How do people find good information on the internet these days?

It used to be that you would do a search on a relevant subject and get blog posts, forums posts, and maybe a couple of relevant companies offering the product or service. (And if you wanted more information on said company you could give them a call and actually talk to a real person about said service) You could even trust amazon and yelp reviews. Now searches have been completely taken over by Forbes top 10 lists, random affiliate link click through aggregators that copy and paste each others work, review factories that will kill your competitors and boost your product stars, ect… It seems like the internet has gotten soooo much harder to use, just because you have to wade through all the bullshit. It’s no wonder people switch to reddit and lemmy style sites, in a way it mirrors a little what kind of information you used to be able to garner from the internet in it’s early days. What do people do these days to find genuine information about products or services?

clobubba,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Mr_Blott,

    UK version of Consumer Reports is which.co.uk

    If you’re buying appliances etc it’s well worth the money

    SoylentBlake,

    We’re gonna put that to the test!

    Sterile_Technique,
    @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

    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!

    Echo71Niner,

    That is an amazing list of helpful extensions, THANK YOU!

    RobMyBot,

    Saving this comment. Thanks!

    deweydecibel, (edited )

    Should also be said that for various edge cases where a extension doesn’t exist, uBlock’s element selector function lets you get very granular with filtering things. If you know a bit of html/css, you can get creative with it and consistently hide just about any element you like across many different sites.

    For example, recently I’ve been on a quest to de-rating all my favorite media sites and Google results, etc. No more wayward rotten tomatoes, metacritic, or imbd scores when I want to look up info on media unless I go looking for them on those websites. No addon that I’m aware of exists solely for this purpose, so I’m basically using uBlock to do it by using the element selector any time I see them. Some sites make this tricky, and any adjustment to the design of the page could break it, but the joy I get from being able to curate my web experience to exactly what I want to it to be can’t be understated.

    Sterile_Technique,
    @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

    Using uBlock to block-element to block a prompt asking me to disable my ad blocker is one of the best feelings ever.

    idefix,

    There’s a list for that I believe

    Daft_ish,

    Neo: What are you trying to tell me? I should ignore ad content?

    Morpheus: No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.

    sylverstream,

    Thanks! Was looking for useful extensions. Saved!

    elk,

    I wish kbin had a save feature; I'm replying so I can find this later 😆

    sheogorath,

    You can always bookmark the direct link to this post :')

    If you’re on mobile I suggest using Pocket app to save interesting links, you can find the Android version here and iOS version here.

    simonced,

    On lemmy, you can click on the little … at the bottom of the post and save bookmarks of posts and replies :)

    https://lemmy.one/pictrs/image/46eb118c-82ea-4475-b208-a1548521fa7f.png

    Lakija,

    Well damn. Thank you. Saving this! I have Ublock origin already. I’m excited about the other suggestions too!

    Pinterest is half the fucking google image search. Bye! And the other half is shopping ads. Google can kiss my grits.

    Diabolo96,

    Use alternative front-end ends of the popular sites such as youtube , Twitter, medium , Google,etc you use to get a privacy enhanced, ad free, clutter free experience.

    github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends

    There’s apps that can automatically redirect you to these alternative whenever you encounter their counterpart.

    sylverstream,

    That looks cool! Saved. What apps could do the redirect? Would that be possible with an extension? That would be awesome.

    Diabolo96,

    Libredirect: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/…/libredirect/?u…

    Bonus : github.com/pluja/awesome-privacy

    sylverstream,

    That libredirect plugin is awesome! Just tried it quickly on Quora and that works.

    Buffaloaf,

    I like Ghostery too. It blocks cookies and trackers so I can just search for something without being bombarded by ads for it later.

    gregging,

    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 :)

    mark,
    @mark@programming.dev avatar

    Definitely. You’d love Allsides.com btw. Gives great info on how a topic is covered across the spectrum and summarizes them really well. There’s an RSS feed for it too.

    enthusiasticamoeba,

    What do you recommend for an RSS app?

    kionite231,

    QuiteRSS

    redshift,

    NewsBlur is great.

    caglel,
    @caglel@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ve just recently found iOS app “feeeed”

    das,
    @das@lemellem.dasonic.xyz avatar

    I’ve been using Nunti (FOSS, Android only) for a few months now. I love it’s adaptive learning feature which does a good job of filtering articles that I don’t care about.

