Google SEO has homogenized the internet with vapid marketing content. The internet is one big commercial. The reason Reddit got popular was because communities found and shared good content and created more by talking about it. Now ads are disguised as posts and memes.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
Lemmy kinda feels like the 2000’s internet and I love it
edit: formatting
Imagine content creation that was done purely for the fun of creating content and sharing info, albeit with literally zero hope of receiving any money. Better in some ways, worse in others.
It just reminds me of early reddit before it was taken over by the dumbs.
Eh, I’d be careful with this sentiment. A significant part of internet’s decline comes from people who think of themselves as too smart and rationalize their own nonsense.
It makes me wonder tho: is Lemmy sustainable? I never want to get invested in something like Reddit again when there’s no proper and respectful end game for all the communities that make up their lifeblood.
The most “2000s internet” I get is me and my internet pals hosting our own websites)
Yeah. I’m noticing when things get too big, undesirables start creeping in.
‘Undesirable’ in this sense would be people with more money than sense and incredibly low standards for what they spend it on. They are the kinds that are proud to be ripped off and businesses will cater to them over smarter folk.
Google’s ranking algorithms are also to blame. If you publish anything on a new website it will take you eternity to rank up against copycat sites and websites that have nothing to do with the search query, they will outrank your publication just because their websites have had 5+ more years presence than you, have paid their way through the ranker, and their article has only one of the six keywords mentioned in the search query but isn’t relevant to the whole search query, your article will linger on page 10. you will put 5 times more work to move your post to the 9th page than the time it took you to research and write the post.
google has shaped the internet into what American democracy is, those with more money get more exposure
I don’t have an Instagram, a YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter account, and I still hate Google search. It’s nearly useless unless I’m specifically trying to find something to purchase.
It’s not about what you as the searcher has. It’s about where the content you’re searching for is located. If the entity or company you’re searching for has only published within walled gardens such as Instagram or Facebook, then you are less likely to successfully find that information in Google. If they had published a normal website, then Google would be better able to index that information and provide you the result you want.
I feel that, but also, the content I am looking for is indeed typically posted on regular websites without walled gardens, and Google still seems to want to show me a whole page of garbage before the site I’m looking for, whereas on DuckDuckGo(bing), my desired sites are usually the first or second result. Google is better if I’m looking to buy something, or find local restaurants etc, but ddg gives me better results in my academic and flight of fancy searches.
It’s even bad for finding something to purchase honestly. I’ll search for a specific part number, and most of the results are other similar but not interchangeable products. No Google I cannot just shove this random other battery pack into my UPS, but thanks anyway.
I tried searching for airtight drawers and all the results were either airtight or drawers. Only one was both and it was a ten thousand dollar museum specimen cabinet.
It’s especially terrible if you care about the fiber content of your clothes. Searching for linen or even 100% linen gets me linen blend, linen-look, linen color. 100% wool gets mostly acrylic wool blends. Wool toe socks gets me either wool socks or toe socks but again, not both.
Plus I can’t block Amazon and Walmart from the results anymore, so that’s a ton of extra junk to filter through manually.
You can use quotation marks to filter only results that have a certain word or phrase in it, rather than related content.
The only REAL replacement I’m still looking for is YouTube. Sure, Peertube and proxy sites for YouTube exist. But the amount of content I am interested in is by dozens of decimals larger an YouTube than on any other alternative combined.
And, yes, of course, the search engine.
I’m hoping that as the fediverse grows it will start to accrue enough capacity to sustain a strong video hosting platform like peertube.
Social media has a network effect where the more people use it the more attractive it gets, and because the fediverse can interconnect between different formats I see it as inevitable that eventually it will take over, because it can manage a much more comprehensive network than any centralised site.
Once it becomes more mainstream, server capacity should increase until it can handle the world’s video sharing as well.
I’m still skeptical whether the fediverse will get as big as the current social media now. We already had a big problem with the recent CSAM spamming by trolls.
Not to say it’s a bad thing. I think having a contraction of social media is better for our mental health because it fosters a better sense of community. Like when you live in a smallish town vs living in a big city. Each has its own drawbacks. But with the loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing right now, it’s better to have something that we can use to feel like we belong to something.
Maybe it’s not like that for everyone. I’m a person who’s always valued quality over quantity interactions. I kept my social circles small but I kept in touch with everyone. Especially now with the abundance of tools, like Discord. Even after having my own family I still show up at the Discord call with my friends after the kids are all asleep just to check in with my friends.
Yes the CSAM attack is a problem, but there are already tools to automatically flag potential CSAM, we just need to integrate them. Unfortunately social media is a natural monopoly, and there are corporate entities that currently make up that monopoly, and that is causing a lot of social problems. The only way to combat those problems is to create something that displaces those monopolies.
Like facebook released a report that compared different personal feeds, one that creates an algorithmically generated mix of all the crap that facebook currently shows you and selectively ignores friend updates, versus one that just gives you just your friends’ updates.
They found people stayed on the site longer with the algorithmic feed than the simple friends feed, and they inperpreted that as meaning people like the algorithm better. Of course they ignored the fact that maybe people like seeing the updates they asked for and then getting on with the rest of their day because they are sated.
Facebook doesn’t care about that, they want retention, so they interpret retention as user “desire” to justify pushing this algorithm on them. There’s a whole spiel here about how capitalism operates on addiction but this comment is long enough already.
