1w ago

Don't reply "just Google it"

It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It's much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it's good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.

So remember, even if it's easy too Google something (well, it isn't nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it's always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.

271 comments

As a software engineer...
Don't just say "just Google it". Guide them to the documentation. Ask them about the detail of the question. If it's an bug, try asking them if they can reproduce the bug.
This reminded me of the time I'm looking for how to do certain things in a software. I found a reddit post asking about the same issue and this is the reply OP got:

Here is the link: https://old.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/mupjsf/how_to_showhide_i3status_bar_taskbar/
Imagine. You search the issue you have. Found the ONLY reddit thread that talks about this, and the ONLY thread that talks about the issue have NO USEFUL ANSWER and, worse, the only reply is TELLING YOU TO SEARCH IT YOURSELF. This got upvoted too 😭😭😭.
Luckily, I found the solution (tbh the solution was there in the docs, but the wording wasn't clear and it makes it hard to search) and I end up replying the OP the actual answer.
So, this is a PSA for the fediverse: be nice. It's free.
While we're still young, we have a chance to become a better forum.
Also possibly an unpopular opinion: you shouldn't downvote a question, even if it was asked multiple times. Guide them to the answer instead
- Wow that is infuriating.
- Has this same energy: https://xkcd.com/979/
  
  Even worse is when they edit their post to add "Never mind, figured it out."
- Also Google results differ since like a decade. It may show for you in California, but its nowhere to be found for me in Iran
- Looks like you solved your problem by RTFM ;-)
  
  I've never seen this acronym, but I'm pretty sure it says reading the fucking manual
- That insulting is satisfactory
- Something, something, recursion.
- Being nice isn't free. It takes energy and time. It's worth it though.

Not sure if everyone knows this, but: if you don't want to answer the question—you don't have to post a reply! Crazy idea, I know.
- what if i want to answer the question but i have none of the relevant knowledge and also don’t really understand the question itself?
  
  ChatGPT, while it deserves almost all the hate it gets, is actually pretty good for that use case.
- I don't actually own this, but I saw it used once 10 years by my fathers aunts best friend. I guess it would work for what you need it for.
- The issue I have is not that " You don't need to reply." I don't if I don't care about you and your ignorance. Experience will teach you soon enough. But I have more than once provided detailed answers on subjects that I'm well versed and experienced in. Only to be insulted because the answer I provided didn't fit what the person wanted to hear.
  And when that answer pertains to a life threat level activity, then I can't help you if you reject the answer. So hey if you choose to put an unknown 200+ year old pipe bomb next to your head and pull the trigger, then Ok it's not my accident scene. And I'm no longer concerned if you live through the experience or not.
- Ah come now my dear sir/madam/xir, who can't resist a bit of trolling here and a google-it there.

So many times I google something obscure, the top result is the same question asked on some forum with a single reply, "just google it"
- The only thing worse than someone saying just Google it is an op replying to their own post saying, never mind fixed it! (Without actually saying the solution).
  
  "What did you see, DenverCoder9?!?!"
  
  No I think someone saying Google it is still worse.
  The former is being intentionally unhelpful.
  Your example is being unintentionally unhelpful.
  Intentional malicious behavior is far worse than negligence.
  
  The fun one that is at least a bit forgivable is "I found the solution! I just followed
  <long dead link to some other site>
  ". It's especially fun when you keep finding multiple postings that look hopeful at first but then end up just linking back to the same dead link.
  The lesson here is that it can be helpful to future internet searchers (or even your future self) to copy the relevant information or briefly summarize it instead of just dropping a URL. Especially when linking to something like an company's official support forum or posting as many companies will pull that stuff down eventually.
  
  yeah i really hate that
- and worse, it's a thread from 17 years ago and apparently nobody else except you has had the issue since.
  
  You ever revisit an old problem, search it, find someone with the exact problem and as you read it think "yes... YES! This person has my exact same problem! Wait, the tone sounds familiar..."
  Only to realize you found your own post from an old throwaway account? With no replies.
  Because I have. It's soul crushing.
- or it's a reddit post that once contained the answer but has been deleted in protest.

