2y ago

Microsoft's Bing search engine claims Australia doesn't exist

www.techspot.com Microsoft's Bing search engine claims Australia doesn't exist

Australian users of Bluesky and Mastodon were surprised yesterday to find Bing was informing them that the country they were in didn't actually exist.

103 comments

You fools! If you die in Australia, you die in real life!
- You cant die in australia because you cant be in australia. You would fall off the world. Duh.
  
  Um, Australia is required to exist to stop the weight of the US from flipping the Earth plane over. It's literally the counterweight continent.
  
  Only if your gravity harness breaks...

I’ll never forget the fall of Australia during the Emu Wars. The siege of Sydney was truly terrible.
- They were dropping bears. It was horrible.
- Emus? I think you mean cassowaries…
- Emu war was on the other side of the country.
  
  The First Emu War was. Emu War II was much more devastating.
  Source: Bing

Thought that was New Zealand, since thats only on maps 50% of the time
- New Zealand is technically part of Australia anyway (when you have something we want to claim).
  
  Oof. I think if nz heard you they will haka your ass ;)
- I was "thinking" of NZ ;) Not sure about Finland but also, yes \s
- Who cares about kangaroo land?

Google isn't even sure so at least Bing is providing an answer, not that the wrong answer is great
- Bing gets you answers fast.
  they didn't say they'd be the right answer tho.
- At least Ecosia delivers
  
  Imagine using ecosia in 2023. You're being scammed my friend haha
- Kagi also believes Australia is not real
  
  Edit: this also shows up if i set the region to Australia
  
  Mine shows a bit more context, did you crop it out or is it just a difference in settings?

Kind of fucked up that we claim it does exist when you think about it

Fuck, who's turn was it to pay off bing this month?!
- whose
  
  This isn't time for semantics, we've gotta problem here!

Australian users of Bluesky and Mastodon
Now that's what I like to see!

Search engines don't make claims. They just deliver search results. People who fail to understand the difference have a really hard time interpreting the results.
- I wish search engines "just delivered search results". Unfortunately, they now directly and confidently answer questions with complete nonsense.
  
  The vast majority of those answers are still just citing another source, though. The only exceptions I can think of are things like math and unit conversions.
  My point is mostly that people insist on treating search engines (and now LLMs) as oracles of truth, and they did that even back when all you got was a list of links with small excerpts. It annoys me to no end when people fail so thoroughly at such a basic test of media literacy and then immediately try to place the blame on someone else.
- Yeah, but it's changing. Search Engines today don't just present you links to other websites, but have also started to take some of that information and show it to you directly. First it was by showing you little excerpts, but now with Bing Chat it's becoming a lot more developed.
  With Bing Chat, you ask your search engine a question, and it will answer you directly in a conversation-like manner. This feels a lot more like it's not just showing you a list of sources, but it's answering you directly, making claims, stating "facts" etc. You can easily forget it's just a search engine, can't fault people for this.

does anyone actually ever use Bing, when not either tricked/manipulated into using it or under some sort of bribe/incentive via ms rewards ?...
- I got super tired of google a few months ago. "Ah, you searched for these terms. But I am going to ignore that and instead show you results for these diffetent ones, because fu."
  So I started using bing instead, I wouldn't say it is worse. Just differently bad. Some search things are much worse, some are much better.
  Quite annoying how they keep pushing for "AI" all the time though, so might go back to google soon anyway.
- Everybody who uses DDG is mostly using Bing. Albeit more privately.
  
  Huh. I had no idea! And I use DDG... But I feel like all search engines are shit these days. 50% of the hits are autogenerated translations with AI creating false .[country] domain (I'm in Denmark) which are just advertisements. I miss the old days of search engines. Fuck, even Alta Vista gave more right answers back in the Netscape days!
- I use it for free access to gpt-4 and dalle-3. Can’t say I use it as a browser though.
  
  Just so you know - it's nowhere near as good as the "real" gpt-4. Maybe try paying for a month and see how it compares.
- I will admit that I used it for years for the rewards, and it worked well for me. Once I started using a VPN though, it decided I could only redeem my rewards in Canada (I live in the US). I could have probably fixed it, but it caused me to have one of those "what am I doing anyway" moments and switch to using a SearXNG instance instead.
- Bing is so much better than anything else for image search in my experience. Anything else, lol.
- It's video search is good for porn lmao.
- you can search anonynous in bing, that's why Ecosia and DDG use it backend
- Yep, Bing is pretty solid as far as search engines go.

Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
- You didn't really think there was an overgrown island with rabbits that stand upright and every animal, including dogs, hellbent on killing you?
  
  These things HAPPEN☠️
- Guildenstern and Rosenkrantz are Dead FTW!

...Guess I'm from Queensland, New York now.
- Welcome to the states, friend! You picked one hell of a time to join

Reminds me of time when Poland was erased from Time Zones map in Windows, creating "The Great Polish Sea".

All LLM replies are hallucinations
- The article isn't about LLMs.

Australia really is the Wyoming of continents.

It doesn’t exist. Source: I’m here.
- Where?
  
  I’m not sure. It doesn’t exist. Perhaps I’m sleeping.
  
  There

This feels just like that situation when gøøgl€ was saying there are no countries beginning with "K" before listening Kenya, except on a continental scale.
- gøøgl€
  Wow that is really obnoxious.

#AustraliaIsntReal
Wake up sheeple, time to get with the program. It's finally all coming out...

Flat Earth and other loonies will be all over this as an "accidental leak"

Australia is really New Zealand, everyone knows that.
- Australians wish! New Zealand tends to get things right.
  
  https://www.npr.org/2023/10/14/1205953096/new-zealand-election-conservative-christopher-luxon-wins

Accoring to my sources, only New Zealand and France are real

It would've been better if they just kept it... I mean, the theory has everybody already

I mean have you heard an Australian accent? It's like "this is totally a legit accent, we're speaking English, mate, jabbamawong!" half of it isn't even words they just make it up as they go like they're not being sarcastic.
Never bought it.

Whats the one that "ackshually" doesn't exist? Its like some running gag or something
- Finland.
  Or New Zealand if you are a cartographer.
  
  NZ
  Yessss
- My brains thinking Finland but I might be wrong.
  
  Can’t have a NATO lake without Finland so of course it exists
- You
  
  [blood seeping from hands] I must not get in fights I must not get in fights
- There's also the city of Bielefeld, which may or may not exist. I mean, I've never seen it.
- America, it was just a practical joke.
  
  Ees joke?!

fact

I’ll bet it does though.

Who caaaaaares, why is this news 😭? It's been said over and over that these networks aren't reliable and can make mistakes, so what, it will be fixed in a month or so? Is not like these systems are deployed in critical situations or anything
- It's been said over and over that these networks aren't reliable
  What networks? What are you on about, did you even read the article?

We don’t
- Alas, Australia was assinated by the CIA
  
  Yep, in 1975. We've been a bit of a puppet ever since.

103 comments