Web rings were one way someone would find their way around the Web before search engines really were any good. Basically, a group of sites of a certain interest would static link each other on each site.

Say you were on a web forum for skateboarders. That forum would have a web ring section, usually in the footer or one of the gutters, of links to other sites related to skateboarding. Each of those sites would reciprocally list the others as well.

If you published your own Website about skateboarding, you would email the webmasters of those sites and asked to be added; although some had centralized Webmasters to manage the ring.

I came across as very rude, but… is this really even something for which there was the slightest shadow of doubt? I mean if a study were to be done proving that “water is wet”, and then an article written about that, and then a full-page feature ad asking me to subscribe to that newsletter slapped in front of it, how am I supposed to conclude anything other than that this was a waste of resources… and of our time for being asked to read it?

In science, a paper must usually pass the novelty test - if a study has already been done before, then it does not rise to the standard to appear in a high-quality, high-impact journal. High school studies or elementary school projects proving that magnetism exists or that plants need water to grow or some such do not quality - which is not to say that they are not CRUCIALLY important for getting young minds interested in how the world works, which itself is a crucial component (motivation) for funneling kids into STEM fields; but it is to say that such a project does not (usually) rise to the status of being worthy of a truly international/global report?

People all over the entire English-speaking world were given this article to read. Sorry/not sorry, but I am outright offended at seeing what it contained. No solutions, no laying the groundwork for future studies like “this will a good metric by which to measure this phenomena moving forward”, nothing beyond “we looked, and found what everyone who has ever used Google in the past 5 years already knows”… and btw which the CEO himself has already openly admitted (in the past I would have offered to dig up the article I am referring to, EXCEPT GOOGLE DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE!!!).

To clarify, I am not opposed to REAL studies being done on this effect. But an “investigation” should go even the tiniest fraction of a step beyond what is already known, or else it is merely clickbait to talk about imho. Whereas if the scientists who did this did not realize that the CEO of Google himself has already admitted that it is broken - which was at the time of the Reddit protests so has been quite awhile now already - then… perhaps they should read more, about the subject that they are trying to educate us about?