"Google It"
I google
finds 1 link
its a link to a fourm post with the same question
only 1 answer found
answer says "Google It"
🙃
- Old Reddit threads where the answer giver deleted their account & all their comments.
  
  That's why when I left reddit I don't delete my posts (even if those posts suck)
  Bonus:
  
  Or scrambled all of their posts after APIgate (or whatever we're calling it). Perhaps they came here, which means OP is right in saying we can be a new source of useful answers.
  
  I don't feel bad about wiping my account, as almost everything on it was useless.
  Also I was pissed off at the time, and my goal was to make more people dislike going on Reddit.

"just Google it" has always been a shitty reply. People are asking for your opinion because they want opinions from people, not some nameless site/author/whatever. Even if you're just regurgitating information, it's coming from a PERSON not a random article. Never mind the reliability of the source. Heavens forbid that we social creatures social about a thing for a bit.
- "I'm not responsible for educating you"
  cool, then stfu and let somebody else or nut up and do the work if you want it done right
  
  But this was one of the original shit replies that demonstrates the energy the person expends replying is greater than that of not replying at all. What will they do with all that self righteous energy now?
  
  My favorite is when someone responds with this but any cursory search to "educate yourself" delivers information that overwhelmingly opposes what they were saying.
  "Educate yourself (using only fringe websites that I agree with)."
  
  Fuckin right lol? Why else do we exist, socially, if not to share cool shit with each other? Be it knowledge, a cool cat pic, a song you wrote, or eventually genetic material, arguably the "point" of sexual reproduction, maybe even life. I think now more than ever we should be hesitant to telling anyone to outsource any of that part of humanity to our AI overlords.
- I have conversations with my spouse sometimes where I am asking for information, and she reads me the article.
  I can read it myself! What did you find interesting?
- Unfortunately, these days it's quite possible it's coming from an LLM. I agree with your sentiment, you just have to always keep in mind what other possible incentives an actor on the internet may have for sharing a fact or opinion, whether it's simply monetary (corporate wants you to buy this product), political (this state wants to you to believe this thing), or personal (this person has a grudge against this thing and is willing to use bots to amplify their discontent).
  
  It's as likely your top 30 or so pages are AI generated, paid results, SEO optimized shit, etc that's just as unsavory. No one says you can't verify information, and probably should anyway, be it one search result verifying another, a bunch of commenters verifying each other, or verifying the two against each other.
  
  That's exactly what an LLM would say! /s

The amount of times I've googled a problem, and the first result is a forum post of someone just being told to google it then locking the thread is way too high.
- I have started getting pissed at people who snap at someone "Don't necro this post" (Or any of the numerous other things they say), on information that is well outdated that could fucking seriously use an updated answer.
  End rant...I'd prefer not, though...I want to keep this rant going.

I'm starting to give up on Google. I've literally copy and pasted the same error message in Google, DuckDuckGo, and Kagl.
Google will respond with "no results found" while the others will actually give me a response.
- okay so it's not just me then! I've been seeing that zero matches page more and more. It used to be the other way around, if I couldnt find something on DDG or startpage it would be on google. how did they fuck up their indexing so badly
  
  I think zero matches means "we weren't able to find any suitable ads so we don't give a fuck about you"
- Yeah, I ditched Google as my default search engine a while ago. It's next to useless and they're a horrible company.
- Test kagi too
- How do the results from ddg match the query? It doesn't look particularly helpful to me, and if not, why would I prefer to wade through a number of results that are ultimately unhelpful?
  If there are no matches, I want to be told.
  
  The issue I was having was getting a hyper-v host to connect to an iscsi array on a nimble. That first result was pretty much exactly what I needed. It didn't highlight it in the preview, but it was on the page once I opened it.
  
