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the web is already destroyed with all the spam, commercial crap, tracking and spying
But the people making money off of all of that are mad now, hence this article.
Yeah. smallest violin plays in the distance
At this point, I’m pretty sure the violinist is on our side, and is no longer to playing for them.
What is dead may never die.
“About to”?
Google disagrees. In fact, the company tells the BBC that AI Overviews have been good for the web, and AI Mode will be no different. Google insists these features send users to “a greater diversity of websites” and the traffic is “higher quality” because people spend more time on the links they click.
However, the company hasn’t provided data to back up these claims.
This is how we know they are lying.
Google disagrees. In fact, the company tells the BBC “Trust us, bro.”
Non-AI summary.
More time per click is such a useless metric for the end user.
I could spend a lot of time sifting through ads, nag screens and bullshit to find the actual detail I want on a webpage.
Or validating source, making sure it isn’t AI content which usually regurgitates the same talking points. Homogenizing the entire query and removing actual information variance of personal experience.
Damn, thats fuckin’ metal, bro. Also, the text to gif gave me a flashback of ~15 years ago.
feels like its 1998 and I’m listening to MTV while browsing the web on AOL with that gif, lol
I haven’t used Google Search in quite a while. It’s frankly unusable for finding any useful information for someone like me.
Not sure about the web but Google can for sure Yahoo themselves out of existence.
I miss Yahoo games.
Google only has one game, and it’s not even multiplayer. :/
Yahoo games and clubs, groups and search, chat and messenger that had filesharing and video and allowed cross fertilisation between everything. It was becoming the internet, it was set to buy Google and then it just stopped and closed it all down.
Japanese people: oh not again
We’re soon going to end up back in the early/mid 90s where the only way to find something is via a internet yellowpages… only this time, not because search engines dont exist yet, but because they are completely worthless garbage.
Don’t forget to put your website on a webring! https://🕸💍.ws/
Man I miss the old internet…
Someone posted this the other day: https://goodinternetmagazine.com/building-a-slow-web/
I really liked the idea so I quickly made my personal site and put it on the indie webring. It’s a tiny community but it’s there.
its neat, but its not the same. old internet was more than a thing. it was an era.
Unpopular opinion: The missing business model for websites is killing the web. If there was a platform that would distribute a monthly fee to the websites we visit, the web would be much better.
50% could be allocated through traffic, 50% by choice. I could pay 20€ a month for example. Some would go to lemmy, some to my local newspaper, some to my favorite YouTube channels, authors or bloggers.
If enough people did this, investigative journalism would be funded, product testers wouldn’t be reliant on sponsoring and hobbyists could gain serious funding without selling out.
Sounds like you want to nationalise the internet and all its services. :P
If only we could pay for a worthwhile internet via taxes.
All it would take would be a platform that handles the payment and supplies a tracking pixel. Websites could join and become part of it. At the moment, every single publisher has their own payment solution. If I want to read one local article from Houston today and one from Tokyo tomorrow, I won’t join two payment plans. I want them to be paid automatically, like when I play a song on Spotify or watch a video on YouTube. Just a decent amount of money instead of paying mostly middlemen.
This sounds exactly like what Brave is/was supposed to be/could have been.
I would love a if there was a standard websites would use to receive donations. An integrated browser addon that track what you visit and gives you a review before distributing funds after each month would be great. It should accumulate money to avoid transaction fees for tiny amounts.
May I introduce you to https://webmonetization.org/ ?
Very interesting. I hope this passes as an actual Standart. I looked around but couldn’t find information on how to enable it in the Webbrowser. It just says firefox is not supported.
Nevermind I found the extension will try it again.
On Firefox (my default browser everywhere it’s available) I use the Coil extension but seems it’s now called InterLedger (Wallet) cf https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-monetization-extension/
If you go on my web site https://fabien.benetou.fr/ you should see 3 hearts under the 3D model if it’s enabled.
