[HN Gopher] Brave Search Goggles: Alter search rankings with rul...
___________________________________________________________________
Brave Search Goggles: Alter search rankings with rules and filters
Author : llevert
Score : 275 points
Date : 2022-06-22 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| rel2thr wrote:
| Yea I've been waiting for this. Feels like the biggest innovation
| in search in a long time . Can't wait till the community builds a
| goggle to remove all built for SEO sites
| Pakdef wrote:
| avivo wrote:
| This is great. That said, I would love to see this extended
| beyond just keyword search, to _contextualization_ of a given
| piece of content. https://aviv.medium.com/contextualization-
| engines-can-fight-... ( I should note that the word authoritative
| here just means a particular 'lens' that has been vetted by a
| defined process--it's a way to make the problem simpler for
| prototyping. It might for example be a lens showing just accepted
| Stack Overflow answers.)
|
| Imagine being able to select a bit of code in your editor, and
| getting an explanation of what that code does based off the
| content of all of the accepted answers on Stack Overflow.
| atotic wrote:
| I hope Goggles can be used as a ranking signal to help default
| search engine deliver better results.
|
| Google has never had the appetite for letting users explicitly
| improve its results. Their reasoning was that pure algorithm is
| the only possible solution that scales. Even the minor features,
| such as "I never want to see this site", were removed.
|
| I am glad Brave is trying out something different. Crossing my
| fingers that it works, the current state of search is so meh..
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| > I hope Goggles can be used as a ranking signal to help
| default search engine deliver better results.
|
| Ranking is already treated as predicting which of the search
| matches the user is most likely to want to see. Clickbait gets
| highly ranked because users do in fact click on it. Goggles
| (which sound like a great idea) apparently let you somewhat
| control the prior probability distribution as an input to the
| ranking algorithm.
|
| I wonder what features it lets you select on. E.g. we had a
| thread here recently about finding useful product reviews. It
| would be great to have a goggle that downranks any site
| containing amazon affiliate links, since those are almost
| always basically shill sites despite being "reviews".
| oDot wrote:
| That is incorrect. Many high quality reviewers make money
| through affiliate links. For example, In 2020 LTT made 9%
| through Amazon Associates[0]
|
| [0] https://linustechtips.com/topic/1270087-linus-media-
| group-ma...
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Yes there are some exceptions. Maybe I should have said
| "most of" instead of "almost all", but the thing is that
| it's common and frequent enough that I want to bypass that
| style of "review".
| hedora wrote:
| Google has had a large team that manually curates results for a
| very, very long time.
|
| I have no idea why they aren't able to flag and block spam
| domains anymore.
| not2b wrote:
| The web is much too big for that to be practical.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I hope forums gain some weight after google decided to f** them
| over in the results. IDK in English but for spanish language
| forums are still valuable, but you need to know the domain name
| so that hurts discoverability.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I just used Brave for the first time and was absolutely
| delighted to see they have a dedicated "discussions" section
| when you search for something. It's literally what has sold
| me to trying it as my default engine for a few weeks.
| Agamus wrote:
| We users are a funny lot. I just used Brave for the first
| time, and the very first thing I did was look for how to
| turn off "discussions".
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Mmm, gonna try, thanks.
|
| Hmmm, can't find that discussions tab.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Goggles sounds like a great idea, and I'll have to play around
| with this more, but visually the word Goggles looks too much like
| "Google". I think that makes the marketing a bit confusing to
| average people.
| jmathai wrote:
| This is a pretty innovative feature.
|
| Here's the source code for a sample "Hacker News" Goggle.
| Essentially, it will prioritize domains popular on Hacker News. I
| could even see a browser plugin that lets you add or remove
| domains as you visit them.
|
| https://github.com/brave/goggles-quickstart/blob/main/goggle...
|
| And here's the language syntax.
|
| https://github.com/brave/goggles-quickstart/blob/main/goggle...
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| And I was wondering how long it would take for the hn version
| to arrive. Very cool.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Assuming I'm understanding Goggles correctly, I'd like to be
| able to have more than one search bar. An unfiltered, and a
| couple of custom ones.
| sp332 wrote:
| You can use keywords to select search engines in both Chrome
| and Firefox. If you configure "custom1" as a keyword, then
| just type custom1 followed by a space into the address bar it
| will activate that search engine and send the rest of your
| query to that URL.
| benjaminjackman wrote:
| maybe combine them with user defined !bang commands like on
| duckduckgo, !hn search_term (searches hn sites list from
| above).