    ALostInquirer,

    Do you happen to know how long it may take the “adaptive learning” feature to kick in? I gather it may take some extended usage, however if that feature does seem to work I may have to reconsider Nunti, as I was initially put off by the absence of some other features when last I looked at it.

    das,
    @das@lemellem.dasonic.xyz avatar

    You can access it after you like/dislike 50 articles

    ALostInquirer,

    Thanks! I must’ve missed or forgot that since I only briefly looked into it (and looking with a different feature in mind).

    Uranium3006,
    Uranium3006 avatar

    I could use android and desktop Linux recomendations too

    Shitemachete,

    I’ve been using FocusReader on Android.

    Very_Bad_Janet,

    Inoreader RSS app for Android.

    thru_dangers_untold,

    Inoreader

    aejinei,

    iOS & MacOS recommendation Free: NetNewsWire Paid: Reeder 5 (one time payment)

    gregging,

    I use NetNewsWire (on iOS) and swear by it. Super simple and easy to use.

    The developer has an intensely focused vision for simplicity that I love and think is pretty wise too.

    AtheistComic,

    Search for open source rss feed readers. There are a few good ones.

    Lininop,

    Uh yeah but also I think I get a chance to get out and buy one yet or not to bad people I know you are going to be a little more than I do you know.

    SoylentBlake,

    You can also check out ground.news for the same bias-check aggregator thing.

    NerfHerder,

    I use ImproveTheNews.org for this.

    Imhotep,

    First story they show a picture of Yvan Attal (actor) when it is about what Gabriel Attal said (minister of education)

    BlackSkinnedJew,

    I use www.presearch.com

    leanleft,
    @leanleft@lemmy.ml avatar

    people are gave some good answers.
    it boils down to various large sites.
    wikipedia(app) and reddit(app) are my top.
    often time i just bang out a search and pinpoint the answer and trash the rest.
    [deleted] stackexchanges and ycomb are some other popular sites.
    quora used to seem attractive but information is questionable and the whole experience is trash.

    gemini,bookmarks,chatgpt are some others. also libgen .

    Aux,

    There’s a lot of competition and a big overload of data. That makes searching for stuff really hard. Don’t know the solution…

    romikusumabakti,

    Hacker News top links

    MargotRobbie,
    @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m just trying asking multiple people who seem to be knowledgeable on the topic to see if I can get people to volunteer their recommendations.

    ZeroXHunter,
    @ZeroXHunter@lemmy.world avatar

    Just use a chatbot, it works like a charm. I personally use bing chat’s api to get good information.

    fat_stig,

    I used to frequent searchlores.org and fravia.com back in the day, they were a treasure trove of specialised web search and data mining techniques.

    UNSW maintain a mirror of the old websites, last updated 14 years ago, worth a look if you have some time on your hands.

    biostatisticien.eu/…/indexo.htm

    Deathcrow,

    There’s an interesting blog post on this subject (likely someone posted it already): 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.

    madcaesar,

    It’s already breaking.

    1. Some stuff just links to deleted comments
    2. Newer stuff is just crap since a lot of knowledge has left the site
    Maybe,

    Honestly, niche YouTube channels. The problem is sometimes you don’t want to sit through a 30-45 minute video to find the information you’re after.

    Obi,
    @Obi@sopuli.xyz avatar

    I would agree, you can still find unbiased stuff on YouTube, though depending how popular the thing you’re looking up is, you might also have to go through a bunch of sell-outs first.

    Also the only thing I still go to the Rxx website for.

    HelloHotel, (edited )
    @HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

    Anything notorios for hype, has its hype based marketing shills that drown out the real information and honest voices. Excelant example is anything involving sex

    bachalxyz,

    I would agree. And I love those videos with timestamps.

    patchwork,

    I haven’t found Google useful as a search engine for years and now Youtube is squeezing creators and pushing so many ads it will become unusable for me once the anti-ad-blocker policy is fully implemented. Paying for Youtube premium isn’t the answer either, it will cost as much as Amazon Prime just to watch YT videos, then the price will continue to rise after we subscribe to the service.

