This is getting ridiculous.

Also anyone else notice that google now censors most search results about drugs? They give you their fucking suicide hotline as the top result if you mention anything harder than weed. After that, it's all DEA and DOJ webpages, literal DARE shit, actual rehab advertisements, and massively SEO'd rehab related grifts. Good luck getting any Bluelight or Erowid pages to come up without actively searching for them nowadays.

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
    hexbear
    54
    4 months ago

    Did you mean * completely different search * because that's what these results are

  • DayOfDoom [any, any]
    hexbear
    50
    4 months ago

    Actually Google just changed it. You gotta put three brackets on each side of each word now.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    hexbear
    43
    4 months ago

    I used to love double quotes because that technique worked so well. Then one day I realized google was getting to be more and more like their Youtube website. Like Youtube - Google was giving me "help" that I in no way wanted. And - of course - google doesn't offer a plain vanilla search option to disable. "Helping" is forced enabled.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        hexbear
        10
        4 months ago

        I don't know but at google you can use before: and/or after:.

        kangaroo attack after:2015-01-01 before:2016-01-01

        So at google videos you could search for

        kangaroo attack after:2015-01-01 before:2016-01-01 site:youtube.com

  • LeopardShepherd [none/use name]
    hexbear
    31
    4 months ago

    Oh my lord the drug stuff is beyond infuriating. If I'm looking up how to abuse a substance, giving me endless rehab ads and helplines is just gonna make me abuse drugs even harder I swear.

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
    hexbear
    29
    4 months ago

    Google, I'm just trying to find a out if my new blood pressure meds are going to put me into a coma after my wife and I took 2.5 shots and then she said "Uh hey, TheLepidopterists, is this okay on <drug name redacted>?"

    I do not need rehab clinic websites with articles about "what do I do if I can't quit heavily drinking on <redacted drug name>" I just want to know if literally any drinking is extremely dangerous. Had to ask my doctor directly to find out that it was fine as long as I wasn't drinking daily or bingeing. Spent the week in panic.

    • SerLava [he/him]
      hexbear
      31
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      you have to use fucking Reddit to find any real information. Otherwise this is all you get:

      "low blood pressure" OK here's 200 blog articles about HIGH blood pressure.

      "I just took an extra pill of this drug by mistake. Is this dangerous?" OK 200 blog articles saying do not take more than it says to take. WOW

      "my arm hurts" OK web MD says arm cancer would hurt.

      "ok that doesn't answer my" OK ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor. Ask a doctor.

      "how long do you have to wait to take Afrin after the 3 day period?" TAKE AFRIN ONCE EVERY 12 HOURS FOR NOT MORE THAN 3 DAYS

      "no but like, I know, but is there like a cooldown period? Do I need to wait a couple weeks? A month? A year?" TAKE AFRIN ONCE EVERY 12 HOURS FOR NOT MORE THAN 3 DAYS

      "Has any human being ever purchased Afrin two times during the course of their long lifespan? Is that OK to do?" TAKE AFRIN ONCE EVERY 12 HOURS FOR NOT MORE THAN 3 DAYS

      • cosecantphi [he/him]
        hexagon
        hexbear
        16
        4 months ago

        The ask a doctor shit makes me especially mad, like motherfucker, if I had any sort of timely access to a doctor do you really think I'd be asking fucking google?

        • LeopardShepherd [none/use name]
          hexbear
          13
          4 months ago

          Also you'll have much more luck and very likely better information about drugs by speaking to a pharmacist. Many doctors don't know are either hard to contact and/or have have fairly basic drug knowledge.

          • Awoo [she/her]
            hexbear
            10
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            I have a family member who's a pharmacist, the doctors know jack shiiiiiiit about the drugs.

            • cosecantphi [he/him]
              hexagon
              hexbear
              8
              4 months ago

              Doctors still think the Naloxone in Suboxone actually prevents people from "abusing it". The patent holder fed them a bunch of bullshit decades ago about how it causes precipitated withdrawal if you snort or IV it instead of using the prescribed sublingual RoA.

              But despite the universal experience of people who have snorted and IV'd it being that the Naloxone may as well be inactive due to it having a significantly lower mu-opioid receptor binding affinity than Buprenorphine, doctors still to this day insist on prescribing Suboxone instead of plain Buprenorphine, often at double the cost to the patient.

  • @GinAndJuche
    hexbear
    24
    4 months ago

    Yandex is where it’s at, doesn’t censor anything I’ve noticed at least. Drugs and piracy ftw

  • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
    hexbear
    23
    4 months ago

    Having to add "reddit" to every search in the hope of getting a remotely human answer and not just 10-20 corporate/government websites rehashing the same information

    • cosecantphi [he/him]
      hexagon
      hexbear
      18
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      When most subreddits went offline last year, google became absolutely, profoundly useless. That really exposed this issue to a lot of people who actually hadn't noticed before. If I'm a google exec right now, I'd be looking to prop up reddit by any means necessary because at this point if reddit were to ever digg itself permanently, it'd probably take google with it.

      • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
        hexbear
        5
        4 months ago

        That's a great point

        The disappointing thing is that there are still some niche forums out there if you know what they're called. But they rarely show up in Google searches

      • sovietknuckles [they/them]
        hexbear
        5
        4 months ago

        I search Lemmy these days instead of reddit. Example:

        laptop "join lemmy" inurl:post
        
  • Awoo [she/her]
    hexbear
    18
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I've been saying for a while now that if someone brought back the fundamental ideas of hyperlinks as an authority-confirming tool of doing search ranking via bot crawlers it's quite possible that they could end up with a better search engine. In particular because the black hats have moved on from manipulating that style of search engine due to it no longer being how Google does things.

    I think the most irritating thing is the recency bias Google has now. Sometimes the 15 year old page on a given topic is just better, and should still be the top result on a topic. Google incentivises the entire web to rehash itself over and over and over and over now. Churning out the same shit in different wording over and over again to chase recency bias.

    • YuccaMan [he/him]
      hexbear
      11
      4 months ago

      The one and only reason that reddit shouldn't yet be scourged from the internet

    • @Shyfer@ttrpg.network
      hexbear
      7
      4 months ago

      What, are the top results all being barely readable, AI generated spam articles and ad-sponsored or hidden marketing masquerading as reviews and blog posts not good enough for you?

      Because if so, ya, that's all we got unless you tailor your search a bunch with stuff like that...

  • pumpchilienthusiast [comrade/them, any]
    hexbear
    10
    4 months ago

    its pretty breathtaking how much google in particular has turned to big pile of dog shit

    I also really like digital repositories of libraries and such that ignore quotes and helpfully provide stuff they think you mean, extremely helpful when researching

  • ValpoYAFF [comrade/them]
    hexbear
    10
    4 months ago

    If you use duckduckgo, you can put

    !psy

    Before your search to be taken directly to the psychonaut wiki page for that search term.

    !psych

    Directs you to the American psychological association lmao