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That makes sense. Way too many web search results look and feel like they weren't written by a human lately. It's gotten even more difficult for me to figure out what's trustworthy and what isn't.
When the first three results look like high schoolers copied with slight wording changes from the same source and they are all written in an extremely passive tone, my assumption is AI. Questions on things like cooking temps are the worst in my experience, and I assume that is something which is easy to automate.
I was looking for tips on cutting acrylic sheets and everything I found seemed untrustworthy. Bad advice there could be hazardous.
That I feel is a case of people yearning for a day that never existed.
Like, every GenX/Older Millennial who had a modem too early in life has stories about The Anarchist's Cookbook. And the thing you learn REAL fast is that people would edit and share MUCH more dangerous versions (and considering what the source was to begin with...). I remember being part of the mod staff for a couple DC++ hubs where we would check versions and tell anyone with a(n overly) dangerous edit to delete that shit or be banned.
Fast forward a couple decades and I needed to do a temporary repair on my car before I could get some "body" damage fixed (like two hours of effort but needed a part). Every attempt at searching, even on reddit, would talk about how you should use flexseal or the good duct tape or whatever. Only lucked out because I found one blog post that talked about how using any of those methods would guarantee you rip off the paint and drastically increase the cost of repairs and to instead use automotive masking tape unless you REALLY needed to drive in a heavy downpour.
Same with doing house work. Youtube is immensely useful for that. But there is a reason so many "maker" channels have "React to life hack" videos. Because if you don't know what you are doing? Some whackjob using clever editing to make it look like they built a duct adapter out of elmer's glue and an actual repair video are indistinguishable (especially after youtube hid the dislikes...). And that can range from wasting your time to outright fire hazards or frozen pipes.
The reality is that people have always been shits. And it REALLY fucking sucks when the LLMs designed to parse that, invariably, become shits too. But this has been a problem since people discovered SEO in the first place. Volume has gone up but the problem is not new.
And... late stage capitalism. But I find myself REALLY liking Kagi (libertarian tech bro CEO aside...) simply because it reduces the impact of my search history on results while also letting me manually emphasize some sites or outright block any that piss me off. Still get the SEO blogspam but a lot less.
I remember the anarchit's cookbook and knowing it was terrible at the time. One dumb friend was able to prove it while luckily avoiding seeious injury!
But what I also learned back then was criticsl thinking as a lot of early websites were just as terrible, but it was a bit easier to tell they were terrible because they did not have any sulporting information like references or examples. Today it is fairly easy to dismiss youtube videos where the person is enthusiastic or doesn't show the thing from start to finish. The best auto repair videos were some guy with a handheld camera (probably a phone) walking through the process and explaining what they were doing and why. If they stuggle a bit, even better! My favorite channel for someone doing wordworking explains everything in a calm and clear way, shows the process, and explains the ins and outs and why they might have done it differently in the past!
The worst ones are someone enthusiastic showing five second clips and not mentioning anything about safety or how to know if you are doing it wrong. They are entertainment personalities and not a source of knowledge!