  Even if the results aren't exactly what I'm looking for, getting something even tangentially related can be helpful in finding the ultimate solution.
- Google knows me too well.
  My kids now get Infoblox commercials in the middle of their Minecraft YouTube videos.

Also, fuck Google. I've been removing the word from my lexicon. I say, let me search (or research) that instead
- Duck It
  
  Duck you 🦆
- IRL i'll say 'online search' or 'internet search' now, and no one ever asks me about that or tries to clarify with 'google?', so the message seems to be coming across just fine.
  
  Same. I still choose to believe that not using Google as a verb makes a dent in the behemoth. Usually gets a curious reply like "what, like Bing?"

Just Ask Jeeves.
- I'm surprised there hasn't been a revival of an AI Jeeves.
  
  Jeeves.Ai - Your Ultimate Ai Chat Assistant Powered by GPT3 and GPT4

“Check the documentation” should absolutely be a retort though.
One of my least favorite things about the fediverse (and especially Discord and Reddit) is members asking the same simple question hundreds of times because they didn’t bother to do a simple search and didn’t bother to check obvious documentation.
They didn’t know the documentation exists? OK, I will happily show you, and show you how to find it in general. Question only partially novel? Great, I will link an old answer and explain the rest… But I am kinda fed up with how “ephemeral” social media is, which is by design, as that repetitiveness increases engagement dramatically. Many forums should be structured more like a wiki, and its users should reflect that.
- That kind of behavior can also be a sign that the documentation is hard to find or hard to comprehend. Or that something isn't documented at all, but the seniors imagine it is, because the answer is obvious to them.
  
  Me. This is me. I'm trying to figure out linux.
  "How do I do.....something"
  "Oh, that's easy! Just do this and this and this. Make sure you check that that and that."
  "Ok.......now how do I do the things you just said?"
  "Just do those things the right way."
  "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE TERMS MEAN, LET ALONE HOW TO DO THEM!!!"
  "Ugh, this guy can't even follow simple directions. What part of that do you not understand???"
  "Uhhhhhh......core concepts?"
  
  Use the Source, Luke!
  
  cmake comes to mind: I can find the docs for whatever function I want to use, but I honestly have such a hard time comprehending what they mean. It's especially frustrating because I can tell that all the information is there, and it's just me not being able to understand it, so I don't want to ask others for help, cause then I'm just bothering people with a problem that I've in principle already found the answer to, I'm just not able to apply the answer.
  Then again, I've heard plenty of other people complain that the cmake docs are hard to understand..
- Maybe they read the documentation and the documentation doesn't clearly answer their question.
  You can always just ignore their question if you don't want to answer. Let someone else do it.
- Rtfm and LMGTFY by themselves aren't useful. They're the equivalent of posting "me too".
  If you think that the answer is in the manual and they haven't read it, post a link to the manual. Double helpful if you reference the section.
  If you think the answer is on Google, I think we can assume everyone knows to try that first, so then no reply is needed. If it's a particularly tricky search to phrase, maybe help with a link with a searchable phrase in it.
  But not replying is always a useful thing to do if you're not adding to the conversation.
- Check the documentation can be pretty useless a lot of times. The docs aren't always great or they're huge and I have a specific question. Often times I do check them, but they're incomplete or unclear. Or the docs change or the links die.
  Just answer the question anyway and then say where you found it.
  
  If you say as much in your question, you're much less likely to get someone saying "rtfm".
  
  Or the docs are just out of date and literally don't mention this feature added 2 years ago.
- To me this is where communities having a maintained wiki is great. More than once it’s saved me from asking a question that’s already been answered a hundred times before.
- Right, and sealioning is also a thing. If we are having a conversation where there is a presumed knowledge of some basic informationor background, I'm not going to sit here and restate that entire basis just because you got in over your head.
  