| hirundo wrote:
| From the whitepaper: This paper proposes an open
| and collaborative system by whicha community, or a single user,
| can create sets of rules and filters, called Goggles, to define
| the space which a search engine can pull results from. Instead of
| a single ranking algorithm, we could have as many as needed,
| overcoming the biases that a single actor (the search engine)
| embeds into the results ... Such system would be made possible by
| the availability of a host search engine, providing the index and
| infrastructure, which are unlikely to be replicated without major
| development and infrastructure costs.
|
| Unironically, a multitude of biases in search engine results is
| just what we need. And the difficulty in building your own index
| is just why we don't have it. I would love to have my own version
| of google-without-the-stupid-stuff according to people I
| specifically identify and respect.
|
| I don't think we yet appreciate the importance of good bubble
| hygeine on mental health, and this is a bespoke bubble
| construction kit.
| [deleted]
| Darkphibre wrote:
| Absolutely! I see a lot of people complain about twitter, but
| if you actively curate who you want to see and turn off
| recommendation posts it can be a very pleasant experience.
| There's loads of positive communities posting heartwarming and
| uplifting content. It's just that rage and anger are optimized
| by the algorithms, you have to actively curate your bubble to
| counteract.
|
| Goggles have a _lot_ of promise. I 'm excited about the
| concepts Brave is bringing forth.
| tacotacotaco wrote:
| Sounds a lot of Kagi's block/boost and their lenses features. I
| haven't used either. Just pointing out prior art.
|
| https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-features
| walterbell wrote:
| Are those search ranking preferences linked to your paid Kagi
| account identity?
| solso wrote:
| Disclaimer: Works at Brave, before at Tailcat.
|
| Goggles white-paper was released more than a year ago, long
| before Kagi was even announced to the public.
|
| Additionally, before Brave acquired Tailcat (Jan 2021) I had
| the pleasure to share the draft of the paper with Kagi's
| founder.
|
| So no, there is no prior art.
|
| Let me add that I do not claim that Goggles is prior art of
| Lenses either.
|
| One of the key features of Goggles design is that the
| instructions, rules and filters are open and URL accessible.
|
| A Goggle is not so much a personal preference configuration,
| but a way to collaborative come up with shareable and
| expandable search re-rankers.
|
| Very different goals if you ask me. Of course, Goggles can be
| used for personal preferences exclusively, but that's not the
| use case we had in mind.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah seems like a copy of that feature
| pythux wrote:
| From what I can see the Lenses feature only allows to specify
| up to 10 domains? (Screenshot in the article linked above). If
| that's the case I don't see how Lenses and Goggles are
| comparable.
|
| Goggles allows to specify thousands of rules, not only on
| domain but also URL patterns and in the future matching on
| elements of the page as well (e.g. titles, etc.)
|
| It is also not clear that Lenses predates the Goggles
| whitepaper. We've been playing with the idea of Goggles for a
| long time.
|
| Disclaimer: I work at Brave.
| christkv wrote:
| Make it possible to share the goggles in some way and we can get
| a goggles best of site for different search domains.
| bombcar wrote:
| Zee goggles! Zey do sawmsing!
|
| This name is surprisingly close to their largest competitor,
| interesting choice.
|
| It'd be nice if Goggles could be "additive" and you could
| subscribe to them; I'd love an "anti stackexchange spam" one.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| Like this?
| https://search.brave.com/goggles/discover?goggles_id=https%3...
| mwint wrote:
| Can you expand on the "stackexchange spam" point?
| lagrange77 wrote:
| They often hide the fact that they mirror SO posts. That can
| be very annoying, like when you're researching a rare coding
| issue and there are 5 Google hits, and you only find out
| after clicking on all of them that 4 of them are copies of
| the first (only genuine) one.
| zamalek wrote:
| There are a bunch of stackexchange "mirrors" that add no
| value beyond adverts. They somehow rank higher than
| stackexchanges in popular search engines.
| purkka wrote:
| And arguably even worse, they often fill the first two
| pages with duplicates of the first couple results, making
| the entire search almost pointless if those couple
| solutions didn't work out for you.
| jacooper wrote:
| Honestly, its the only usable independent search engine, its
| privacy focused and unlike start page and DDG, its actually
| independent.
|
| Brave is doing what Mozilla wont't do.
|
| Also with Goggles you can finally block all the stupid Automated
| comparisons sites, Brave already had a forums section, and this
| makes it even better.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| > its actually independent.
|
| Brave used to inject their own affiliate codes into browser
| URLs [2]. It's a super shady practice and not one I would
| attribute to any trustworthy company, even if they rolled it
| back after being caught [1]. This is also after their whole
| eToro affiliate debacle too.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1269323315409235968
|
| [2] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/06/08/brave-
| browsers-...
