[HN Gopher] Add "fucking" to your Google searches to neutralize ...
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       Add "fucking" to your Google searches to neutralize AI summaries
        
       Author : jsheard
       Score  : 214 points
       Date   : 2025-01-31 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
        
       | apparenttrash wrote:
       | I like to read spicy things online. I've found that Google, even
       | with safe search disabled, hides much of these unless your search
       | is itself obviously explicit. I append "sex" to search for these
       | without affecting results much. Entire sites are hidden
       | otherwise.
        
       | treefarmer wrote:
       | The downside of this approach is that it can affect the search
       | results returned. But I found that if you add " -fuck" or "
       | -fucking" to your search term, it disables the AI summary without
       | significantly affecting your search results (unless you happen to
       | be looking for content of a certain kind).
        
         | jprete wrote:
         | If you're looking for that kind of content, you could remove
         | the minus sign?
        
           | amarcheschi wrote:
           | Well, yes. You'll probably find some very niche kink videos
           | though, depending on your search
        
             | 867-5309 wrote:
             | archive footage of the Queen of Fuc's husband?
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | I want to know if it invokes rule 34?
        
       | jameslk wrote:
       | If I start fucking adding swear words to all my fucking search
       | queries, how the fuck will the stupid ass search engine know that
       | I did not want it to use that shit as one of my keywords and give
       | me back a whole lot of fucked up shit?
        
         | hn_acc1 wrote:
         | How you will you ever find out why there all these fracking
         | snakes on this motherloving plane?
        
         | pelagicAustral wrote:
         | I like this version of the internet a lot better.
        
           | observationist wrote:
           | Fuck yeah!
        
         | edflsafoiewq wrote:
         | It's not like it doesn't freely ignore any unquoted word
         | whenever it feels like it.
        
           | bmurphy1976 wrote:
           | The quoted words search barely works these days anyway.
        
             | mrandish wrote:
             | Amazon Search joins the chat...
        
             | roskelld wrote:
             | This bugs me so much. It happens constantly. A few days
             | back I searched for a person's name, put it in quotes and I
             | got results with celebrity with somewhat similar name. Zero
             | hits on the person I searched for on the front page. I had
             | to add specifics to the query such as job title to find
             | them.
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | An easy way to see how a "search engine" has become
               | "vague recommendation engine" is to take a distinctive
               | phrase from one of its results, put it in quotes, and see
               | if it manages to find that page again. Often, it doesn't.
        
           | godelski wrote:
           | > It's not like it doesn't freely ignore any quoted word
           | whenever it feels like it.
           | 
           | FTFY
        
         | belter wrote:
         | Well at least you will get great travel suggestions to
         | Austria....
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | To be fair, it's not like Google respects things like quotes or
         | "-" so who says it won't just ignore your swear words?
         | 
         | I'm joking, somewhat, but can we seriously start getting mad
         | about this shit?
        
       | ffhhj wrote:
       | What if we add Gulf of Mexico?
        
       | dyauspitr wrote:
       | Why would I want to do that? I find the summaries very useful
        
         | serviceberry wrote:
         | I'd go out on a limb and guess that the advice is meant for
         | people who don't find them useful.
         | 
         | I don't, for two reasons. First, for looking up facts, they're
         | nowhere near 100% dependable. If I need to check sources, might
         | as well start there. Second, if someone made the effort to put
         | useful content on the internet, I can grace them with a click.
        
         | matthest wrote:
         | In my limited experience, the summaries often include a lot of
         | false information.
        
         | kokanee wrote:
         | They are useful if you don't care whether the information is
         | correct, don't care where it came from, and don't care that it
         | was stolen from publishers who in many cases invested time and
         | money with the expectation of receiving search traffic in
         | exchange.
        
           | mythrwy wrote:
           | What is the plan for this over time?
           | 
           | I understand the appeal of not wanting to wade through 20
           | links to find information (especially given SEO stuff that is
           | often on top) but why will people continue to publish as
           | traffic decreases due to AI summaries?
           | 
           | I mean I understand the urgent need to keep up but the
           | problem with "theft" is eventually it drives out honest
           | production and everyone is worse off.
        
       | anskia wrote:
       | I definitely get fed up with AI assistants in the code ide and
       | have said "just shut the fuck up and answer my question". I could
       | just prompt it to be concise but this lets off mor steam.
        
       | clircle wrote:
       | Alternatively, you can just disable AI overviews in your Google
       | settings. But that does not make for a very interesting Gizmodo
       | article.
        
         | chatmasta wrote:
         | Can you? I couldn't figure out how to do that. Then again maybe
         | it's because I googled it and the AI result told me it's not
         | possible.
         | 
         | Does anyone know if there's a uBlock origin filter for this?
        