  Okay, you're not required to snarkily broadcast that in the conversation, though. You could just ignore it.
  
  definitely helps to bow out instead of talking down to a beginner. "it seems you're having an issue with X, I would recommend reading up on Y and Z because [how they relate to your problem]" is helpful, a very natural stopping point, is useful to people who search and find the thread in the future.
- Lemmy documentation is fucking terrible.
  Ive submitted PRs for documentation to some Foss projects (not just in the fediverse space) that were rejected by the owners.
  It is some FOSS projects intention to intentionally add obscurity to their product, specifically when they monetize by paid hosting.
  
  Funny, I wrote plenty of documentation and release notes. In some cases I even got direct commit permissions to the repositories after a while.
  And if monetized projects want to have obscure docs: edit the Arch wiki.

I feel like it’s 2000 all over again on the Internet. The bloat has made pages borderline unusable, and using AdBlock or NoScript reverts any so-called "design progress" back to the good old HTML days.
Google is only semi-useful now, while pages like DuckDuckGo are starting to deliver results reminiscent of the old Yahoo or Lycos days.
It feels like my trusty, old-school Internet skills are helping me navigate this mess. The reemergence of usenet / groups feels inevitable.
- It's like a bouncing ball, social media starts small, and then it became bigger. It's trending on becoming small again. In the future (barring civilization ending war/calamity) it'll become big again due to some technological progress or shift in society.

I've never had issues with looking anything up. By downranking Reddit and using a search engine with a good indexer that downranks bullshit and generated websites, which mine is really good at, I haven't noticed much change from how it was before.
But I agree with the second part. That's something that never occured to me, and it makes sense. I was usually trying to answer questions I knew, and never had the urge to reply "just google it", so it doesn't change much for me, but it's a really good point I never realized.
- Remember that most people don't even know there is something called "rankings" or "indexer" in this context.
- In the before times we had libraries of books that'd teach a person anything they wanted to learn. If a person had a question and the book didn't answer there was someone there who didn't know the answer but damn well knew how to find it. We never had to sort through piles of garbage content produced to waste our time for profit.
  Even the early Internet was this way. Its slow degradation became a nose dive with broad adoption of Facebook and AI. I had to starting writing a line of code to search. And, that doesn't even work anymore.
  
  I used to be pretty good at googling stuff, but the last 1 or 2 years it just won't work anymore. For instance, I had to charge a battery yesterday, and the power led started blinking when I put the battery in. I didn't know if this meant either charging or faulty battery, so I googled it. Got pages of ads for this particular charger, but no answer. So google is just a big marketplace these days, and nothing more.
  Just so you know, a dremel battery is charging when the power led blinks.
- Do you mind elaborating on your search setup? I'd like to be able to avoid a ton of bullshit especially while working.
  
  I just use Kagi, which seems to be pretty good at filtering bullshit by default, and have mabually downranked reddit and twitter, ot any other site I found and don't like. But it's been a long time since I used other search, so I can't compare it much since I'm used to it. Never really had any problems with not finding what I need.

Noooooo don't Just Google it try, Use a Search Engine or just WebSearch it
<br>

Dont't make Google an integral part of internet culture
- on one hand I agree. on the other, google has historically been afraid of the verb to google becoming generic, so of course I'd like to see that happen.
  I think the middle ground is say google it, but make it clear you mean google it on an alternative search engine
  
  Yep, just like Kleenex, or Xerox, (a faded term for mimeograph/photocopy), Google has become a generic verb/term for search in virtually every language now. To google something is synonymous with search. It no longer implies a specific search engine. (I use Ghostery private search myself). Google has lost the war on their name and "It's a Good Thing^tm"
  But there does seem to be a greater amount of "search entitlement" these days for even the easiest of problems. People as a very general rule don't seem to want to be bothered by the need to learn things on their own. They expect others to provide them all the answers in an effortless format.
  I've even provided detailed answers to people on some 'life threat level' activities that were rejected because I didn't simply reaffirm their ignorant and misguided thoughts in looking for shortcut answers.
- I wish I had the power to make google a not integral part of the internet just by calling it duckduckgoing.
  On that note: If you talk about what you searched for last week, would that be "I duckduckgoed" or "I duckduckwent"?
- Jokes on you, I google it using ddg!

