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Re:Ads are impersonating government websites in Google resul... by tialaramex on Friday May 14, 2021 @06:18AM (#27152684)
Humans are lazy. It would be more effort, after constructing their argument, to actually sit down and test that the argument passes a basic sense test. So, they don't. And most of the people reading (and upvoting to signal "I agree") won't either. Why should they? They agree with it, there's no sense in fact checking things you agree with, right?

You can see this in the recent Google 2FA threads too, lots of people were quite sure Google is doing this to get their phone numbers. The facts don't line up with that, but who has time for facts? They know they're right, and so do the people upvoting. If you point out the facts a handful of confused people might agree, yeah, what you're saying does seem to match reality, but that's no match for the self-assurance of those who haven't checked at all.

Much of the time you can get a long way on just lots of people believing you, without any basis in reality. But Mother Nature couldn't care less what you believe, and it's tricky for people who think this way to sense where the line will be until they've stepped over it.

Better versions of the (apocryphal) story of King Cnut the Great can get this across. The courtiers pretend to believe their King's claim to command the sea, but the sea of course couldn't give a shit, it's just water, it obeys Mother Nature's laws (in this case Gravity via a fairly circuitous process causes Tides) but not the whims of men.

Re:Ads are impersonating government websites in Google resul... by gbear605 on Friday May 14, 2021 @08:44AM (#27153627)
In this case, you’re the courtier of King Cnut. I just did the search and the first correct result is the sixth and the first five are incorrect, including the seemingly definitive answer at the top of the search.
Re:Ads are impersonating government websites in Google resul... by eloisius on Friday May 14, 2021 @09:38AM (#27154152)
Lazy? People who think this way? Mother Nature? Claiming to command the sea? I’m just talking about SEO spam.