100 feet away waving our arms at them.
The reluctance to accept reality vs the phone is itself interesting.
I have seen this with taxis (which never see the number on my huge apartment building, drive right past and up the street where their GPS tells them to, wrongly), and with delivery drivers (who often are directed to the back door, which I cannot open remotely for them, by their GPS).
@tomjennings@bougiewonderland@pluralistic@AnnaAnthro Navigating exclusively by driving doubles this effect. When you walk a lot you observe little details (because it's actually possible to do so) and so when you do use maps you take them as only vague guides to locations. There's always missing details on a map, even the best ones necessarily have to leave out details.
Delivery drivers have so little time to linger and learn. It's a real loss.
@pluralistic Yes, we are seeing a return of the days where we needed to have a varied network of associates and friends from which to get referrals and recommendations based on their experience and grounded in trust, earned and held dear. As I'm finding, for most of the rest of the world outside our little technosphere it's never been any different, and probably never should have been. The internet as it is now puts too much emphasis on self-promotion and captured attention, and there's a huge value miscalculation going on over it currently. Companies like this, popping up to grab attention and money away without providing anything of real value in return is just another altitude marker flashing past on our race to the bottom of this collapsing bubble. The other billion-and-a-half 'attention scams' being enabled by the internet are the same, and they've been able to disassemble, subvert, or make us distrust the tools of trust we had relied on before.
One good option, which does require a bit of personal rewiring on our parts, is a personal emphasis on personal networks of human contact and human interaction, which over time and practice can help us build bonds of trust with those around us in our community. Long before the web came along (at least for me in the western US), other forces were already hard at work trying to break our links to and trust in our local communities, and a car-centric suburban-sprawl cookie-cutter landscape of identical houses filled with people that drive 2+ miles to meet at a place you must pay to inhabit and hang out.
When I started to look into the cracks in my section of that society, I found flourishing cultures and groups who think and work completely differently, even in my own neighborhoods. Trying to learn more about leftism and anarcho-whatists groups ideals and thinking made me look for hints of these different approaches. Changing things like how often and where I bicycle (and for what purpose), where and how I shop, and needing to take a second, locally-centered job helped force me to learn more about these networks, and seeing them in action helping people accomplish things really makes me hopeful about a life without, perhaps in spite of, the web.
@pluralistic yeah I looked for a laundromat near me once, the closest one Google Maps found was 4km away. Then the next day I’m out for a walk and find one myself not a kilometre from my apartment…
@pluralistic There's a wider, weird ecosystem of home-service contractors who have bad reputations or otherwise can't get visibility in online results who sign up with scammy referral services. Wound up getting our AC repaired during a heat wave last year by a guy who no one would ever have hired directly, for an exorbitant feed. Our local tile warehouse tried to the same thing with their referral service.
Alternatively, Google (and by extension, all tech companies) have been horribly evil companies from the beginning, but we were too gullible to notice. By the time we did realize that huge corporate monstrosities are as bad for society as criminal drug cartels, it was too late.
@eldubuu@unikitty@pluralistic I was searching my Gmail inbox for something yesterday, and happened upon 20 year old invites I sent to others, so that they could join Gmail themselves, the only way at the time.
@tehstu@eldubuu@unikitty@pluralistic I did that same thing last week. I gave my gmail address over the phone to somebody and they commented that they had never heard such a short Gmail address. So I went and looked, and it was June 2004 when some blogger gave me an invite.
When we talk about managing disinformation, it often devolves into fights around "left vs right". Or "people being silenced". But I think the examples here and throughout the replies actually make this a much better use case for discussing responsibility.
I know that we all want to fight fake news, but we should probably start by trying to fight fake addresses and fake businesses. At least that would start to establish baseline societal expectations in a non-partisan way.
@pluralistic Google is anti-democratic. It should be a publicly accountable democratic organisation. Instead Larry and Sergey created yet another tech-monster, just with a slightly moderated profit motive because they own the controlling stake and don't care that much about profitability. Albeit enough to piss 80bn a year up the wall on buybacks.
Add comment