Search engines are mega sucky these days, but Wikipedia has never been better. I find myself going straight to wiki any time I need a quick fact or basic info.
- Hear hear! We're all witnessing what can happen with something nice, if you nurture it and keep improving, slowly, instead of the new pattern of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish or insisting on extracting maximum value. Modern Wikipedia is often rich in content and fun to use. I love it :)
- Wikipedia is an internet gem
  
  I give them a few quid every month. Might be the only regular donation I've got going at the moment (was being the sole earner for 3 until recently so yeah, rebuilding slowly)
- I can't imagine just how much more lost we would be if we had an internet without Wikipedia...
  What would we be using, some form of online Encarta? Ugh.

When I ask someone for clarification via their expertise, I usually reflexively indicate that I cannot trust google because of the incursion of AI slop, and even if it shows THEM accurate results, it is no guarantee that it will show ME those same results.

The most useful thing about interacting with another human mind is that it can see when the question needs to be updated in order to get a correct answer.
A crude example would be:
Q1: how many screws should I use to join these pieces of wood?
A1: It's more relevant to use screws which are long enough.
Q2: Which screws should I use?
A2: This size.
- These will be CAPTCHAs in the future.

If you don't show me that you at least made some effort to investigate: No.
- Its a bit annoying when i google something and search forums and cant find an answer and i go to ask reddit or a forum and someone says"just google it" like am i really expected to make a preamble every ask-post that I've searched already?
  
  i really expected to make a preamble every ask-post that I’ve searched already?
  Yes. You need to show your effort, otherwise your question will be considered lazy. This is specially true regarding technical issues in volunteer forums.
  The seminal essay "How To Ask Questions the Smart Way" explains these and other finer points.

I've noticed that a lot of people are just really bad in using the right searching terms, and then quickly shifting through all the info to find the right information. Googling well truly is a skill. Though be it a strange one.
- Same! Had a discussion recently with a guy searching about gun law in Austria for 3D printed weapons. He showed me his Search Query. Didn't even include the word "Law". People just really forgot how to properly query search engines.
- I was going to bring up card catalogues and microfiche, but it is more difficult now, especially with all the AI written articles popping up a la carte as top results.
  I guess it would be like the physical library having a fee^1 to enter, the librarian men and women in lingerie and banana hammocks, and all the publications unsorted: Fiction and Non-Fiction together with celebrity magazines, The National Enquirer, and nazi publications.... and lots of torn out pages.
  ^1 Fee replaces ads. I'd rather not picture a world where the advertising in the show Maniac exists. (Can't afford the bus? The ad-reader shows up and speaks ads at you until you have "earned" the $1.25, or whatever.)
- It's not even much of a skill anymore now that there's so much focus on natural language question and answer. You can straight up Google "how do I X?" And get a relevant answer for just about anything.
  Edit: I'm not even talking about generative AI here, googling simple questions without using AI worked well before the AI craze.
  
  That's not exactly true. The AI answers are often wrong or incomplete. You still need skill, it's just that the required skill has shifted to accepting this is true, recognizing when the AI answer is not complete and correct, (which can be more difficult due to the answers often being seemingly correct, yet slightly wrong or incomplete), and then doing what you'd do in any other search that nets poor results: adjust and search more or dig further down the given results stack.

Yes please don't do this. Google doesn't need more support either from search activity or inclusion into the vernacular. If someone is asking in the fediverse which is still a relatively small community, they are expressing a degree of patience with their answer that suggests they've already tried search and came up dissapointed or they are really lacidasical about their question and won't really mind if you just ignore it and move on. Taking the time to tell someone to websearch something is even more pathetic than a "this" reply.

While I don't think we can beat AI driven content degradation by outposting them, I still agree posting 'just Google it' does any good either.
Post an answer or link a topic which covered the same question in detail. But directing people to Google isn't something I'd advocate. Maybe tell them to Ecosiate it if you really have to.
Also it's just rude and creates an uninviting admosphere around here Imo.
But the AI issue can't be solved by users alone. It's moderation and maybe regulation which is needed here.