    We must remember that Alphabet Inc, the parent company of these services is an essentially an advertising company that also sells the data they collect about us to virtually anyone, including police in right-wing states looking to arrest abortion seekers.

    telegra.ph/How-Big-Tech-Revenue-and-Profit-Breaks…

    androidauthority.com/youtube-anti-adblocking-feat…

    https://www.businessinsider.com/police-getting-help-social-media-to-prosecute-people-seeking-abortions-2023-2

    PersonalDevKit,

    Worth noting my youtube premium subscription price hasn’t changed since I signed up in 2017.

    If I cancel this deal I have and go to sign up again, or change to a family plan then the price goes up.

    I’m not sure if this is the norm, or a special part of the deal I got but just a bit of extra info

    madcaesar,

    They are also removing features like downvote count and raising prices. Fuck google and YouTube.

    TechCodecPawx,

    Quora (www.quora.com) is marketed as “A place to share knowledge and better understand the world”… You can ask questions and get them answered by experts, or you can find questions already answered by experts…

    Moghie,

    I follow some reviewers on YouTube, Project Farm is a great one.

    randon31415,

    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?

    Wakmrow,

    I mean Wikipedia is not without a shitload of bias. Try searching democracy in China or homelessness in the USSR.

    Take the contrast between the pages democracy in China vs democracy in the US. The Chinese page uses shit like oxford and Cambridge to call China an authoritarian one party state. Which: okay, but the framing of this is incredibly negative given the same argument could be for the US. Notably, the US page (redirected from democracy in the US) simply outlines US government structure and function.

    The Chinese page condemns the current government of China as being antidemocratic while unironically citing the government that lost the civil war to the Chinese communist party instituted martial law for 38 years in Taiwan. Yes, the current Chinese government does not allow other parties to run candidates (as far as I understand it) but given what the people experienced before this government, its not that shocking that the vast majority of the population believes they live in a democracy.

    Long windedly, Wikipedia is also super biased and corrupt.

    randon31415,

    One of the longest running ARBICOM cases is about Tawain. The first one ended, and then another one pops up literally on naming conventions of geography in Tawain. It is like a unmovable obstacle vs. an unmovable obstacle with endless chineese editors vs. endless wikipedia burocracy.

    I would hate to see what the mandarin version of Wikipedia has to put up with.

    Franzia, (edited )

    Wow are you saying Wikipedia is biased and corrup because they didn’t inaccurately call the U.S. a one-party Authoritarian state?

    The “Democracy in China” page explicitly states at the top that i’s going to be an overview of political concepts and that there is on-going debate.

    Homelessness in Russia does have a section on Soviet Union, talking about “Densification” following the October Revolution ie. Forced re-housing into small state owned flats.

    Criticism of the US is indeed found directly in the same paragraph about how our government works:

    It has higher levels of incarceration and inequality than most other liberal democracies, and is the only liberal democracy without universal healthcare

    Open your eyes, Wikipedia is showing how it can be an incredibly dense and informative resource.

    Wakmrow,

    The debate is from western scholars and from a western perspective.

    If you are going to call communist party control of elections authoritarian and undemocratic, then two capitalist parties controlling all elections in the US isn’t really functionally different. I’m not a China Stan. My point is that even trying to research how Chinese government and politics function using Wikipedia is exposing one to western propaganda.

    Also, I think it should be fairly obvious that the western state and intelligence wings clearly are influential on Wikipedia.

    Franzia,

    Calling the CCP Authoritarian and Undemocratic / Illiberal is accurate. They disappear those who protest or object.

    Having a two party, first past the post, electoral college system in the US is less democratic than other Liberal Democracies. And wikipedia has links acknowledging that.

