ellie (slut arc) 🖤 
whoever the fuck decided that ecosia should have an llm generating answers to search queries should be shoved down the stairs and break something
the introduction of so-called "AI" into products whose users obviously and definitely Do Not Want It, such as ecosia or at mozilla, exemplifies the sheer soullessness of the nonprofit industrial complex. evidently the people making decisions at ecosia don't actually care about the environment, or being sustainable, or planting trees (which tbh is a very simplistic solution to a complex problem to begin with). No, to them ecosia is just a step on their career path like any other, and they're clearly more focused on being able to write "spearheaded introduction of AI at [company]" in their resume than they are on making good decisions that actually further the goals the nonprofit is ostensibly for.
The Nonprofit is a monument to the failures of liberalism
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK@roadblock161_ I gave up on Ecosia when they *repeatedly* moaned about me using adblockers (as its only rebranded Bing search anyway, same as DuckDuckGo)
Ratsnake Games 🔞@vfrmedia @roadblock161_ isn't that because their whole business model is "we show you ads and buy trees with the revenue" so if you adblock you might as well use bing?
@vfrmedia i never understood the appeal of that
@ratsnakegames they went through a stage of saying adblocker use wasn't such an issue, then went back on it.
In any case if I didn't block ads about 80% of them would be for car-related stuff, which is hardly environmentally friendly, on top of which I've found companies that heavily advertise online often have worse customer service than brands you know about from word of mouth / seeing their delivery vans on the street..
@vfrmedia yeah, no need to convince me, i always adblock everywhere and just rolled my eyes when my ex-employer officially recommended Ecosia as search engine because trees good
Juho Mäntysalo@ratsnakegames @vfrmedia @roadblock161_
I've never understood this "spend money and we plant a tree" on any level.
Why not just buy some existing old forest from getting lumbered? And if you aren't going to do it, why shouldn't I spend my money to preserve some forest instead of using a sub-bar product with a gimmick?
Particularly as the product is itself working in a way that can't really be called green.