Even if you want to be snarky, at least do something like:
I [googled it](searchresult.com) for you.
- Alternatively
  undefined
  
  I googled it for you > Copy pasted answer in case the source disappears
- I'm not kidding, one time I saw that and the first result was back to that thread where the only answer was to Google it.
- I understand the temptation for snark, but if you're going to snark, I suggest that "here is how I googled it for you" is a better response, wherein you explain the terms you chose and how you selected the most pertinent result.
  Definitely more work, but even if the OP is infuriating, there are people who will find the answer in the future, and who would benefit from the explanation of something that might be obvious to us but not them.

"Just ChatGPT it" is going to become a thing.
- Until it gets paywalled
- "Just make shit up" is basically saying the same thing.
- and ill throw that suggestion into the fucking trash.

Remeber for a while there used to be this website you'd create a link, which would direct you to a portal that would type your question into Google and hit enter. It was let me google that for you dot com or something.
It always felt like such a passive aggressive dick move 😂 when people just wanted answers from a real human they could interact with
We're all stupid about some things, but googling stuff has genuinely gotten harder these days. The answers are full of ads and AI garbage
- https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=let+me+google+that+for+you+website
  
  Doing the lord's work.
- Yeah shame it doesn't exist
- You say "just wanted answers from a real human" and I hear "I'm too lazy to search and now I'm going to be a fucking time thief".
  
  Someone asking doew not obligate you to respond. There is no theivery. You can walk away without saying anything. They cannot take your time from you.
  You're choosing to waste it by responding with something unhelpful, though, and wasting their time for the sake of your unrequested public masturbation.
  
  Equating answering a question to somebody stealing your time is not the hot take I was expecting to read this morning, lmao
  
  time thief? are you fucking kidding me?
  you realize you don't need to reply right???
  
  https://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/
  
  This. Searching Google still nets valid first page results most of the time. Like it always has been, searching is a skill that you need to develop and maintain. When the results shift due to content drift, you need to adapt to remain effective.
  If you can't be bothered to try, you don't get to throw a little baby tantrum because you didn't get the bottle put directly in your mouth.

If someone actually wants help searching Lemmy or the Fediverse, I recommend this site: https://fedi-search.com/
Very simple, but it does the job. It's also good if one wants to learn advanced Google queries.
- Unfortunately it doesn't work in Tor Browser

While I agree that the search engine has gone to shit, the problem I have with people who ask really simple questions is that they haven't done the bare minimum to ask for help.
Simple questions have fairly popular answers and even an enshittified Google search will return the correct result within their fucking AI.
If you have a simple question and the answers seem confusing, tell us why the answers are confusing. Don't just ask the question.
Being able to Google your question is an important skill, but so is asking a question in a forum. Since forum posts are at their very nature asynchronous, being able to do your own searches shows those who are trying to help you that you have the skills to read their responses and extrapolate to your situation and then take the appropriate action.
I provide a lot of free support on various Linux and developer forums. The sheer number of people who want me to hold their hand is too high.
- There is no bare minimum to ask for help.
  There is a bare minimum to responding to someone asking for help, though: Being willing to provide some. Replying to tell them they haven't earned the help yet is just being an asshole for the sake of feeling self-satisfaction, and it's actively making the Internet a worse place.
  Don't do that shit. They don't need to know your feelings on the issue, and neither do the rest of us. Nobody asked about them.
  
  Yes, it also leads to people like me feeling like they need to go down a rabbit hole for 5 hours before they're "allowed" to ask. Then, upon finally asking, they come to find out the answer was quick and simple and they could have saved many hours.
  This is such a problem for me. Hot damn do I envy people who don't let the fear of seeming stupid keep them from just asking the damn question.

Recursively google searching is an interesting case of the halting problem.

