I do agree that the content farms are frustrating, and if like to see more done to combat them. I also agree that discussions happening on locked platforms is net loss for the sharing of information. I think search engines can do more about the former, but not as much about the latter. I think folks like us having discussions on the open can help.
I went ahead and searched “best Linux distro” and the top three results for me was
I then turned on my phones VPN, opened edge, went to Google, and repeated the search with the same top three results. I tried to bypass personalization, but might need to use a clean VM with VPN to succeed.
I actually thought all of those results were pretty good from a quick skim.
I will say I have custom DNS filters and plugins that block ads and untrustworthy domains and I can’t guarantee that didn’t influence my results.
I tried other searches like “best Linux distro” plus “programming” or “gaming” and received similarly helpful results. But I can’t tell if I’m in a personalization bubble.
sculd@beehaw.org 11 months ago
This is the direct result of Google diminishing the importance of forums and blogs in the first place.
There used to be a “discussion” tab in Google search and forums used to have higher placement in Google. At some point they decided that “professional sites” are more important than discussions. Forums and blogs getting less traffic means more people decide to create content on SNS instead.
Google created this issue in the first place.