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Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees, and then kills those trees by having an "AI" chatbot that is just ChatGPT in a trenchcoat.

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Ecosia's "AI" chatbot.
Ecosia Chat is powered by OpenAI. We don't share your personal data with OpenAI, but information you share in the chat will be sent to OpenAI. We don't store any personal information but we do store your chat queries in order to improve our service. Your chat data will be stored in OpenAI's database for up to 30 days. OpenAI will only access your chat data to resolve issues, recover conversations with your permission, or if required by law. Data from your chats will not be used to train the OpenAI model. Your chat history is saved on your browser, so that you can continue your conversations. You can delete your chat history at any time below. You can find out more via Ecosia's Privacy Policy or OpenAI's Privacy Policy.
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

El Duvelle
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El Duvelle
• •
that is so disappointing...
in reply to El Duvelle

Alexandre Klein
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Alexandre Klein
• •
@elduvelle what is disappointing? That a greenwashing company is doing greenwashing?
@El Duvelle
in reply to Alexandre Klein

El Duvelle
mastodon - Link to source
El Duvelle
• •

@TheyCallMeHacked
I'm not sure how using "genAI" would be greenwashing? Everyone hopefully knows by now that it is using tons of water and electricity to produce inaccurate answers. Greenwashing is supposed to at least have the appearance of "green"..
Also, I did not personally consider Ecosia to be a greenwashing company, but I haven't looked into them that much - any source on that?

@thomholwerda

@Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺 @Alexandre Klein
in reply to El Duvelle

Alexandre Klein
mastodon - Link to source
Alexandre Klein
• •

@elduvelle I mean that they greenwash genAI, sorry if that wasn't clear.

And regarding Ecosia as a greenwashing company:
- They are a techno-solutionist company, so sort of by definition, that already makes them greenwashing
- Their revenue is almost entirely from microsoft ads. Need I say more on that point?
- There are countless studies on the ineffectiveness and even harm done by carbon offset initiatives

I'm not at my computer, so more detailed will have to wait

@El Duvelle
in reply to El Duvelle

All Europeans 🇪🇺
mastodon - Link to source
All Europeans 🇪🇺
• •

@elduvelle

You can check their Youtube channel, there are hundreds of videos of their green projects, interview with farmers etc. It's very interesting.

@El Duvelle
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Nath
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Nath
• •
the AI bubble is very useful to identify the projects who are genuinely focused on ecology and privacy, and those who are just a bunch of marketers wanting to ride the ecology and privacy wave to make money but don't care at all.

Shkolopendre 💀 reshared this.

in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Mcinstit
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Mcinstit
• •
😔 so, what do we do now?
in reply to Mcinstit

GunChleoc
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GunChleoc
• •
@mcinstit Decentralized meta search engine searx.space/

SearXNG instances

Online and offline instances
searx.space
@Mcinstit
in reply to GunChleoc

Mcinstit
mastodon - Link to source
Mcinstit
• •
@gunchleoc thanks! As I'm not into tech, I hop I'll be able to set in on my Phone 😜
@GunChleoc
in reply to GunChleoc

Max Resing
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Max Resing
• •
@gunchleoc @mcinstit - the name alone suggests the problematic: it uses other search engines and empowers what they do. Yes, it ensures more privacy, but it does not run an economically more friendly search engine instead
@GunChleoc @Mcinstit
in reply to Max Resing

GunChleoc
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GunChleoc
• •

@resingm @mcinstit What we need is an independent search index, but we don't have it.

At least this one is not offering AI.

@Mcinstit @Max Resing
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Jan Penfrat
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Jan Penfrat
• •
Unfortunately @duckduckgo also included an #AI #LLM bot option in their search recently. But at least they aren't pretending to save our planet. #climatecrisis
#ai #climatecrisis #llm @DuckDuckGo
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Duco
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Duco
• •
it depends on what you compare it to. A message to ChatGPT causes much more CO2e than a search, but only about as much as 5 minutes of watching Netflix. Instead of driving 10 kilometres in a diesel car, you can also write 390 ChatGPT messages.
The problem with AI is, that energy consumption has risen sharply from model to model. Meta's has caused more than ten times the emissions. Fortunately, deepseek has shown that it can also be smaller.
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

ombremad
gotosocial - Link to source
ombremad
• •
and their planting trees promise is also bullshit to begin with, they just pay carbon offset companies
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Leigh Silvester
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Leigh Silvester
• •

@ombremad
They do make a slight mention of it, and are aware of the pitfalls.

Don't know what percentage of their activity is by this method.

blog.ecosia.org/carbon-offsett…


Does carbon offsetting work? Only if you get it right.

Can companies take their footprint off the planet by buying carbon credits? Here's what to look out for.
ecosia (The Ecosia Blog)
@ombremad
in reply to Leigh Silvester

ombremad
gotosocial - Link to source
ombremad
• •
you don’t know because they don’t want to tell. Hence me trying to make you understand that it’s important to rather refer to independent reporting sources
in reply to ombremad

ombremad
gotosocial - Link to source
ombremad
• •
(I think you should absolutely check the second link I mentioned earlier, because it’s covering everything you need to know about companies "planting trees".)
in reply to ombremad

Leigh Silvester
mastodon - Link to source
Leigh Silvester
• •
@ombremad
I know that there are a lot of dodgy carbon offset schemes - a colleague who was an economist/agronomist was doing a lot of work on this.
She never published it as it was reports for a government department, but did do a talk about it. She was part of an international group trying to develop accreditation criteria. That was ages ago and have no idea if it amounted to anything.
@ombremad
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Antimundo
mastodon - Link to source
Antimundo
• •
This doesn't even make any sense, the users who would use Ecosia are the exact kind of people who really wouldn't like to use anything related to AI.
in reply to Antimundo

Leigh Silvester
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Leigh Silvester
• •

@antimundo
Of course everyone has the choice NOT to click on the AI Chat button...

I never have.

@Antimundo
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Stomata
mastodon - Link to source
Stomata
• •
it's just ai ai ai ai and ai also ai. Don't forget about this ai also that ai.
I'm tired of it.
in reply to Thom, United Europe 🇪🇺

Leigh Silvester
mastodon - Link to source
Leigh Silvester
• •
A serious miscalculation by Ecosia.
I have had them as my default search engine for many years.
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