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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

As it's not clear from the title, it's this company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Brands (most famous brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebMD). They operate "online media, community, e-commerce, and SaaS businesses" but don't seem to believe in it that much.

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> but don't seem to believe in it that much.

Yeah, if they won't eat their own dog food then why would I want to eat it?

WebMD is mostly famous for being a thorn in the ass of doctors, when panicked patients insist that their latest symptom is definitely cancer, and not trapped wind. They're a gift to unethical pharmaceutical companies and they add little to no value.

But don't take my word for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebMD#Criticism

This happened to me in my early twenties. I'd have some symptoms, look them up, and it always led to either cancer or aneurysm. It actually made me a hypochondriac for years, and I had to just stop.

The thing to realize is that the map between illnesses and symptoms is many-to-one. Given some symptoms, doctors assume the most common thing (because then they're right most of the time) and WebMD assumes the scariest thing (because it benefits their traffic).

When I was a practicing pharmacists it was the bane of my existence. Can't wait for some ChatGPT skin to put it out of business.

Just the ability of ChatGPT to calmly remind people that a collection of symptoms, without a proper exam (and maybe tests) can only rarely lead to an accurate diagnosis.

That, and it won't immediately say "Cancer"

This is the shit company that bought vBulletin and ran it into the ground.

And many big forums (and immediately stuffed them full of keyword advertising)

Is there a good FOSS alternative?

phpBB is a long standing project similar to VB. One could also use something like Lemmy or Kbin, though they have a different style and focus.

vB itself isn't FOSS. XenForo is the best alternative by a fair margin, but for FOSS there's good old PHPBB.

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