| jjcon wrote:
| How many times does this need to be corrected... Brave never
| injected their own affiliate codes into anything. They had
| sponsored results when searching in the URL bar just like
| Mozilla is doing now in Firefox (as of v93) with 'Firefox
| Suggest'. When people complained, the Brave team turned it
| off by default and made it so users couldn't tab-to-complete
| to a sponsored result which was never the intention in the
| first place.
|
| If you don't believe Firefox Suggest is a thing:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest-faq
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| >Brave never injected their own affiliate codes into
| anything.
|
| Coinbase, the founder of Monero, and other experts
| disagree.
|
| Firefox does not opt-in their users to inserting Firefox's
| own affiliate codes to coinbase, binance, or other crypto
| websites to get paid for traffic the way Brave did.
| dubswithus wrote:
| When you say the founder of Monero do you mean the guy
| that was arrested recently for embezzlement?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Where's the forums sections. Second time I see it mentioned and
| I can't find it.
|
| This is what I see: https://imgur.com/onlrA5I
| soundnote wrote:
| They're not a tab at the top, but a boxed section in the
| search results.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/10vIh7x.png
| gnicholas wrote:
| What does anyone think of the name "Goggles"? I wonder if they
| would have named it this if Google didn't exist. Seems like a
| genius name to me, under the circumstances!
| robonerd wrote:
| I think they're trying to bait Google into a legal fight that
| would immediately turn into a PR war. Very.. brave.. of them.
| xbar wrote:
| Can you hear the Google PR team whispering to Legal?
|
| "...don't touch it...."
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Very cheeky.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| It makes me think of the movie "They Live", which predates
| Google.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Probably not the best idea, given how similar it to "Google",
| but I assume all better alternatives were trademarked away or
| something. Then again, if Google would be stupid enough to
| declare they own the word "goggles", it may generate a lot of
| PR for the project that they would never get otherwise. So may
| end up a win.
| jkuria wrote:
| Also a ripe opportunity for Google's lawyers to go after them
| as it creates confusion in the marketplace. Or maybe a
| marketing opportunity for them, if they play the David vs.
| Goliath card, should Google come after them.
| gnicholas wrote:
| That would be a genius judo-style move. David versus
| Googliath -- the headlines practically write themselves!
| smsm42 wrote:
| Google, giggling giddily, gobbles "goggles".
| edm0nd wrote:
| Bravid VS Googliath
| donmcronald wrote:
| Plus, if Google gets in their face about it they can rename it
| to "Shades - Better than Goggles".
| Imnimo wrote:
| I feel like I don't grasp the 'boost' concept. The white paper
| says:
|
| >$boost=XX--is used to alter the ranking of specific results by
| XX (e.g. $boost=1 would not alter the ranking, while $boost=2
| would make a result two times more important).
|
| But then we have this in the example:
|
| >! Generic boosting
|
| > _rust_ $boost=1,site=rs
|
| So this line is a no-op, because it uses boost=1?
| pythux wrote:
| Hey, Brave engineer here,
|
| In this case it is needed because there is a generic '$discard'
| rule in the Goggle (which means: discard any result that does
| not match any other instruction from the Goggle; you can see
| this as a 'default action' applied to results if they are not
| caught by any other instruction).
|
| Using a 'boost=1' allows you to keep some sites, that you don't
| necessarily want to boost more than their "natural ranking".
|
| We have a bit more info about that in the "Getting Started"
| guide here: https://github.com/brave/goggles-
| quickstart/blob/main/gettin...
|
| I hope that helps!
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I think it's the "Generic boosting" comment that might have
| thrown the parent off. The comment could say something like
| "Keep these sites with default ranking" instead.
| pythux wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying, makes sense. I think the comment
| might predate the switch to boost=1 and was not updated
| accordingly.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Does anyone have thoughts about how to use these to eliminate
| Amazon-Affiliate pop-up shops with auto-generated listicles of
| products no one so much as even looked at?
|
| I would love a "Product Reviews" goggle that helps find
| legitimate reviews or recommendations without having to narrow to
| somewhere specific like reddit.
| __ka wrote:
| If there is a pattern Amazon affiliate links have in common,
| you can create a goggle which removes any URL containing that
| pattern.
| hahnbee wrote:
| automatically append 'reddit' to every search
| guessbest wrote:
| I would like my goggles to block Pinterest.
| greenyoda wrote:
| They already have a "No Pinterest" goggle:
| https://search.brave.com/goggles?goggles_id=https%3A%2F%2Fra...
| [deleted]
| slater wrote:
| And Google Books.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| And Quora.
| e-clinton wrote:
| Porn Goggles dropping in 3...2...
| Method-X wrote:
| There is a Goggle that prioritizes domains popular with the
| Hacker News community:
|
| https://search.brave.com/goggles/discover?goggles_id=https%3...
| Darkphibre wrote:
| Tried this with "Long Tail." I'm excited for this tech... THIS
| is innovation.
|
| https://search.brave.com/goggles?q=long+tail&source=web&gogg...
| mihau wrote:
| Nice! Ability to quickly choose goggle would be nice, something
| similar to "site:" or !bangs in ddg. Example search: "integration
| tests best practices goggle:tech-blogs".
| Method-X wrote:
| You could also make search more like the command line for
| advanced users. Typing a ! would prompt a dropdown and the user
| could select what Goggle to add. Eventually they could let
| users add multiple Goggles to a single search.
| jdonaldson wrote:
| I did a version of this waaaaay back in the day. Naturally since
| Google was sooo cool back then I called it Google Goggles. Now of
| course they're not as warm and fuzzy.
| crthpl wrote:
| Do you have a link?
| throwaway23234 wrote:
| I need to check this out. I am guessing I can do all the things I
| used to be able to in Google, like disable all results from say,
| pinterest and a few other sites I dislike.
| Pakdef wrote:
| > like disable all results from say, pinterest and a few other
| sites I dislike.
|
| I use the uBlacklist addon for that
| dwighttk wrote:
| Can't tell if name is genius or terrible... Just reading about it
| here and at github I keep seeing Google instead of Goggle.
| luis8 wrote:
| I keep saying this but we need a local web search engine.
|
| How can we accomplish this?
|
| I'm not sure if it's possible or feasible.
|
| But i want the discussion to happen. Maybe someone will
| eventually find a clever way to solve this or maybe it's just a
| matter of time until our cpus/bandwith/storage is good enough for
| this to work
| fsflover wrote:
| https://yacy.net.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It's been a while since I played with it, but how is this
| different than Google custom search?
| abhayhegde wrote:
| I kept reading it as 'Googles'. Makes me think it was intentional
| to keep it close to the rival company just off by a letter?
| defenestration wrote:
| On first scan, I read that Googles is now available in Brave
| Search. The oog and ogg are visually a bit similar.
| pluc wrote:
| They picked that name for a reason.
| defenestration wrote:
| That's quite a brave thing to do.
| pluc wrote:
| It was even a Google product once upon a time (but what
| wasn't): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles
| [deleted]
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Essentially, Goggles will act as a re-ranking option on top of
| the Brave Search index.
|
| The idea is amazing. Just the "no pinterest" and "copycats
| removal" examples have me super excited.
| [deleted]
| engineertorque wrote:
| mistrial9 wrote:
| technically useful _if_ the first step is to remove SEO bias
| today _then_ apply goggles.. next is transparency for the goggle
| filter actions (nothing more sinister than a convincing lie)
| overall looks useful
| melq wrote:
| How would you 'remove' SEO bias?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I personally ? would remove SEO-bias by first exposing the
| actual construction of the site without SEO add-ons, to some
| engine for consideration. A simple example would be "built
| with wordpress". Please note that it is wise to know that I
| do not know, many many things. So it becomes a networked
| endeavor, to find and identify "literal attributes" to sites
| for the use of the engine, not my personal opinion of what
| the web-o-sphere is in 2022.
|
| A very very significant example is the primary language group
| exposed on the site.. for example, Cantonese ? I personally
| support the rights of "minority" languages like Gaelic and
| Welsh in the European setting, Tamil for South Asia, things
| like that.. make it so..
| ryandrake wrote:
| I agree, the ability to _reliably_ filter out overly-SEO
| sites, copy-spam, and other search engine-bait would be a
| true game changer! Defining and detecting it is of course
| the hard part.
| melq wrote:
| My point is that as long as there is an algorithm, it will
| be possible to optimize for it.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| The advantage that Brave and co have is that SEO sites
| will largely not be willing to make changes that decrease
| their Google rank to improve their Brave rank. If Google
| changes their algorithm, everyone will optimise for the
| new one, but as long as the Google algorithm is there and
| the main priority, Brave may be able to extract some
| useful signal.
| vkou wrote:
| You apply an arbitrary filter that deranks 'shitty' sites,
| and then you play a semantic game about what 'bias' is, and
| how you don't have it, but all the competing search engines
| do.
|
| There's no objective measure of what site is 'good', and what
| site has been 'SEO-gamed' to rise to the top of <arbitrary
| search engine's algorithm>. The measures are subjective, and
| people complain when changes to the algorithm aimed at
| punishing black-hat-SEO also punish their website (Rightly or
| wrongly).
|
| Not to mention the problem of using black-hat-SEO to punish a
| competitor (By creating scummy links to them, that make it
| look like _they_ are trying to game the search engine.)
| hedora wrote:
| Growing up, my mother always used to give me books that
| contained content on page one. This goggle really brings
| back memories of wandering the dusty library isles of
| Mediterranean street markets with their pungent spices and
| beautifully crafted rugs.
|
| ... 100,000 words later ...
|
| I don't think it will be very hard get right.
| indymike wrote:
| All web search engines are biased to sites that are well
| designed to be included in the index. It is literally how a
| search engine works. Removing SEO bias would just eliminate
| sites that are easy to spider, parse and index and rank.
| Goggles are great because they will eventually become a signal
| for Brave to change the rank of a site - or even in the case of
| sites that end up on lots of goggles, delist them. I love the
| feature.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| my mind boggles at the sheer number of people being employed
| over SEO so removing that bias is like literally killing their
| livelihood. i don't care anyways because i don't use google and
| use a pi-hole AND ublock origin so i am insulated from ads but
| just saying
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| cartesius13 wrote:
| At some point you have to stop to reflect: "Wait, Am I really
| against the idea of people choosing what to see on the
| Internet"
|
| In a world progressively more controlled by proprietary
| technologies and big corporations this feature is such a breath
| of fresh air
| firebaze wrote:
| "Brave users tend to skew right-wing" wtf.
|
| Such a reductionist opinion on HN not flagged already.
| Unfortunately, reality doesn't pick sides on the reason why
| someone chooses some tool. It may be due to right-wingism,
| sure. But it may also be caused by, focusing on brave, feeling
| sick by being fed low-quality SEO sites, quora articles (or
| even clones tbereof) and more.
|
| And in my opinion, your apparent cure (censoring and filtering)
| makes things worse, at least from my POV the divide between
| reason and extremism got _way_ worse since we 're trying to
| "correct" opinions by censoring stuff.
| blangk wrote:
| You sound very sure of your opinions on all of this. Your life
| must be bliss, being right and righteous about everything all
| of the time. You could use the Goggles to cement your current
| world view - what an excellent feature for you. /s
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a flamewar comment by breaking the
| site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| But then your sarcasm makes it sound like you want white-
| collar workers in San Francisco to choose what you see.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell.
| It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
| There's a substantive discussion to be had here about a
| tradeoff between individual control, institutional biases, and
| echo chambers, and setting the thread on fire is not the way to
| have it.
|
| We've had to ask you this kind of thing more than once before:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436536 (Feb 2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30432761 (Feb 2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28948081 (Oct 2021)
|
| Would you mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit here more to heart? We want curious
| conversation across differences, not name-calling and enemy-
| bashing.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31838508.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I'd rather have this power than give it to someone in Silicon
| Valley who isn't even in my country.
|
| I'm happy to avoid "fact-checkers".
| smsm42 wrote:
| You're saying it like people choosing how to consume the
| information by themselves - rather than the choice being made
| by their betters somewhere deep inside the corporate guts of
| Google, Facebook, etc. - is a bad thing. It's nothing of the
| sort. And yes, if people are free to choose who to trust,
| somebody would make a mistake and trust wrong people. That's
| inevitable consequence of freedom. The only alternative is to
| have a choice taken away and everybody rely on the choices that
| somebody made for them.
|
| > But it's cool because it will be a "conscious" choice
|
| Exactly. You probably meant it to be sarcastic, but it's
| actually true.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| What do you think about confirmation bias, and enabling it
| even further?
| sp332 wrote:
| I think it can't be solved by a search engine. If you
| search for conspiracy junk that's what will be surfaced.
| Attempts to correct for this will just introduce other
| biases until the search engine maker likes what they see.
| Introducing contrary content into search results will annoy
| users, and also surface fringe junk more frequently.
|
| A search engine _is_ bias. If you wanted unbiased results,
| you would sort the results randomly. Maybe even return
| random URLs without regard for what was in the search
| query.
| [deleted]
| smsm42 wrote:
| It's a personal responsibility of each person to deal with
| their confirmation bias. You can't outsource it to a bunch
| of underpaid overworked subcontractors, even if they are
| called "fact checkers" or "moderation team" by their
| employers at Facebook or Google. The way to reduce the
| consequences of bad thinking patterns is not to censor more
| and force-feed people the "approved truth". It's to educate
| more and to earn people's trust by telling them the truth.
| It's not easy and it's not a guarantee of success. But it's
| the only way that can actually improve anything, as opposed
| to just creating more and more people that can't even talk
| to each other.
| dubswithus wrote:
| I don't think this is how we reach people. The antivax people I
| know aren't won over by seeing a public health official on TV
| or in the news. The person most likely to reach them is their
| physician -- but only if they are a strong personality.
|
| On the plus side, it may mean less vitriol in the comments
| section.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| I'd challenge the term anti vax.
|
| People get applied unrepresentative negative labels because
| they ask questions, challenge points, have different opinions
| or simply take principled stances.
|
| So they get called terms that squash conversation and have a
| purpose to see them shunned.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| >ask questions, challenge points, have different opinions
| or simply take principled stances.
|
| This is a common conspiracy red herring because anti-
| vaxxers by definition have already made a choice to be
| anti-vaccine.
|
| Very few people are still genuinely debating the merits of
| vaccines (or the covid vaccine), and those who choose
| against vaccines try to nobilize their opinion as being
| some unsung investigators. UFO enthusiasts, big foot
| hunters, and other conspiricists shine themselves in the
| same light.
| rglullis wrote:
| Alright, let's play a game of "What am I?":
|
| - 40-year old with no health conditions. Suspects of
| having contracted Covid back in February of 2020
| (symptoms were high-fever, a really bad sore throat,
| _anosmia_ ) but due to lack of tests at the time could
| not confirm it.
|
| - Inclined to oppose vaccine _mandates_. Doesn 't believe
| that any vaccine in particular is "dangerous", but that
| mass-vaccination brings systemic risks. (Black swans)
|
| - Got the vaccine anyway as soon as they were available
| in Spring 2021. Got the booster in end of 2021.
|
| - Has two kids of school age, all of them received the
| commonly schedule vaccines for "traditional" diseases.
|
| - Opposes vaccination of _healthy_ children for Covid.
| Prefers the policy of frequent testing instead.
|
| - Supports the eventual decision to have scheduled Covid
| vaccinations like the flu: for older people and those
| with health conditions, or anyone recommended by a
| doctor.
|
| - Despite triple-shot, got infected (this time confirmed
| by rapid tests and a PCR) in February 2022. Symptoms were
| again high-fever and a bad throat. No anosmia. Kids also
| got infected, only one of them with symptoms of fever for
| one day and two days of coughing.
|
| - Not planning to get the fourth booster, unless required
| for practical reasons.
|
| So... What's your verdict? Anti-vaxxer? Conspiracy
| theorist?
| Arainach wrote:
| If you "oppose vaccine mandates" you don't understand how
| vaccines work and are antivax, full stop. Their
| individual effects are far less potent without the herd
| effects.
| smsm42 wrote:
| By which definition? There are a lot of people that doubt
| effectiveness or risk-reward benefits of some vaccines,
| and choose not to take them by themselves for one reason
| or another. There are much less people that oppose any
| medication called "vaccine" on general principle, just
| because it is called so. Conflating all variety of
| people's opinions about all variety of medications called
| "vaccines" into a binary "for-against" choice and
| establishing a tribal barrier that discards everybody
| with a wrong value of the bit as "conspiracy" is a
| useless exercise for anything except making yourself feel
| better because you have the right bit value, not like
| _those idiots_.
|
| And of course, for each new vaccine, its merits must be
| debated, and its risk-reward profile (no medication is
| ever without risks) needs to be discussed on merits.
| Saying it can not and should not happen only paints you
| as a quasi-religious zealot who would refuse to even look
| at facts and consider them - that's not how science is or
| should be done.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you are against forced global monkey pox vaccination,
| does that make you anti-VAX?
| dubswithus wrote:
| No, anti vax means you're against vaccines that are
| prudent. Like if you got bit by a dog with rabies but
| refused the rabies vaccine.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Two thoughts on this:
|
| - Antivaxxers can't be reasoned with anyway (appeal to
| authority or not) because their opinion is not based on
| reason but on personal identity.
|
| - Conservatism is based on there being an in-group and out-
| groups. Conservative-focused websites (gab, voat, etc.) tend
| to not get traction because they lack the out-groups to
| reinforce the in-group with. Basically, you're still going to
| get vitriol in comment sections bc those types of people seek
| it out.
| gtvwill wrote:
| rcoveson wrote:
| The purpose of a search engine is to help people find what
| they're searching for, full stop. We can't go around
| transforming every class of tool into some kind of galaxy-
| brained universal-utility-maximizer. Things, meaning not-
| people, should just do what they're expected to do. Calculators
| help child traffickers compute the profits they make from their
| victims, as they should. Search engines should find what you
| ask them to find. Or at least, there should be _something_ in
| existence that we could call a "search engine" which just does
| that one thing and does it well. I don't expect Google to
| change or anything, they can do what they want. But it's
| absolutely not wrong to have something that just accomplishes
| the task of finding a thing you want to find on the Internet,
| any more than its wrong to have a thing that just compiles
| code-- _any_ code--to an efficient list of CPU instructions.
|
| A tool that has one primary purpose _but also_ does no evil is
| an insanely complex, corruptible, expensive, and ineffective
| tool.
| cabirum wrote:
| Is the similarity to "google" intentional?
| slg wrote:
| You don't "accidentally" name a product something that is one
| letter off and so visual similar to the name of your biggest
| rival. It is clearly intentional. The only question is whether
| Google has or will want recourse for that.
| nerdponx wrote:
| On the other hand, "google" has always sounded like "goggle",
| in addition to being a cute misspelling of "googol".
| userbinator wrote:
| In what accent do Google and goggle sound almost the same?
| sdfhdhjdw3 wrote:
| Google? What is that?
|
| No, it was an accident.
| throwamon wrote:
| Maybe, but it may also have something to do with Kagi's
| "lenses"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31823317
|
| So it's doubly punny.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Google Lens was originally called "Goggles"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Goggles
| Method-X wrote:
| This is where you go to discover and use pre-made Goggles:
|
| https://search.brave.com/goggles/discover
| LegitShady wrote:
| so happy to see "no pinterest" already there...it's not just me
| davidork wrote:
| so... don't get rid of search engine filter "bubbles" that turn
| the web into an echo chamber, let the people build their own echo
| chambers?
|
| I mean, its at least transparent, people are aware of it or have
| to opt in.
|
| It feels like a weird compromise in terms of misinformation,
| cultural division, etc... but letting people choose which kool-
| aid they're drinking instead of letting the "totally not hand
| tweaked for edge cases in favor of the creator of "the
| algorithm"" to decide. Out of the handful of "ideas" around
| wrangling the the trashfire that is the modern internet, this
| seems like the most sane the best fit solution so far.
|
| In terms of it being an actual search tool for finding
| information, answers, documentation, references that are actually
| relevant or useful it sounds insanely useful.
|
| Narrow down searches for anything + "datasheet" to manufacturer
| websites and a handful of non paywalled datasheet catalogs - fuck
| yeah!
|
| I forsee lots of angry website owners who run fluff content or
| bury reposted useful info under mile thick layers of ads.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| I'm waiting for Reddit & Twitter to let _me_ specify who I
| trust to moderate what _I_ view. Or for a scrappy young startup
| to show them how to do it. I see no reason for Twitter 's hired
| fact checkers to exclusively perform this function, just like
| there's no reason why the first user-and-their-friends-to-grab-
| a-subreddit should have anything other than "recommended
| moderator" status.
| gen220 wrote:
| Twitter's social graph is fairly exposed. You can start with
| a few trusted "role models" (i.e. you'd want to follow anyone
| they're following) and build a pretty sizable graph from
| there, with minimal pruning necessary.
|
| I built a tool to recursively scrape RSS feeds from web pages
| linked to twitter bios. You pass in a "root" trusted user,
| and look in their bio and every "followee"'s bio for a
| website, then look for anything "rss" "feed" "atom" or
| "xml"-y on the link itself or in the domain's sitemap.xml.
|
| Surprisingly very useful. There's a decent amount of value in
| twitter's content, but arguably much more value in the
| followee network of "smart people", and the websites "linked
| out" from their profiles and tweets.
|
| Reddit, similar but in a different way, filters itself into
| variously useful, well-moderated communities. Top X posts of
| subreddits A, B, C is a great heuristic for getting 90% of
| the value out of reddit with very little of the toxicity.
|
| You needn't limit yourself to r/all and the twitter
| equivalent! :)
| LegitShady wrote:
| alternately just get rid of consistently bad results - I don't
| want to see pinterest and simiilar aggregators in any result
| I'm looking for, ever.
| davidork wrote:
| Pinterest is ad fueled zombie. Scrape the web, rehost
| thumbnails of other useful/interesting images, put up ads,
| pollute image search results until the heat death of the
| universe.
| guipsp wrote:
| believe it or not, other people do
| LegitShady wrote:
| which is why this Goggles concept is so good - let me get
| rid of the search results I consistently want to remove,
| like pinterest.
| gen220 wrote:
| From another corner of the "search" universe, I get most of my
| daily information doses through the lens of a collection of RSS
| feeds I've built up over the years. My feed collection is
| intolerant to toxic content, although I still see random toxic
| stuff on the "wild web" (YT, FB, etc.) every now and again.
|
| Does it put me in a bubble? Yeah. But it's a bubble of my own
| design, and it's a pretty nice place from my POV, that reflects
| my real world interests, hobbies, etc.
|
| I see goggles as a parallel system for "I'm looking for
| something specific" search.
|
| I think Goggles might turn out to be a mild retardant to toxic
| bubble formation, because toxic content is _rocket fuel_ for
| the kind of "engagement" metrics that
| google/youtube/twitter/fb have spent the last decade min-
| maxing.
|
| IMO, existing "search" players (Google, FB, Twitter) are
| culpable for toxic echo chamber formation, only to the extent
| that they push toxic content "by default". By allowing users to
| fine-tune their weights, Brave+Goggles is attempting to
| dislodge this norm by introducing user feedback into the
| equation. Like you, I think it's a good idea.
|
| Some people will always opt-in to toxic bubbles, but I think
| that's more of a human/society problem and not one for a search
| player to solve.
| georgehill wrote:
| > Google more than a year to reach 2.5 billion queries, and
| DuckDuckGo more than 4 years.
|
| I love Brave as a search engine but these statistics are
| misleading. They fail to account for the fact that there were
| only 147 million users in 1998, but today we have 5 billion
| users.
| zanethomas wrote:
| Very interesting.
|
| When I was teaching programming students were bewildered,
| befuddled, and confused by the incorrect, out-of-version, and
| incomplete technical information which litters the web.
|
| I have often wondered about creating a curated collection of
| known-useful information for students to search.
|
| This could be the start of something good.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The polarization bit is like watching a person who hit your
| parked car explain why the crash is really your own fault.
| Explanations that 'the web is too broad' or 'it takes an active
| choice to enable the goggle' mean nothing. It takes an active
| choice to watch polarizing news and those sources will tell you
| that you really need to only get your info from them. I would not
| be shocked to see major sites use this to control how people view
| the world.
|
| "Use our brave search and escape the leftist google agenda!" or
| such.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| That said, I'll trade the world crashing to an end for a search
| engine that knows that when I type 'Angular template variable
| scope' It knows that when I say angular I explicitly mean
| angular 2-current not 'angularjs'
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I've seen a number of stories from places like
| r/QAnonCasualties (support group for people whose loved ones
| have fallen into the QAnon conspiracy) where people have
| deprogrammed their parents or family members by blocking far-
| right/conspiracy content via DNS or through the cable box
| parental controls.
|
| The obvious questions of morality aside, my perception of those
| stories is that most of the victims are hopelessly addicted to
| the feeling being righteous and correct and part of something
| bigger to the point that it takes over their whole lives. They
| end up a husk of a person all for a fake cause. But what is
| interesting is that after you take it away they generally don't
| find something else to latch onto, they slowly go back to
| having hobbies and normal conversations and normal
| relationships with their family, friends, and coworkers.
|
| This is of course all anecdata, but if Goggles are another tool
| for giving people their loved ones back I think that's worth
| weighing as part of the equation.
| solso wrote:
| An active choice is better than a passive one, if only because
| it requires an effort, in that respect the explicitness is an
| advantage over the typical personalization.
|
| The article also mentions that Goggles will not stop
| polarization, it suffices to not exacerbate it.
|
| No technology/system on any period of time has been able to
| suppress it, censorship included.
|
| Disclaimer: I work at Brave search
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Active choice is bad for people who think they know better
| and want to control others.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| You mean people at Big Tech and dependent editorial
| downrankers such as DDG, right?
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| I think they were going for "Active choice is
| [considered] bad [by] people who think they know better
| and want to control others." At least, that's my read.
|
| By the way, cool feature :)
| davidork wrote:
| Being that the vast majority of the public facing internet is
| ad driven there will always be some sort of leaning.
|
| Allowing the users to choose their own filters will allow
| advertisers to actually read the market based on the the sites
| that are whitelisted in the filters instead of shotgunning ads
| at any website that claims to be relevant to the target
| demographic they can actually see the popular ones that users
| choose based on these filters.
|
| its still targeted advertising, but abstracted one layer away
| from the actual user so that the targeted ads don't have to be
| as fucking creepy with all the data they're gathering on
| people. With the customer choosing what sites they want to see
| results from, the advertisers can stop wasting money on ad
| revenue for click farms that everyone hates.
|
| its a better deal for advertisers, and provides a better end
| result for the user and some degree of transparency.
|
| It can't make people accept inconvenient/uncomfortable facts,
| it won't solve any political problems. You can lead a horse to
| water but can't make it drink, you can point out any number of
| problems to a person but you cannot make them care.
|
| edit- relevant to solso's comment about an active choice
|
| The active choice democratizes the ad market allowing users to
| choose, instead of the passive route of allowing an algorithm
| to coerce the market.
| slg wrote:
| >its still targeted advertising, but abstracted one layer
| away from the actual user so that the targeted ads don't have
| to be as fucking creepy with all the data they're gathering
| on people.
|
| How is it less creepy if the advertisers still end up with
| all the same data? Whether they snoop on my browsing history
| or snoop on my search rankings doesn't make any material
| difference to me. The problem is building a profile on me
| through snooping.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-22 23:00 UTC)