This person's argument is arguably weaker with their gmail address written out inside a H2 tag at the bottom of the page
Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
41–50 of 280 posts
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#42Google didn't stop there. It ruined the internet even at protocols level. Google engineers didn't understand the beauty and simplicity of the original internet protocols, and were in a position to trace the evolution path of such algorithms without any of the elegance and equilibrium the original designers had. Now if you want to make an HTTP query you have to understand an incredible amount of details. Before that with adsense Google forced the web to evolve into a clickbait arena. Google is the worst thing that ever happened to the internet.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#43In my opinion, "the Feed" ruined the internet. The news feed, the Twitter feed, the Reddit feed, etc. The addictive nature of the Feed, and the tendency to reward dramatic or outrageous or ridiculous content leads to the herd mentality and mindless dogpiling that occurs on these platforms. And then, because expression is compressed into short form soundbites, pics and videos, the platforms actively inhibit constructive, complex discussion. This is one reason I like podcasts and why, for example, Joe Rogan has become popular. The demand for long form, complex discussion is higher than the supply the internet currently provides.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#44> The web was supposed to forcefully challenge our opinions and push back, like a personal trainer who doesn't care how tired you say you are. What does this even mean? The web wasn't "supposed to" be anything. Though I'm not sure what magic search engine OP actually has in mind and how it's supposed to work. Besides, one of the modern mysteries is that we're in the age of instant information yet you'll notice how ma…
I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…
> There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place
I have been there since the old times of IRC and I have never seen anything promised.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#45The real problem that happened to Internet and is more or less predestined to happen to anything popular enough:
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#46This person's argument is arguably weaker with their gmail address written out inside a H2 tag at the bottom of the page
Actually, it isn't. It makes it immeasurably stronger. You see, you just can't get around google. They've poisoned the well in so many ways that you just have to use their products or you will end up being cut out. Email is the best example of that. Google determines who can and who can't email and the best defense against that is to make the problem worse: use a gmail address.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#47> Search for "GM" and the Gmail homepage ranks prominently. Is Google pushing its own products on people? Well, yes, but not here. This is an example of a query refinement algorithm at work. Google is altering its results in recognition of the fact that many people who search "gm" subsequently search for "gmail."
I tried this and there are three news articles about General Motors, an infobox for General Motors, 4 search results for General Motors (their web page, another of their pages, a New York Times article about them, and the Wikipedia article about them), a box containing tweets from General Motors, two more news articles about General motors, and finally a link to GMail. Then the other "GMs" start, including GraphicsMagick for node.js. I think they did a pretty good job interpreting "GM" here, and I don't think the Internet is exactly ruined.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hacker News can be great for complex discussions, but it's not free of filter bubbles and echo chambers. Nothing on or off the internet is. That is why it is important to keep an open mind and read widely and voraciously.
Right. I think Hacker News does pretty well for itself, and it shows: the users that accumulate karma the fastest usually have insightful comments, which is rarely true elsewhere.
No. Exactly like reddit, it awards people that have the most popular comments.
Some people are more insightful than most, but its the exact same system as reddit
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#49> The web was supposed to forcefully challenge our opinions and push back, like a personal trainer who doesn't care how tired you say you are. What does this even mean? The web wasn't "supposed to" be anything. Though I'm not sure what magic search engine OP actually has in mind and how it's supposed to work. Besides, one of the modern mysteries is that we're in the age of instant information yet you'll notice how ma…
I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…
>There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge
Did anyone really believe this other than middle aged libertarian hackers from the 90s who kept repeating this in prayer like fashion?
The internet is, as the name suggests, a network. Google also is a sort of network, one that is semantically searchable. But Google Search is not a fact checker. It doesn't have an editorial room for every piece of content it exposes, it doesn't have deep knowledge about everything it throws back at us, and it could not have those things at the scale it operates.
That's not Google's fault either. It's not a search engine's job to correct wrong reporting. It's the job of journalists and news outlets to fact-check information, it's the job of citizens to be critical of the information they consume, and it's the job of governments to facilitate that this happens.
It's our fault that our civic institutions have degraded, and not the fault of Google that it spits our own stupidity back at us. It's not Google's fault that we don't like what we see when we look in the mirror and techno utopianism isn't going to save us either.
Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I came on just around altavista/google so I don't remember, did people only use registries before ? or word of mouth ? must be weird to buy a domain name and still be mostly anonymous and invisible :)
Web rings were common. If you visited a webpage on a particular topic, they would usually contain links to other related sites on a side bar. Dmoz was an old registry and I think Yahoo had a registry at one time as well.
Yahoo was a registry back in the day.