Google search engine has been shit for a decade or more. Wasn’t there some document that it was made so by purpose, because there was no incentive to improve it becuse there was no real competition or the competition was just a front-end to google.
2018-2019 is when they officially turned the corner and decided to focus only on ad revenue. But the SEO abuse dove it into the ground by 2014ish. They were making money enough to expand by orders of magnitude into other areas, so they simply didn’t want to tweak their search or strategy and kill their golden goose that funded things like Good Drive and their shit social network and loon, etc.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
I’m not a huge fan of Ed Zitron generally, he leans towards histrionic too much for my tastes, but he makes a compelling case here.
histrionic
True… yet nearly everybody else, maybe beside few like 404 media, seems to be either boot licking or access “journalism” so I get the “spicy” take.
I recommend Kagi. It is a search engine with absolutely no tracking or ads, AI slop filter, an in-house index and a cute doggo. It’s a paid search engine (which means you pay with money not with data), but you can give it a try with 300 free searches with no strings attached.
I called this one pretty early on. Let’s see if it catches on or tanks the Goog.
Cool, I’ll just ditch Google at work as well, then
peak internet; https://jpbtlorgy.ytmnd.com/
Blaming google is like blaming the gun for killing someone, google gonna do what google gonna do, it’s up to the consumer to effect change through attention.
Well no, it’s not, because they have multiple monopolies. So we should blame them and blame government for not stopping them.
Exactly, it’s counter-productive to blame individuals for doing the best they know how in a broken system.
Where do monopolies get their money?
From the consumers of necessary services that they have wholly captured…?
I dont believe they are necessary or failing that are not available elsewhere, and i would call captured, handed to.
No, it’s Google changing their algorithm to feed you AI slop.
The first page and a half of Google results now is just AI-generated comparison websites. That’s by design.
Use another search provider then, it’s what’s called consumer discretion and historically has the best chance of effecting an outcome.
Okay Bot.
#1 most butthurt response ever.
Nah, i just know a bot when I see one.
Beep boop butthurt.
Good bot
To a degree perhaps. It has also monopolised industries that feed into each other. Even if you choose not to use their consumer products, you are being used by them as the product in these industries if you use the web at all, which is most of their business model. That isn’t consumer choice. Political intervention is one hope, which in some countries I guess there is some consumer power over, if consumers were to collectivise to a degree more valuable than the lobbying power of this monster. The internet was turned into the yellowpages with sharp teeth by google .
Oh yes, political intervention, that’ll work, no chance of that turning out worse than what we have now.
How about taking responsibility and just not using services that require it. And I dont care if that’s a disadvantage to some, that’s the cost.
Political intervention is what started Google, so I don’t see the problem.
How about taking responsibility and just not using services that require it.
Google has shaped the web into what it is over decades so that they could maintain their position of power. This is the very essence and purpose of a monopoly. Yet here you are trying to blame anything but the monopoly for the monopoly’s existence.
Nothing like convincing hundreds of millions of people to abandon a company rather than put any pressure on the small group of greedy people who own it.
Listen man, if thats what you think is best, you keep using them and try to effect change, good luck, im just not going to use services like that and have the problem solved for myself. Let me know when you’ve made something happen and I’ll even apologise.
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The two approaches you mention need not be mutually exclusive. I ditched google services more than 10 years ago, while loving somewhere they did some truly despicable antidemocratic things. but so what? They’re a corporation. There are political lobby groups, privacy foundations and advocacy groups you can contribute to. Despite being respectfully evangelical with those around me, most other than a fringe really don’t care enough about this. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop. I will still suggest alternatives. They’re my principles. you’re working in their interest if you tell your allies to give up. I understand and share the cynicism around political process especially in democratic nations with disappointing levels of corporate influence over legislation, we can only engage in it best we can, as well as exerting our rights as consumers. The critical mass required may seem insurmountable but negativity toward those effectively on your side is not going to help either.