    Researching China is always going to be exposing oneself to Western Propoganda. Why? Because Chinese Propoganda is the direct source we have to go by. We are unsure 100% how it works, and must try to read China state actions, and makr educated guesses - because of China’s obfuscation of the truth.

    mimichuu_,

    The thing is most of the people who say they’re making educated guesses are actually just being deliberately dishonest to plant dislike for a geopolitical rival in the population. And obviously Chinese state media is being dishonest too. You don’t have to pick one over the other.

    790,

    Alignment with the facts? Depends. quillette.com/2022/07/18/cognitive-distortions/

    stabby_cicada,

    What I’m getting from that is:

    (1) Wikipedias editors don’t want to use racists as sources for articles.

    (2) The author thinks refusing to give equal time to fringe arguments that link genetics and intelligence is a surrender to “woke ideology” that will kill Wikipedia in the long run.

    Yawn.

    790,

    “fringe arguments that link genetics and intelligence” – genes influence intelligence, that’s the state of science.

    I’ve always wondered how people who think the link between genes and intelligence is false explain the evolution of intelligence. I’m honestly shocked that people here in “Technology” give your comment so many upvotes. Shouldn’t we be more sciency here? Also, AI is a good example that intelligence is not independent of the material world.

    Your point (1) probably gets applause because of camp thinking. Don’t let your beliefs become your identity. www.paulgraham.com/identity.htmlwww.youtube.com/watch?v=NxqTOm3TzsY

    However, I understand that the topic is extremely uncomfortable and personally even think it should be avoided because society is not ready for it. There is still too much racism and hatred existing in society for this knowledge not to be abused. The same social immaturity also explains why currently many suspect this research to be motivated by racism.

    waterbogan,

    Well that was interesting. Useful to know I cant rely on Wikipedia any more for anything on human intelligence.

    With anything controversial like this its best to go direct to the source if possible - the research itself

    randon31415,

    If you feel something doesn’t align with facts, there is a whole multi-level system. Check the talk page to see if the page isn’t part of some sanctioned case. Make a referenced change. If it is revered, bring it up on the talk page. Seek consensus. If there is a coordinated group of people reverting you, then bring your case to Request for Comment (RfC). If you are following the rules and being civil, others will come to your aid through the RfC process. If it breaks out into an edit war, the thing will go to the Arbicom and those that were civil will “win”, e.g. the people not being civil will be banned.

    mimichuu_,

    Again with this. Wikipedia can’t be neutral. Nothing can be. Neutral doesn’t exist.

    There is absolutely no way to be “politically unbiased” when talking about things. Being “neutral” just means being in favor of the status quo, which is not neutral at all. There is no third position, you either oppose or support the way things work right now. Bias is completely inescapable.

    If you want to get an “unbiased” view of something, the only real thing you can do is to read many sources biased against both outlooks and compare and contrast. What you end up with will still be biased though, just by virtue of what you select to care about and not.

    People who claim to be neutral and unbiased only say it because they think it makes them look more credible, or they have deluded themselves to be able to think they’re somehow more rational than everyone else. There is no way to not be biased as a human being.

    randon31415,

    A good chunk of Wikipedia content is minor sports teams, players, towns with sub-1000 population, and minor highways that connect them. I’m not sure how you can be “politically biased” when describing “Alberta Highway 564 which runs mostly west-east from the east Calgary boundary”.

    Franzia,

    so neutral that they had people arguing how to write articles from a non-human POV.

    Academics have since acknowledged the impossibility of achieving this fantasy “unbiased” perspective.

    give you a good lesson on what people think are fact and opinion.

    This has been such an incredible change to Wikipedia’s work, allowing dedicated spaces to talking about rhetoric and talking points for readers to learn.

    facts regardless of what current political discourse says is right

    Yeah, more or less. We are always free to check the sources, which is also a part of what Wikipedia nerds debate - what is the best resource to link to for those who need more info?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • technology@lemmy.world
  • rosin
  • cisconetworking
  • GTA5RPClips
  • osvaldo12
  • khanakhh
  • DreamBathrooms
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • everett
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • InstantRegret
  • kavyap
  • cubers
  • megavids
  • modclub
  • normalnudes
  • Durango
  • thenastyranch
  • ethstaker
  • tacticalgear
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • JUstTest
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •