this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 133 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Watch out mate, you're going to bring out the deniers

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Look, all I’m saying is that I have yet to see any definitive proof that China really exists. A flag with 5 stars and 2 colors? Who do they expect to fool with that?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Also the borders are so inconsistent. One minute it’s 9 dashes, next they’re claiming it’s 10 dashes. Can’t even keep a story straight.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

And a giant ass wall all around it? Ppfsht, yeah, right. Just believe in fairy tales if you want to.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I saw a picture of China's purported leader but it was just Winnie the Pooh.
You can't fool me with cartoons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

I've seen lots of people who say they're from China, but they all look just like Japanese people, can I really just take them at their word?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Wow. I had never seen the full image. thanks!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

That moment when you go shopping, but have to stop a column of tanks on the way home.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Did you upload the image? I don't see anything

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I did, can you see the link? The picture was originally from there.

[–] [email protected] 98 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

When will people realise that google has tailored algorithms and we are not all experiencing the same search results?

The first thing you’ll see if you search Google for “tank man” right now will not be the iconic picture of the unidentified Chinese man who stood in protest in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square, but an entirely fake, AI-generated selfie of that historical event.

No, this is the first thing the author saw. Probably because they are a journalist writing about AI.

When I google tank man I don't even get the AI image on the first page. The top result is from history.com. If I go to google image search it is the 7th result on the page. The top result is from wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

When will people realise that google has tailored algorithms and we are not all experiencing the same search results?

You're right. This is the real problem with search engines like Google and one reason I use SearXNG instances and Mojeek instead. Where I live, the algorithm is more likely to net content that is biased toward right-wing conspiracy theories and problematic agencies because of that algorithm. Any search engine that does this is not a valid search engine, in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I suppose it's invalid in the context of showing you what you exactly searched for. But it's pretty valid in the context of showing you what you're looking for. For example, someone with a disdain for science when searching for the terms "big bang" or "evolution" is probably not looking for scientific articles detailing the rigor of the prevalent theories. If the point of a search engine is to find what you're looking for, it's pretty effective by that measure. It just so happens that what you're looking is biased in its own ways.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Similarly, but from a good view, if a programmer searches "how to kill child" they probably don't want a tutorial of how to kill human children.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yes I had a family member in a right wing conspiracy area. It was infuriating because his friends would tell him their nonsense and he would be skeptical and google it, only for google to seemingly support what they were saying.

I couldn't replicate his results at all and it would take a lot of searching to even find what he was talking about so I could debunk it for him.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Google's becoming pretty terrible anyway, it only seems to return pages that are selling things. I've switched to Kagi at this point and it seems to work better, it's subscription only, but you know you're the one paying for it and that means that you're the end customer.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because last time I checked they just used Bing anwyay, while Kagi runs their own indexer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yes but why is that better. For censorship you mean?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's better because Bing may still have selling ads as a priority when building the indexer. If you're not the one paying, you're the product.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That's a good point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

You do know it's not an either- or situation, right? You can be both.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It changes the question from "why not use duck" to "what does duck really add to bing"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

@eltimablo @throws_lemy @xilliah @rastilin what it removes from bing: tracking, and personalized results. I believe it also adds the bang search, which few if any other places have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Well they have a sensible business model and can provide another stream of income for Bing from users it otherwise wouldn't reach.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Duck duck go is practically broken. I switched to startpage which worked alright until I got a VPN, then I just started using bing with better results. So it is somehow worse than bing even. Duck ignores my quotes and minuses and such things.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I recently switched to kagi, too. Couldn't be happier.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

New Kagi user here too, been very happy so far. Though it turns out I do a lot of searching and blew through the 300 searches in the $5 plan in like 2 weeks...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I just signed up with them, too. They were able to get me a link to the age of a small, nondescript lava flow near my town on the third hit. (5000 years old! A youngster!) All the other search engines gave me unrelated crap.

I have a hard stop set up for when I hit $10, so I'll switch tiers if it comes to that. 😅

I don't necessarily like paying for search, but I couldn't take ad-driven search any longer. Big waste of time getting through the chaff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I wonder if the verb Google will stay with us when its origin is lost in history

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm sure it'll still be in the paper. 😉

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago

we aren't far away from easily-made interactive images / video where people will be able to create realistic selfies / video clips of their own self - in famous situations. Like Forest Gump being inserted into meeting historic President. The appeal is too strong and it will likely create tons of highly upvoted/shared social media images distorting the original.

People tend to treat detecting photoshop images as a game of one-upmanship, not as an importance of preserving a documented concept or situation for others to learn and understand.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe google images needs a toggle for AI generated content. It won't be perfect, but it should filter out a chunk of it just by excluding pages that have it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Accurately detecting an AI generated image may be more computationally expensive than generating it in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Another "success" of CCP technology