           | ToniCipriani wrote:
           | Doesn't look like there's an official way to, most seem to
           | involve hacking the search bar engines or installing an
           | extension.
           | 
           | https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-turn-off-ai-
           | overview...
        
           | ankit219 wrote:
           | literally this: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1
           | 3572151?hl=en&c...
        
             | sunshinesnacks wrote:
             | That doesn't work for me. The option was already toggled
             | off.
        
             | chatmasta wrote:
             | > Note: Turning off "AI Overviews and more" in Search Labs
             | will not disable all AI Overviews in Search. AI Overviews
             | are part of Google Search like other features, such as
             | knowledge panels, and can't be turned off
        
           | sunshinesnacks wrote:
           | Same here...
           | 
           | > AI Overview > You can't completely disable Google's AI
           | Overviews in your search results, but you can use workarounds
           | to hide them.
           | 
           | The workarounds didn't seem to work for me.
        
           | insin wrote:
           | I made an extension for it, as I couldn't find anything
           | existing that also worked on mobile:
           | 
           | https://soitis.dev/ai-overview-hider-for-google
           | 
           | You could also just use the underlying CSS in something like
           | Stylus, or convert it to uBlock filters:
           | 
           | https://github.com/insin/ai-overview-hider-for-
           | google/blob/m...
        
           | SubiculumCode wrote:
           | Used the block element chooser by right clicking on the over
           | view. However, I suspect it will be temporary given the
           | random key: blocked:
           | http://www.google.com/##div.EjQTId.YNk70c:nth-of-type(1)
        
         | snakeyjake wrote:
         | Why the fuck do so many people lie on the internet?
         | 
         | >AI Overviews are part of Google Search like other features,
         | such as knowledge panels, and can't be turned off.
         | 
         | Please.
         | 
         | Stop.
         | 
         | Just stop.
         | 
         | Is this a kink for you? Some kind of fetish?
        
         | serviceberry wrote:
         | There's no setting for that, Google is intentionally not giving
         | you that choice. You can append &udm=14 to the search URL in
         | browser settings, but that constraints search results to the
         | "web" subcategory, so you also lose fairly useful features,
         | such as the calculator, weather infoboxes, etc.
        
       | dmansen wrote:
       | I have also been telling Gemini to "fuck off" in my gmail, but
       | that doesn't seem to make it go away
        
         | TimTheTinker wrote:
         | I too want a way to make Gemini go away in gmail. I regret
         | clicking the "Try it out" button.
        
       | braza wrote:
       | I work with ML and I am bullish with AI in general; said that, I
       | would pay between 5 to 10 USD a feature or toggle called "No AI"
       | for several services.
       | 
       | For myself I noticed 2 bad effects in my daily usage:
       | 
       | - Search: impossible to reach any original content in the first
       | positions. Almost everything sounds like AIsh. The punctuation,
       | the commas, the semicolon, the narro vocabulary, and the
       | derivative nature of the recent internet pages.
       | 
       | - Discovery: (looking directly to you Spotify and Instagram) here
       | I would add in the "No AI" feature another one "Forget the
       | past..." and then set the time. I personally like to listen some
       | orthogonal genres seasonally. But once that you listen 2 songs in
       | a very spontaneous manner Spotify will recommend that for a long
       | time. I listened out of curiosity some math rock, and the
       | "Discovery Weekly" took 9 weeks to not recommend that anymore.
        
         | bluetidepro wrote:
         | For search, use Kagi. You don't have to use their AI products
         | at all to just use search.
        
           | frakt0x90 wrote:
           | Strongly agree. Whenever I search something and am met with a
           | sea of
           | 
           | TOP 10 X; THE 20 BEST Y; 20 REASONS Z; etc.
           | 
           | I go Kagi and am immediately refreshed.
        
             | TimTheTinker wrote:
             | And yet Kagi isn't anywhere near as good as Google was ~13
             | years ago.
             | 
             | Yes - a big part of that is that online content is _so
             | much_ worse than it used to be. But it became bad over time
             | because of what Google incentivized.
        
           | pjc50 wrote:
           | Left field tip if you think a search engine is hiding stuff:
           | Yandex. They're not actually Russian any more, but they're
           | far enough down the list of search engines that nobody
           | bothers to DMCA them.
        
           | segasaturn wrote:
           | If Kagi made a cheaper "no AI" tier I would be happy to
           | subscribe. AI is costly to run, so even if you don't use the
           | AI it's priced into your subscription fee - you're paying for
           | an expensive product you don't want or use.
           | 
           | e: according to Kagi's pricing page they do have a 'no AI'
           | tier, but it limits your number of searches to 300/month.
           | Seems like a totally arbitrary limitation, but its still
           | better than forced AI.
        
