Search is shit because of advertising influence on algorythm design and tuning.
Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#32Search is shit because of advertising influence on algorythm design and tuning.
Having observed that major search engines often seem to hide what I'm actually looking for - web search results - "below the fold" (assuming it's there at all) I can't help but wonder if there is an opportunity for building niche "web search" engines that search the web (rather than the adverWeb, the seoWeb, or the goog/twit/faceWeb.)
As I've mentioned before, my favorite flavor of Google is Google Scholar. I'd also like to be able to slice/subset search results to get scientific, non-commercial, public interest, etc..
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#33Business model seems to be broken. I pay a giant internet bill each month, basically insane margins based on what it should actually cost to deliver much faster connectivity than what I get, yet none of that extra money funds the things that I actually use the internet for. (Why does it cost that much? Part of the reason may be that our local cable company is a government-enforced monopoly, that it's next to impossible to get right of way for new fiber, and that wireless is currently uncompetitive. Perhaps 5G may change things, but I'm not holding my breath.)
Moreover, the internet makes distribution nearly free and allows a nearly unlimited number of people to access information and digital media from all over the world, but lengthy (70 years or more) copyright terms make it illegal to do so in many cases. Instead, thousands or millions of person-hours are spent on the impossible task of trying to make bits behave like physical objects in order to satisfy legal and business requirements. When an organization such as the internet archive tries to make a digital library whose collection isn't bound by the constraints of physical libraries, they are sued by publishers for copyright infringement and potentially liable for $150k in statutory damages per occurrence.
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#34Talking about the www specifically: too many trackers, dark patterns, hard to use sites, cookie notifications are just an annoyance and often come with dark patterns and no opt outs, ridiculous asset bundle sizes, auto play videos, pop ups, ridiculously large attack surface called the web api, working group standards ==
Chrome is the standard, Chinese firewall, browser complexity makes it hard to compete, JS security challenges ...
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm thinking more and more the same, I'm beginning to think we need a dual function web. Static web, and run as an app web. I kinda have this by running with javascript off (this solves all sorts of other issues, though much of the web doesn't work that could work.) When I need to 'run as app' I allow js for that one visit.
That's what I do on most machines I use, but it just feels kinda wrong to not only have to use a bloated app, but also install add-ons to said app, when I just want to read some text This is probably just me being picky though.
Smart comments. I don't think you're being picky. I'm kinda shocked that this is the only thread about reading because that's what I think is wrong with the web: It's not good for reading. I'm 4 years into co-founding a startup that's solving this problem.
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#36Two things discovery (search) and dns (centralized). Not sure if they are both the same problem.
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#37These days you need an internet-device and an anti-internet-device like a Pi-Hole plus half a dozen browser plugins. Every driver of every part of your computer is trying to sneak out some of you data. Every website is full of trackers. You are not only fighting off criminals but also some of the most powerful corporations and every government. A hand full of companies run large parts of the infrastructre - you could…
I was doing some work for a company and someone posted on Slack about ad blockers. I noted to everyone that I used ad blockers because I don't like how invasive ads have become.
The founder and CTO then proceeded to berate me in the channel for using a blocker. He had made a lot of money over the years from writing code that helped ads figure out what content to target for a user.
I still use an ad blocker, but have added Disable Javascript to all my browsers as well, just in case they try to detect I'm blocking things.
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#38the "modern" internet - web x.0 - has a focus on ads, (personal) data-collection and commercialization.
this is a social not a technical problem -> imho. its broken beyond repair.
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what I do on most machines I use, but it just feels kinda wrong to not only have to use a bloated app, but also install add-ons to said app, when I just want to read some text This is probably just me being picky though.
Smart comments. I don't think you're being picky. I'm kinda shocked that this is the only thread about reading because that's what I think is wrong with the web: It's not good for reading. I'm 4 years into co-founding a startup that's solving this problem.
Making the internet more useful in the area of concise to the point information without sidetracks would be a big improvement. How is your startup approaching the reading problem on the web?
Re: Ask HN: What's broken about the internet?
#40Search. Google results are now full of SEO optimized low quality affiliate garbage.
I recently tried switching my default search engine to duckduckgo for like the 4th time in my life (I've been trying it about once a year), and this time I'm sticking with it. It's good enough now that I don't need to use google for every search. Maybe you could try again.
A search engine can be much better than google. All shopping websites of any significance have better features. (Is google treating links as competing technology?)
Denying the search provider a page view might work. Have them return xml. Use the OS, browser or custom theme. Build a search extension platform on top of it, sit back and watch what people come up with. (I would filter out websites that need more than x requests besides images and video, have more than y kb js, z kb css, make big news websites into a check box in the side menu, I can think of 30 extensions right now)
I made a search bar for Opera one time (widget) that had a row of submit buttons (icons) with different targets. It sat on top so one could just click the next button. It is hard to explain but it can be quite surprising to re-send your query some place else.
MyIE use to be able to open X search results in background tabs. A mouse gesture would close one and move to the next.