This is one topic I’m quite willing to go into conspiracy theory territory on, because Google have a lot of very clever engineers and must surely know that their search is dogshit.
The only plausible explanation is that they’re somehow making more money doing this than they did by being quietly competent.
You don’t even need to reject the applicability of Gödel, because there’s no proof that our universe doesn’t include a bunch of undecidable things tucked away in the margins. Jupiter could be filled with complete nonsense for all we know.
Yeah, if you were to ask “do cisgender people like to be noticed?” people would assume you were being facetious.
It sounds ridiculous now with everything that’s happened in social media in the meantime, but I can see that being a thing in 2006 when the vibe of social media was very different to what it’s become now. Back then it was just a tidy little PHP site for you to chat and share photos with friends and family on. Literally nothing appeared in your feed that wasn’t a post from a Friend. It was basically a Whatsapp group with a photo gallery feature.
Since Facebook didn’t have the baggage it has now, it’s much easier to read refusing to join your girlfriend’s circle of friends and family back then as a wider rejection of her as a person, same as if you refused to join her family Whatsapp/Telegram/whatever group chat.
I’m not taking her side here, but I wanted to give a bit of perspective for people looking at it through the lens of 2025.
A few years later: “dang, they knew all along”