monument valley girl4d ago
me: search engine B, can you please tell me generally about topic X
search engine B: here are results for topic X in your area
me: no, i don't want local results for my area. if i had wanted that, i would have specified my area in my search query. i want general results about topic X
search engine B: we don't keep or sell your location data
me: thanks, but privacy isn't the issue, the issue is you keep showing me irrelevant local results. search engine A did the same thing
Show threadmonument valley girl4d ago
search engine B: if you want, you can specify a fake location so that we definitely won't know where you are
me: thanks, but that would just give me different irrelevant local results, specified to a different place, instead of what i want, which is general, non-localized results. can you do that?
search engine B: yes, it's on this page
me: great!
me: ...
me: there's nothing like that on this page
search engine B: have you tried specifying a different location?
me: search engine C...
Show threadmonument valley girl
#techbullshit
Mar 29 at 4:48amWeb
Show threadmonument valley girl4d ago
i found multiple people complaining about this exact problem on the duckduckgo subreddit, and the replies were all either other people with the same problem commiserating, or people acting like search engine B did in my little dialogue. it's not just duckduckgo either. seems like this is how every single search engine is now. as far as i can tell, there's no escaping it
Show threadmonument valley girl4d ago
i can sort of work around it by just adding "-[mytown'sname]" to the end of my search terms, but it's not perfect, and there should clearly just be an option to disable this supposedly "helpful" feature, but there isn't. and like i said, this is every search engine now.
Show threadmonument valley girl4d ago
errata: i did just come across a search engine called "mojeek" that claims to allow you to disable location-specific results in its settings. i think i'll try this one for a bit and see if it actually keeps that promise. i'm not optimistic, but i'll give it an honest try
Show threadClaire, The Ultimate Worrier4d ago
@wehpudicabok I guess you could make it localized to wherever the recording was made but I guess it isn't guaranteed what you want is near there
Show threadmonument valley girl4d ago
@waitworry yeah it's not guaranteed. that does work sometimes, but by no means all the time