61–70 of 265 posts
>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today it’s google that decides what spam(aka marketing emails) gets delivered to my mailbox. No matter how many times I mark some emails as spam, they always seem to find the way to my inbox. But I guess that’s what you get when you use an email service from an advertising company.
Phishing emails seem to always sail right through their filters. I'm lucky that I'm extra paranoid.
>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…
People parse, trust and communicate with supposedly objective sources differently from supposedly subjective ones (e.g. the BBC v Breitbart) and dislike when the latter is presented like the former.
(You can change location on the bottom of the desktop page, and you may be able to unset some other targetting settings, but these are buried somewhere and not clear to the average user. Changes in T&C's also seems like a constantly moving target)
>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…
>If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. Google "takeaway pizza [place of residence]". >If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport Google "cricket provider" or "cricket insect". >if a British person makes the same search, th…
Also, a system that adapts to its users is generally more successful than a system that requires users to adapt to it.
Moreover, proper education across the whole population requires, well, a country with proper education across the whole population. So you might have luck in some Scandinavian countries, but not at global scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. Google "takeaway pizza [place of residence]". >If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport Google "cricket provider" or "cricket insect". >if a British person makes the same search, th…
"Educating" users is not as profitable as serving users. Also, a system that adapts to its users is generally more successful than a system that requires users to adapt to it. Moreover, proper education across the whole population requires, well, a country with proper education across the whole population. So you might have luck in some Scandinavian countries, but not at global scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. Google "takeaway pizza [place of residence]". >If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport Google "cricket provider" or "cricket insect". >if a British person makes the same search, th…
"Educating" users is not as profitable as serving users. Also, a system that adapts to its users is generally more successful than a system that requires users to adapt to it. Moreover, proper education across the whole population requires, well, a country with proper education across the whole population. So you might have luck in some Scandinavian countries, but not at global scale.
Manipulating "uneducated" users is much more profitable.
I'm relived that at least some people are leaving social media. "Gamification of personal interaction" certainly degraded my health. Quitting Facebook "cold turkey" is the best decision I've made this year.
I wonder about the time and physiological consequences. In particular the behavior of rapidly clicking back to these sites checking to see if anything interesting has popped up or if you have any discussions ongoing - I can't really see that as something that's particularly great for our longterm healthfulness. It's likely not just a correlation that the average human attention span has fallen by 33% just since 2000. We now have a lower attention span than goldfish. [1]
My justification is I've certainly changed my views on numerous things thanks to these interactions, and I've also even managed to convince a few people to change their views on various things. And that, on a high enough level, is how society evolves. But on the other hand the literally exact same justification can be used to argue that water cooler gossip is a socially productive behavior.
[1] - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/humans-have-sh...
This speaks to me on a visceral level. I was lucky enough to have started with computers, BBS and the early days of the web very early in my childhood. Hobbies and later a job supporting 70s-90s era tel co systems gave me a deep understanding of fundamental technologies and protocols no one thinks or cares about. My hope is that me and others like me who are young enough to have long careers (I'm in my early 30s) and…
> I paid them for the app. Then they sold the app to Facebook. Now I see targeted ads and promoted posts.
Was Instagram really a paid app at some point? Couldn't find any references to this.