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
i didn't get to experience the 2000s internet and I've been loving lemmy
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.
And also nothing prevents people who ruined Reddit from coming here, and they do.
The most "2000s internet" I get is me and my internet pals hosting our own websites)
Oof, that last sentence hits home.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is plenty they can do. They created this mess with their algorithm. They can undo it by changing it, again.
Google does not objectively score or rank a site based on what you are actually looking for. They rank based on how much time other people spend on the site. How many other sites link back to the site. They rank based on how many words are on the page, regardless of if that actually matters.
This is why when you google a recipe, all the top results are blog posts from soccer moms telling a life story about food. You don't care about that stuff - you just want the recipe. But that's what google cares about.
Google can change this.
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
That’s easily abused. Search engines before Google were pure keyword search, but those were quickly abused. People just made websites with all types of keywords just to get on top of search results. Google’s PageRank fixed this - temporarily. People were quick to abuse it too.
It doesn’t matter what you try to do. Somebody will figure out how to abuse it.
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?
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.
Try magic earth instead of gmaps
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).
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.
Maps is also seriously going down the gutter.
translation: Google Search is still an important tool, but it is no longer the only way people find information.
there’s been a shift to entertainment-based video feeds like TikTok — which is now being used as a primary search engine by a new generation of internet users.
I hate when journalists use data from Arse Research Institute to boost sensation
But if that last 25 years of Google’s history could be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb, it is now starting to feel that the search engine is finally losing pace with the hijackers. Or as Marwick put it, “Google has gotten shittier and shittier.”
“To me, it just continues the transformation of the internet into this shitty mall,” Marwick said. “A dead mall that’s just filled with the shady sort of stores you don’t want to go to.”
Worth citing
Dash is one of the web’s earliest bloggers. In 2004, he won a competition Google held to google-bomb itself with the made-up term “nigritude ultramarine.”
DarkBlue.com is not Google
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225539/http://dashes.com/anil/2004/06/nigritude-ultra.html
The only thing I still use from Google is their Pixel phones, and then I immediately flash them with GrapheneOS. That, and Google maps which I can't find a good replacement. I've tried every single OSM app and none of them remotely compare.
In fact, the site’s original name, BackRub, was a reference to the backlinks it was using to rank results.
Oh, I'm so gonna be using the original name from this moment on. "Have you backrubbed it?"
Too long. We need to shorten it. I know... "I can't find any information on grasshoppers." "Have you rubbed one out?"
I wish. Unfortunately it will probably live on for all eternity like Facebook is somehow living on.
It's no surprise that Facebook is hanging on, the average nerd might avoid it like the plague but the average person doesn't care
It's far from over
We had some good variety of search engines back in the day. Alta vista, Hotbot, Infoseek, Yahoo... Now it's just Google, or slightly worse versions.
I know people say to use DuckDuckGo but I never get as useful results there as on Google. I just have to scroll past a lot more ads on Google to get to the actual links.
The fact you're saying you're still getting useful results on Google means you haven't used Google for the past year to me.
They said as useful as Google. Not that Google gives objectively very useful results. And I agree with them. I use DuckDuckGo every day and pretty much every time I have to add !g to send my query to Google because the DDG results are shit in comparison.
I'm talking about on the desktop btw. With adblocking and script blocking. I accidentally used Google on my phone yesterday and I think I got cancer.
I hope it's true, but honestly I don't believe sites and opinions that have to do with google from sites like the verge.
Because sites like the verge are in reality rivals to google. For example verge is owned by voxmedia which has an advertising company and a web advertsing platform. They are rivals to google which also is an advertising company. They hate google because they want google's money lol. I seriously doubt they can be objective especially to google.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
