this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Google search is over (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by JoBo@feddit.uk to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

  • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

  • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K." "What about Kenya?" "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

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[โ€“] Rottcodd@literature.cafe 68 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I doubted this, so I tried it. I haven't used google for ages, so I first had to search "google" in DDG, then I went to the main page. When I started typing it in, it suggested the full text of the search, so I thought it was even less likely that it would work like the OP said - that even if it had been the case that it previously did that, so many people have self-evidently done that search that the results would now be correct.

But no - there it was, right at the top - "While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter "K". The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."

And with that, I'll contentedly go back to not using google.

[โ€“] jigsaw250@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

The closest is Kenya, which starts with a "K" sound, but is actually spelled with a "K" sound."

Not going to lie, that's pretty disturbing. This search engine is used by millions (maybe billions?) and they're providing false information to all those people. That's scary.

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