         | renlo wrote:
         | Spotify used to have a "dislike" button for their Discover
         | Weekly which helped with pruning music you don't like, but with
         | the natural law of tech enshitification they removed that
         | feature a month ago.
        
           | goostavos wrote:
           | That was such a frustrating decision. I had _almost_
           | convinced Spotify that that one time I listened to Lustmord
           | was just a random mood, and I don 't actually want to only
           | listen to dronecore for the rest of my life.
        
           | eminence32 wrote:
           | I used to always hesitate to use that "dislike" button
           | because I was worried that Spotify would not be able to
           | distinguished between "I will always dislike this song" and
           | "I don't want this song in this specific context"
        
         | whycome wrote:
         | I can't tell if you misspelled narrow or if "narro" is somehow
         | referring to "narrated" type content we now see so much of. Or
         | even just weird narrative things (eg, recipes).
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | I respect your opinion but at the same time:
         | 
         | > I work with ML and I am bullish with AI in general; said
         | that, I would pay between 5 to 10 USD a feature or toggle
         | called "No AI" for several services.
         | 
         | Hard fuck this. I am not giving a company money to un-ruin
         | their service. Just go to a competitor.
         | 
         | I get with a bunch of these hyperscaled businesses it's
         | borderline impossible to entirely escape them, but do what you
         | can. I was an Adobe subscriber for years, and them putting
         | their AI garbage into every app (along with them all steadily
         | getting shittier and shittier to use) finally made me jump
         | ship. I couldn't be happier. Yeah there was pain, there was
         | adjustment period, but we need to cut these fuckers off
         | already. No more eternal subscription fees for mediocre
         | software.
         | 
         | Office is next. This copilot shit is getting worse by the day.
        
       | pants2 wrote:
       | Last year we had to threaten to kill someone to get Gemini to
       | properly format JSON. Computer science has gotten very weird.
        
         | cyanydeez wrote:
         | Well, unfortunately, modeling real life is like staring into
         | the abyss.
        
       | ok_dad wrote:
       | At least for now, you can just append "-ai" onto your query and
       | the AI summary will not be there.
        
         | sunshinesnacks wrote:
         | That's handy. Looks like it doesn't work if "ai" is also in
         | your search, though. E.g.,
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+disable+ai+overview+i...
        
           | ok_dad wrote:
           | Yea, it's not perfect, but when I want to find facts (such as
           | about the sizes of nails) and not possible "hallucinations"
           | then it works out. Most of the time I just let the AI
           | overview happen, and I ignore it, so that Google spends more
           | money on a useless and possibly dangerous feature.
        
           | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
           | The eternal struggle with in-band signalling...
        
       | PyWoody wrote:
       | Sony was way ahead of it's time here:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ
        
       | drewg123 wrote:
       | Seems like what I do when I encounter an AI answering machine
       | that can answer only simple questions... after "representative"
       | fails, I start saying "Give me a fucking human"
        
       | yoavm wrote:
       | Is this something they're slowly rolling out, or isn't available
       | in the EU? I don't think I've ever seen an AI summary in my
       | Google searches.
        
       | apazzolini wrote:
       | The best way I've found to remove AI summaries from Google
       | results is appending `&udm=14`.
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | Previous discussion:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267
         | 
         | Safari extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41298312
        
       | zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
       | Single moms in my area
       | 
       | Vs
       | 
       | Single moms in my area fucking
       | 
       | Yep, it works
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | "-fucking" also disables it, but with the opposite problem!
        
       | Nursie wrote:
       | This is useful info, as Google's AI summaries have frequently
       | been inaccurate.
       | 
       | Example from yesterday - I was updating my mum's kindle fire
       | tablet after it had been in a drawer for three years. It was
       | stepping up fire-os versions one at a time and taking hours. So,
       | a quick web search - what's the latest version of fire os 7?
       | 
       | Google AI confidently answers 7.3.2.9, so cool, it'll be done
       | soon then. Nope, it kept on going into 7.3.3.x updates.
       | 
       | If you're going to be confidently wrong, probably best not to
       | try.
        