Imagine asking chatgpt and it tells you to "Google it"
- Didn't it already tell some teen to kill themself recently? It fits right in with the worst of the internet.
  
  I assume that grok did that, just because that's on brand
- This will be Gemini in 2025

It’s too bad ChatGPT will never replace a real Reddit thread:
- Just ask them to answer your question in the style of a know-it-all Redditor because you need the dialog for a compelling narrative or something

Just googlw it is unfortunate shorthand for "learn it by doing research and troubleshooting", a skill sadly very scarce. I agree it's toxic and unhelpful. Guiding people to be better at finding information on their own is the way.
- Asking someone else a question is also doing research.
  
  Can't argue with that.

Or start any replies with « just google it « to mess with AI learning 😏

I agree even though I will sarcastically answer things with how easy it was to find, but I still give the information. I ask questions about things I could google myself, but I am not looking for just and answer. oftentimes Im looking for a nuanced answer and hope to find someone with knowledge around the subject that can give me a human take. not that I need a human take to know whats human because im so human myself and all. its not alien at all to me and hey who said anything about aliens. heh. heh.

The issue with that is trolls who either 1. ask for source when something is an easy to find fact of life (i.e. it doesn't need a scientific paper / article or whatever to prove). To later try to convince / discredit you that your link does not show what you claim (when it does). This one is to waste the other person's time and nothing else, and is really popular by kremlin bots 2. launch an outlandish claim with no source, you counter it and then you are asked by OP to provide your source, then back to 1. for the rest of the bullshit that they do.
Ultimately it doesn't matter much when you reply to 2 - 3 people like that, but posting more often, it does simply waste your time.
Source about these tactics
- This is still better than the opposite tactic of sending your opponent to google it and when they don't find anything saying that it's because they are not trying hard enough.
  Source: google it
- I dont think I've hardly ever seen someone asking for sources on obvious truths or pretend a source is lying. They just say Nuh uh or Cuss out
  I have, however, seen a LOT of people claim shit that isn't true at all and try to pass it off as basic fact, and
  I've seen even more people post sources that don't actually say what they're trying to prove.
  And i dont think this is really the point of the Google it conversation

I reply "search it"
- "Just Bing it"
  
  Duckduckgo it

There's a few things I hate people for regardless of context and one of those is lmgtfy links

A "real answer" is rarely as credible as an article with quotes including time and place, as well as citing statistics and peer reviewed studies. In fact, I'd wager the amount of misinformation on Lemmy is a very high ratio. People are even writing entire fanfictions about current events to fit their narrative.
- A "real answer" is rarely as credible as an article with quotes including time and place, as well as citing statistics and peer reviewed studies.
  Depends what kind of learning is needed. Fixing a car, I have found rando-on-the-Internet to be a far more effective resource, than peer reviewed sanitized but irrelevant information.
  Different tools for different needs, and all that.
  People are even writing entire fanfictions about current events to fit their narrative.
  Impossible!
  (This is sarcasm, meant to purposefully demonstrate your point.)

Check on Ecosia!

Never say just, and if you bother answering be proper about it

comment removed for sealioning

Search for it on the Internet

I never say it like that. But I’ll tell people I found it by searching it. People really need to learn how to search first.

Fine I'll just tell people to Duckduckgo it! /s
Jokes aside I agree with this message. Better to give at least a basic idea on where to find something, or just don't be a pedantic cock and give me the damn link, your word is not good enough okay buddy, pal, friend.
- I’ll just tell people to Duckduckgo it!
  Duck it.
- What I'd like to become the standard is:
  If the question makes it super obvious the asker has zero clue what they're asking or trying to do, lightly correct and steer them to beginner friendly resources.
  If the question is competent but focusing the wrong direction or will lead to a bad habit, essentially, they know just enough to be dangerous but they're about to be dangerous, more pointed and technical correction and steering them to either articles or better search terms to use.
  If it's a pointed question with the information to show they've done the normal information gathering and either need opinions that are beyond the theory or book standard information or they don't answer the question, answer the question. Ideally also giving sources to back up your answers.
  Bonus points if you can do the above without coming across as a dick. Unless they ask to ask. You can be a dick to those people.

