• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    That’s a bingo. Any “trending” algorithm is designed to get you to click on it. It’s not a source of accurate information.

    It’s the same with search results. You’re searching for X? Here’s something X-adjacent we’ve been paid to show you that you might click on while looking for X. We’re going to call it “what others buy” and hope you do, too.

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It really bothers me because I want to buy actual good quality stuff but I have no idea how to find it because I don’t trust any reviews or anything on search engines at all really.

      • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This is one of the big things that killed Amazon for me. They used to have a great search and filter function that was designed to make it as easy as possible to find what you were looking for. Now it’s designed to find things that are related to your search and ignore your filters when sellers pay them to promote their product. Combined with the fake reviews and the ocean of low quality trash that fills 95% of their inventory, it’s now actually easier to drive to a store and search shelves manually than it is to sit and click.

        And don’t get me started on AI generated “reviews” that are just reworded marketing material with affiliate links. It used to be that google could get you some relatively reliable sources, but most of those have long since replaced real reviews with this bullshit. At this point, I just assume every review is a lie unless I see a video of a human testing the product while taking about it.

        I honestly think that anyone who is making money by misleading consumers with product reviews that aren’t actually based on some interaction with the product should be in prison for fraud.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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          5 months ago

          Top 7 “All” of all time on Lemmy, as seen by my instance:

          None younger than 10 months old, on a platform largely only about 12 months old in total. So once again, not really representative of the lifetime of the site, or what the site is like today.

            • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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              5 months ago

              No posts about open source. Nothing queer. No tankies or even leftist. I wouldn’t say that the best representation of today’s Lemmy.

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            5 months ago

            Yeah, to be clear that’s “of all time”. Like, if we listed the greatest human achievements of all time - fire, gunpowder, antibiotics, computers, vaccines, the internet, etc. - that list would not be expected to change daily or even once a century.:-)

            Also, every single one is either 10 or 11 months old - with only one exception being 9 months. That is obviously some kind of spike related to the Rexodus:-P.

            The Fediverse is much older than 12 months btw - your list contains posts from outside of Aussie.zone so it’s not looking at Local but rather All, so it includes those, which you can get to by sorting by Old.

            TLDR: “top of all time” is not intended to be anyone’s default search - Top or Active or New would be much better choices.