As a teen, I thought I was going to be a physics professor. Loved the heck out of the citizen science involved in astronomy research as well. Thought we were on the cusp of something extraordinary online.

Today, many life dreams later, I came across this video, which doesn't just correct info about a so-called exoplanet; it also depicts how mangled everyday #science info is (made worse by AI!).

We could've had such nice things.

#MediaLiteracy #ScienceLiteracy
#Space
https://youtu.be/EzrwL3W5wl4

@MLClark unbelievable!! And I thought the NASA website was reliable!! And yes, misinformation spreads rapidly online, in almost every topic.

@Jorro

It says something about our state of affairs that, early in internet days, folks were taught to treat Wikipedia with caution because it's curated by a group of everyday editors. But years on, as expert sites & forums have been underfunded or lost amid a deluge of bad info, we now know Wiki is a rare example of fairly reliable intel, & we desperately need more investment in such curation elsewhere, too.

Trouble is, our online "town hall" is mainly a bunch private, for-profit platforms!

@MLClark and I’m guilty in part too, I have been using an AI browser like if it is the law .

@Jorro

Oh, that's only human. When shiny new objects are put in our line of sight, we do love to play with them!

What did you do before the AI browser? How did you corroborate data, when you needed to?

@MLClark I’m a fact checking obsessive person, I usually google stuff two or three times , so google is or was my main source but I found out they miss the goal too .

@Jorro

Google used to be excellent, until it captured market share and started selling top spots in its search results. Enter the whole industry of Search Engine Optimization experts - a must-have on any business team to game the Google rankings!

And now there are inaccurate AI answers popping up first, as tech companies try to prove the value of their investment.

So, your Google instinct was right... years ago! We haven't built a better public commons with this tech, alas, and it shows.

@MLClark @Jorro

Google is only good for searching for stuff that is not important these days

For important stuff startpage

https://www.startpage.com/

& lite.duckduckgo is my goto search engines

https://counter.social/@ecksmc/112850017874198369

And using chrome browser its easy to use all 3 search engines by setting up "shortcuts" via search engine settings imputing SP into omnibox(address bar) then enter then input search query will give me a startpage result or ddg for lite duckduckgo results

@ecksmc @MLClark have you used “ Brave “? One of my sons recommended it to me .