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The internet is slipping out of our reach

injuly.in

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Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#41

Post by renegade-otter »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #25

Google will not be interested in fixing search. It also may not be possibile because of ai spam. They would like to invest in deep mind/bard/gemini than to fix technology that will be obsolete in a few years. I have started scanning domains to see how many different places there are in the internet. Spoiler: Not many. We could try to create curated open databases for links, forums, places, and links, but in ai era it…

It's likely we will come full circle - to a Yahoo-like human-curated Internet directory.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#42

Post by HeckFeck »

krapp wrote: post #10
HeckFeck wrote: post #9

Another victim of LLM-'enhanced' search results is serendipity. Many times I've found random, fun and unrelated websites from mistyping a query. Now the AI tries to guess what I meant and adjusts the search results, meaning such gems are lost.

To be fair, most people using search aren't looking for fun, random and unrelated content, they want results specifically relevant to the terms they're searching for even if they mistype their query. The big problem with LLM and search is that the results themselves are often poisoned by factually incorrect LLM generated content being promoted from sites Google presents as sources of truth (see the recent "can you me…

> they want results specifically relevant to the terms they're searching for even if they mistype their query.

You're not wrong here, and I don't think LLM has made this much better - for a reason in addition to yours.

In my experience pre-LLM there was a good blend of both relevant and unrelated even when a few letters were off, or a word was slightly wrong.

And now more often than not, the LLM they must have parsing the search query guesses my intention wrongly, making the search results ironically less relevant. Pre-LLM In that situation, I'd correct my query to narrow down the results in my next search - as I still do anyway post-LLM.

TL;DR using LLM to 'enhance' search queries hasn't actually improved anything, while also making my day less fun.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#43

Post by renegade-otter »

richrichie wrote: post #39

> Today, you get paid search results, ads, third-party cookies, trackers, newsletter prompts, notification requests It is worse. You get curated political opinions that you must have, referrals to government agencies, etc.

So it's fine when one party is in control, but then suddenly it's "censored" or "curated"?

I would like to get my first page from the "deep state" State Department if I search for "is it safe to travel to Iraq", not from some sketchy travel blog written by a dude who believes in lizard people.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#44

Post by injuly »

llm_trw wrote: post #35

The irony is that this feels like a chat gpt post asking it: "Write something negative about the internet outside my bubble." That said I've found that asking a question of an llm, then copying its response into google gets me extremely high quality results, much better than the question does by itself. In essence the curse of dimensionality means that with enriched queries SEO is literally impossible. You can't SEO…

I'm not the best with words, but did you actually try that? I can't seem to get anything out of ChatGPT that isn't overly prosaic. If you did, I'd benefit from the prompt.

Genuinely curious, don't mean to question your claim. Though I did write this myself.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#45

Post by tiborsaas »

injuly wrote: post #23
furyofantares wrote: post #17

> If you searched Google for a movie review in 2005, you'd get a review. Today, you get paid search results, ads, third-party cookies, trackers, newsletter prompts, notification requests, and, if you're lucky – a movie review. No matter what you search for, SEO-hacked content farms will blot out the sun. This resonates, but I tried it, and it looks false. On both kagi and google, for both an old and a new movie (find…

Good catch! I had originally written "travel plans"/"workout routine", but changed it to "movie reviews". If you try to plan a trip to Dubai with Google, the first 4 posts are sponsored. With workout routines, The first post for me has ads + newsletter prompt + notification access request. I should change it back :)

Why are you not using an adblocker if your current experience bothers you?

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#47

Post by bayindirh »

throw120324 wrote: post #28

I disagree. I think Google works quite fine, even compared with 2005-era Google. I'm also tired of this whole debate.

Yes, for showing ads. Try Kagi, and see the difference. Google feels like moving through a mine field.

I'm also tired of this whole debate.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#48

Post by 082349872349872 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #32
roenxi wrote: post #14

This reads to me like a rant. Good material for a blog post but I don't think there is anything particularly profound going on. The internet is not a static place, and parts are always being born and dying. Maybe today is going to be Google search. There was an interesting question early on in the internet of whether content would be aggregated by corporate entities or whether people would self-host and communicate p…

> unless you're the sort of person who doesn't understand why IRC got marginalised Or X Windows. I still hear the occasional diatribe, on how X is "just as good as" Windows or Mac (usually from a person that pretty much exclusively uses CLI). These folks can't understand why desktop Linux hasn't crushed the Microsoft/Apple hegemony. People who hang in like-minded communities can often assume that "everyone" is just l…

GP> Private spaces might be a big net win.

I am old enough to remember the pre-Internet geek world; things like cons and zines were way more important than now, but they existed, and we definitely didn't expect for there to be, let alone rely on, mainstream channels providing our social contact.

> there are a lot more non-tecchies, and they are the ultimate arbiters of what succeeds or dies.

Succeeds, yes. Dies? I think no. There aren't many mechanisms to kill off things in the long tail, other than whatever the kids mean when they whinge about "discovery".

In The Time Machine, the Morlocks use the Eloi for sustenance. I suggest we do something similar, living among ourselves in our caverns, letting the masses frolic upon their platforms, and merely harvesting a few percent (2?) of the revenue every now and then; not so much as to threaten their existence, but enough for us to thrive.

> "We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society." — ♝

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#49

Post by injuly »

tiborsaas wrote: post #45
injuly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good catch! I had originally written "travel plans"/"workout routine", but changed it to "movie reviews". If you try to plan a trip to Dubai with Google, the first 4 posts are sponsored. With workout routines, The first post for me has ads + newsletter prompt + notification access request. I should change it back :)

Why are you not using an adblocker if your current experience bothers you?

I do use uBlock Origin. It removes sponsored search results, but it won't do away with the poorly written articles just below.

More importantly, not everyone uses an ad-blocker (especially mobile users). If installing a browser extension becomes necessary to deem a browser worthy of use, I would think that's a problem.

Re: The internet is slipping out of our reach

#50

Post by foul »

troupo wrote: post #34
roenxi wrote: post #14

This reads to me like a rant. Good material for a blog post but I don't think there is anything particularly profound going on. The internet is not a static place, and parts are always being born and dying. Maybe today is going to be Google search. There was an interesting question early on in the internet of whether content would be aggregated by corporate entities or whether people would self-host and communicate p…

> The public internet is too small; we can't all fit in it. what? > It'd be a win if someone figured out how to force OSS to win at the protocol level so interoperability is easier You know that HTTP, HTML etc. is open and interoperable? Or that there's no end of open protocols for interoperability? Edit: For the size of most of those communities you could host your own Discourse server on a NAS behind Cloudflare's t…

>You know that HTTP, HTML etc. is open and interoperable?

W3 at its core is very simple. This simpleness gives large gaps of freedom in what two parties have to do for exchanging data, e.g. 27 years have passed between the birth of W3C and Webauthn.

>Or that there's no end of open protocols for interoperability?

There is a multitude of reasons why you have marvellous designs on websites but you can't name a mass-market search engine you can run outside of the browser on your local computer using on-line data. Sure there are some or you can nowadays assemble some software parts and build your own, but it isn't a thing, and there is a why.

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