This idea that somehow search engines _can_ arbitrate "truth" is just so… not how any of this works or could even conceivably work.
The reason that search engines "backstop" with wikipedia is because wikipedia is a giant curated and mostly-audience-appropriate collection of knowledge.
Knowing what is "true" is so incredibly nontrivial.
@hrefna Does God exist? I can definitely imagine a world in which I might try to come up with an answer to that question by entering it in a search engine. I can not—I refuse to—imagine a world in which I simply take the search engine's word for the answer.
That goes double now that the search engine would search instead for "Does Greenland exist?" instead—without telling me—if it thought that was more popular, and it will go triple once the ChatGPT knockoffs finish taking over search.
Hrefna (DHC)
Linebyline→mastoart.social