Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything?
Carighan@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, can’t say I had issues like that.
And I will say that while I think Google Search has become poisoned by fake/AI results, it’s actually marginally better on Google than on something like DDG. It feels like all major search engine scraper developers just gave up on hte cat-and-mouse of blocking shit content and slowly it’s all succumbing to endless SEO bullshit. 1995 Altavista all over again ;_;
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
It has been solved then by web rings, web indexes and web directories ran by humans for other humans.
The issue is that such a cure is not acceptable for Google, FB etc.
Carighan@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah and then their usual reply is “With how big we are, there’s no way we could hire enough moderators!”, which I agree with. They’re too big. Cut’em up!
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Well, I don’t want to cut them up really, just leave them be with bots answering bots.
The problem is that people use them still. There is demand for features absent outside of their platforms.
I mean not other people being there - that’s a point of pressure, but wouldn’t be sufficient alone.
These features are (I’m describing the abstract thing):
Search. People want relevant search or another way to quickly find a service, a place, a memo, a person etc without thinking.
Applications. Various services allow you to easily find and install some casual game, for example.
Forums and messaging.
Common identification for all these.
An RSS-like feed.
Common interface for sharing posts, pictures and so on so that the source would be referenced in a uniform way.
Likes and dislikes.
One can easily see these are partially things which were present and working in the good ole 2007 with XMPP (half of 3), openID (4), RSS (5), numerous web forums (another half of 3), Flash (yes, Flash, and also Java applets) (2). And back then (I was a kid, but) I can remember those being treated as future mainstream.
So the remaining parts which these companies filled and abused to monopolize the system are: 1, 6 and 7.
Search, common object space and rating.
Of course, now the other parts are not really present too.
What I’m coming at, to make it short - GNUNet could make a world of difference if it were really functional and not permanent alpha unclear how to run.