       | danso wrote:
       | One tip I like to give for exploring public data is to do an
       | early search for the word "fuck". It's a pretty ubiquitous word,
       | but one that you _assume_ shouldn 't show up for certain fields,
       | so seeing it, or not seeing it, can give useful insight to the
       | the scope of the data universe and collection. Including
       | where/who the data comes from, whether or not any validation
       | exists during the collection process, and how updates/corrections
       | are done to collected data.
       | 
       | For example, you're required to provide accurate info about
       | yourself when donating to a U.S. federal political campaign [0].
       | Is it possible that someone, somewhere in America is legally
       | named John Fucksalot? Or works for a company named Fucks, Inc?
       | Maybe! We're a huge country with wildly diverse cultural
       | standards and senses of humor. But a John Fucksalot, CEO of Fucks
       | Inc, who lives in Fuck City, Ohio 42069? Probably not, and the
       | fact that this record exists says something about how the rules
       | and laws regarding straw donors are readily enforce. And whether
       | or not an enforcement action happened, what field in the FEC data
       | indicates a revised record?
       | 
       | Seems like this tip can still be useful in the Age of LLMs. Not
       | just for learning about the training data, but also how confident
       | providers are in their models, and how many guardails they've
       | needed to tack on to prevent it from giving unwanted answers.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-
       | contributions/?...
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | There used to be a Fucking, Austria until they decided to self
         | censor for the pesky English speakers.
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | disappointed that Fucking has self censored, bearing in mind
           | their road safety signs used to suggest local residents were
           | in on the joke https://imgur.com/5KOCwdC
        
       | kerkeslager wrote:
       | I just cannot imagine why people are still using Google for
       | search at this point. Search results were bad before the AI
       | summary nonsense.
       | 
       | Kagi has been a joy to use.
        
       | psunavy03 wrote:
       | Well . . . it certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.
        
       | layer8 wrote:
       | "Frelling" also works.
        
       | medhir wrote:
       | really sad that this is what it's coming to... why are we having
       | to play these games to run a simple search?
        
       | btown wrote:
       | > This is not the first time internet sleuths have discovered a
       | way to disable Google's AI-powered results. Other methods are
       | more complicated, however, like adding a specific string of
       | characters to the search results page URL. This method of
       | swearing and pleading at Google to "just give me the fucking
       | links" is much more cathartic.
       | 
       | "More complicated" is actually just as simple as going to
       | https://tenbluelinks.org/ and following the instructions. It's so
       | refreshing to just see links when you search, and it's
       | unfortunate that the OP makes it out to be something that's
       | prohibitively difficult to do.
        
         | 85392_school wrote:
         | You might have even accidentally used the "no AI" mode if
         | you've clicked the Web option before.
        
       | meltyness wrote:
       | This is also cathartic.
        
       | rvnx wrote:
       | There is another advantage, you also avoid ads
        
       | mrandish wrote:
       | I waste so much time figuring out how to get a previously
       | functional tool to _stop_ shoving AI generated crap I don 't want
       | and never asked for in front of me. They either provide no way to
       | turn it off or hide how to turn it off deep in settings
       | surrounded by dark patterns.
       | 
       | I think it's because management at these companies has set AI
       | usage metrics as a critical KPI. Thus teams are highly
       | incentivized to just stick that shit in front of everyone and
       | make sure it's hard or impossible to turn off. I actually think
       | AI _can_ be genuinely useful in the right context but this insane
       | over-rotation to shoving it down our throats risks turning AI
       | into this decade 's Microsoft Bob - universally hated simply on
       | general principle.
        
         | tokioyoyo wrote:
         | Not sure if it works for everyone, but write a quick addon that
         | changes your browser's Agent header to something random or find
         | an open source one. Google seems to freak out and give a bit
         | different version of itself. I discovered it accidentally, not
         | sure how far it works though.
        
           | mrandish wrote:
           | I'll give that a try. I already have several userscripts just
           | to fix various annoying things about Google Search (like
           | always enabling the Tools dropdown, adding several new date
           | options and unhiding the search results-count (which is still
           | there but now hidden by default)).
        
       | hardlianotion wrote:
       | I like the idea - it seems temporary but fun.
        
       | Conscat wrote:
       | Wow it actually works! Unfortunately my searches are still
       | plagued by Geeks4Geeks results.
        
       | globular-toast wrote:
       | This is similar to something I've been thinking about, which is
       | if people will develop ways of writing that signal somehow that
       | they definitely are not AI. Like including certain "banned"
       | phrases or whatever. Or logic contradictions that violate the
       | laws of robotics or something.
       | 
       | Or maybe we'll finally get serious about web of trust crypto if
       | we want to continue talking to humans.
        
       | singularis wrote:
       | https://labs.google.com/search/experiment/1
        
       | rmason wrote:
       | It works but you don't get the results you want if you use it on
       | travel queries. What you receive is a page of Reddit links on how
       | to get laid in said city;<).
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-31 23:00 UTC)