Thank you for saying that.

Did you mean "Don't reply, just google it"? /s

A little study of philosophy helps us ask and consider better questions, a little study of google helps us consider a world without CEOs and the constant encroachment of enshittification for shareholder profits.

Jesus thank you. And also dont post screenshots of web pages. We've gotten much worse since the reddit exodus.
- If it's for textual information, I'm personally a fan of covering all bases. Screenshot, link to site, and quoted relevant text.
  Webpages can change, but screenshots can stop being hosted with no warning and any text in screenshot form can't easily be copy and pasted. Quoted text is essentially the longterm accessible failsafe. Text in comments tends to last much longer than images or links.
  
  Yes, its only a problem when folks include an image of text without copying the text and linking to the source.
  I'm not anti-image. I'm anti-ablism and anti-misinformation
- I will occasionally post a screenshot of an excerpt of a web site, specifically for the purpose of showing it to whoever I'm responding to who is continuing to bleat rather than visit the link I provided and use their eyes, or is attempting to argue with me about the presence of content that is, in fact, right there as plain as the nose on your face. Extra bonus points if whatever they need to click on to get what they want is right there in the header or sidebar menu, without even having to scroll or anything.
  I maintain that this method of saying, "look, dumbass" is perfectly valid.
  
  Ableism
- Only if they include the link.
  I prefer the screenshot to a webpage because
  If it's a shit site, I don't want to give it clicks and revenue
  News sites have a history of manipulating the title over and more to maximize views
  Images are easy to scan within the Lemmy app. Versus kicking me to a browser that has to fetch data somewhere.
  
  Posting screenshots of webpages isn't disallowed.
  But posting screenshots of webpages without a link to the source is temp-ban-worthy

Don't tell me what to do.
- Found the guy who grew up listening to rage against the machine, who now uses machines to rage against the humans who want him to rage against the machine.......but fuck you I won't do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won't do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won't do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won't do what ya tell me! (UGH!) guitar solo
  
  Who?
- I see things haven't changed much since the island...

Correct.
Use udm14.org instead.
- I prefer DuckDuckGo, but federated SearXNG exists too (but imo it's not as good as DDG)
  
  All good choices, but udm14.org filters out ads too.
- I don't get it. I entered a search term and I was just redirected to regular Google.
  
  The difference is you're not getting ads or AI. It's basically google from 2010.
- Thanks for sharing!
- I mean, the biggest issue with me for the great googlio isn't the ads and the ai, both of which I hate, but the actual shit-infested results. It's not removing the ads full of SEO that are posing as websites, it's just giving you an old UI for the new 2025™ search.

Why not just reply with Search it?

Never thought I would see anybody call having to scroll past some sponsored links and reddit results "hard". Compared to what, farting? Honestly folks, after 2025 we'll probably all have a different view of what's easy and what's hard.
- It's not hard. It's that information from people has become more fact than a single persons opinion on a topic. Do you have any idea how many variables are involved in why my cucumbers are dying in my green house? How many links and articles I've read before just asking it to the community and finding the answer in literally the first person who replied?
  Information, wisdom, knowledge are all empowered by a community, and trusting a search engine to populate those will eliminate the community aspect of information gathering. It'll cause the watered down, lost in information practices that we have going on today.
  Doing this, in 30 years no one will be able to grow cucumbers in their greenhouse becuase all the information you'll have will be based off the same shitty technique and everyone's attempt at that technique, and no one will talk about the nuanced variables.
  The cucumbers is an example.
  
  I too value the advice of people sharing their experience on reddit, but I also see way too many highly upvoted posts crediting Nikola Tesla with inventing everything but fire. Top google results are increasingly useless junk, but so are top social media results. Having grown up with physical encyclopedias I wouldn't say information is "hard" to find.

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