this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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I feel like the internet is getting worse for users
I particularly notice it on google searches. So cluttered with ads and promotional listings. It used to be that the most useful answer was in the top 3 results. Now you’re lucky if it’s on page 2.
Google search is dead. The alternatives aren't much better but I barely use it anymore. Or if I do, I have to put the word "Reddit" in the query to get a decent answer.
Yep
I often have to go to Reddit, but the shit hit there too
You've heard the term enshittification?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Oh yeah. It's turned up to a gallop though
@melbaboutown @dumblederp Yeah, it's not just you.
And it's deliberate.
This article by Ed Ziltron has a really good rundown of what happened inside Google: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
Basically, in February 2019, there was a some corporate politicking going on within Google.
The search/tech experts (some who had been there from the start) wanted to improve search results.
The finance guys wanted to deliberately make search results worse so people would search more often and there would be more money from ads.
The finance guys won.
They replaced the head of the search team (who had been there from the very start) with the guy who had been in charge of the search engine at Yahoo at the time Yahoo stopped having its own search engine.
If by "search more often" they mean searching the same thing on multiple different search engines trying to find better results I guess it worked 🤷♂️
I barely even bother with google anymore
I just go straight to wikipedia and if want further reading i look up the references on the wikipedia page ( I do pay for wikipedia , not much but something )
and yes, i search reddit quite a bit
Yep. The numbers must always go up, at the cost of killing the golden goose. And it's not confined to Google. It's in social media, any kind of tech, streaming services...
it isn't just sites like insta or fb or apps that are designed to suck your attention and time that are worse, the net has become a battlefield between countries
they are fighting for your approval and your vote and the bad guys will use lies to get it