It’s enough to say that these algorithms contributed to a genocide in Myanmar because facebook established themselves as the de facto internet. They knew the algorithm was exacerbating racial tensions, but also turning down the genocide dial would make them less money, so they kept it turned up.
I think it’s worth creating an alternative where people have control of their own feeds because the algorithms are open source, and it’s worth working hard on. The information ecosystem is maybe one of the most important things we need to fight things like climate change. Like the stakes are more than just our personal comfort.
Odysee seems to be doing relatively well. Probably 20-30% of the YouTubers I watch are also on there.
I hope alternatives to youtube like Nebula and peertube find their footing, but I can’t help but suspect that youtube has and will continue to find the successful path in this social media era. I’m not a youtuber or anything, so I don’t really know any details about how it works, but the way they seem provide a platform with monetisation and brand building possibilities built in seems pretty effective/pragmatic for a platform that needs to find someway to work within capitalism.
I tried DDG many times for work. Often I don’t find the result I want at all. I try different queries and all, but I only find barely relevant shit. I switch to Google, and immediately the top result is exactly what I want.
Try Nebula! It’s a bunch of YouTube creators who got together to make their own platform for video content. The price is quite reasonable and the videos are the same you would see on YouTube but often a few days early and with the sponsorship ads removed.
Duck Duck Go has been nothing but great since I switched a few months ago. It’s like Google from 10 years ago.
I like Google products but the search engine really has become shit. I’m not sure there’s anything they can do about it though.
I don’t think the algorithm is the problem. The problem is that sites started to capitalize on your attention. Everybody wants your sweet little attention so they can earn money from it. Internet also moved into walled gardens of money making machines (like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok).
It doesn’t matter which algorithm is used. Somebody will crack it and abuse it for their own good.
There’s no reversing this.
It doesn’t matter which algorithm is used. Somebody will crack it and abuse it for their own good.
If the algorithm gives a bigger shit about giving the answer people are actually looking for, and doesn’t emphasize length, formatting, and other bullshit… And people crack the algorithm by giving exactly that answer I’m looking for, I’d be ok with that.
But it all starts with the algorithm
This is exactly right but assumes the nature of the internet must remain the same. The problem is the content and people wanting your sweet little attention. The internet described in the article - the blogosphere and Usenet and the rest, was an internet created by people for people and existed for its own sake. What google has access to now is 3 billion people all trying to scam the others for money. Its a fundamentally different user base and there’s no way a better algorithm can find content that isn’t there
They simply need to change the way relevancy is measured. They need to implement some mechanism that can evaluate the quality of the page. The algorithm should penalize sites that have content very similar to other sites (like those that scrape github or stackoverflow), low effort sites, or sites that are infested with too many ads.
And since so much quality information is in youtube videos, and they already generate transcripts, why can’t you search through those?
Yeah. The whole ‘search engine optimization’ scam has really messed things up.
I feel like, aside from a top few sites, most results just spit out content mill bullshit.
Ever notice how just about every explanatory article is structured the same way? They’re trying to repeat the same shit as much as possible to get higher in search results.
“What is X?”
“Why would you want to do X?”
“Here’s how to do X.”
I just want to know how to do X, guys. Enough with the fluff.
I guess it’s gmail, drive, calendar and YouTube mainly
Edit - and maps
I personally want to degooglify as much as I can, just saying what the other person probably uses
Thanks. The only one left for me is YouTube now. On a WAN show Linus asked Luke what product released less than 10 years ago by google he was using and they couldn’t think of one. It was the same thing for me. I’ve been asking friends and colleagues ever since, the answers are interesting.
I avoid Google products as much as possible these days, especially anything launched within the last 2-3 years, because it will soon be abandoned and unsupported. Their search results are worse than they have ever been. The only Google app I actually like is Google Maps.
Yeah the search has gone to shit. I’ve been using Duck Duck Go but I guess that is Bing based?
Also been trying out Kagi. The format is unsettling at first but it is nice to see the results I am looking for at the top instead of a bunch of bullshit ads / sponsored results and whatever along with crappy results below the fold.
I’ve been using Kagi for two months now and I can’t recommend it enough. Whatever I search is always on the first results, no need to filter SEO crap.
Also it’s incredibly fast.
I’m not a heavy search user so their lowest tier (5$, 300 searches) is more than enough for me. I can see how the costs can add up for someone that is a heavier user tho
I’m still figuring out what tier I should go for before I decide what to do.
But yeah it is quite zippy fast!
All the alternatives work great for cycling, driving etc… but collapse instantly when you try and use them for public transport
Yeah, I find Maps the best for getting around regardless of the mode of transportation.
Only thing I really dislike about Maps is that it doesn’t make it very easy to explore businesses. Like, try to look at a random strip mall and it won’t show you what all the store fronts are. Some things only seem to show up if you search for them (not if you look at exactly where they are).
I’ve always wondered, does Google Maps link into each city’s public transport API manually after contacting the city, or do they have some sort of AI scraper?
In Poland we have OSM based jakdojade.pl
Maps is also seriously going down the gutter.
- There are ads in maps now.
- It works OK if you know a name, but not the location, but not the other way around. If there’s any concentration of businesses, you can zoom in all you want but it will only show 1 in 2 places.
- Many search terms now result in residential places near the top results. I suppose these are mostly small webshops run out of homes for the same terms, but that isn’t usually what one is looking for when using maps.
Maps isn’t doing too hot either.
