Generative AI and the Illusion of Free Choice
I've seen a few different people talk about the uprise of the "zero-click internet". For those unfamiliar, in a nutshell the "zero-click internet" refers to how search engines now use AI summaries to answer questions, so users don't actually have to click on links or visit sites anymore.
There are obviously a lot of problems with this. AI overviews are notoriously buggy. They often get stuff wrong and the sources for said info is often missing or misattributed, but you probably already knew that. Smarter people than me have already pointed all of this out and analyzed it in depth.
Something I haven't seen as many talk about, however, is that even if you turn AI summaries off, the search results still suck.