This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Google SEO has homogenized the internet with vapid marketing content. The internet is one big commercial. The reason Reddit got popular was because communities found and shared good content and created more by talking about it. Now ads are disguised as posts and memes.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
The internet is getting as bad as radio.
Lemmy kinda feels like the 2000's internet and I love it
edit: formatting
i didn't get to experience the 2000s internet and I've been loving lemmy
The whole internet used to be like this and it was lovely.
Let's not romanticize the old web too much. It had its problems too:
Half-done html pages with under_construction.gif or cliparts copypasted from Word. Some went through multiple editors like Frontpage and Dreamweaver which ended up producing spaghetti HTML.
Autoplaying midi from songs probably from Limp Bizkit, Metallica, Blink 182, etc. Did I mention that MIDI volumes count as separate from normal 'Media' volumes, and were often cranked to the MAX?
It was a time when HTML/CSS/JS would chaotically intertwine with proprietary plugins like Flash and ActiveX. "Best viewed from Internet Explorer at 800x600" was a thing. Readability? Accessibility? Forget about it.
You paid by minute on dial-up connection until ADSL appeared. Good luck trying to download that tenchi_muyo_hentai.jpg.
The most "2000s internet" I get is me and my internet pals hosting our own websites)
Yup and hopefully only the beginning. The fediverse is like a better internet without big tech.
The internet is one big commercial.
So fucking true.
Thanks, capitalism.
The only REAL replacement I'm still looking for is YouTube. Sure, Peertube and proxy sites for YouTube exist. But the amount of content I am interested in is by dozens of decimals larger an YouTube than on any other alternative combined.
And, yes, of course, the search engine.
I'm hoping that as the fediverse grows it will start to accrue enough capacity to sustain a strong video hosting platform like peertube.
Social media has a network effect where the more people use it the more attractive it gets, and because the fediverse can interconnect between different formats I see it as inevitable that eventually it will take over, because it can manage a much more comprehensive network than any centralised site.
Once it becomes more mainstream, server capacity should increase until it can handle the world's video sharing as well.
Odysee seems to be doing relatively well. Probably 20-30% of the YouTubers I watch are also on there.
Just use duck duck go. Its better in all regards.
I truly wish this was true. But for work, everything I search on ddg is just not useful
Its better in all regards.
I wish it was true. My strategy is to use ddg in first try to find something and switch to google when ddg ducks in wrong way. Currently google is better in images and searching for "this particular site" instead of answer on any site
I hope alternatives to youtube like Nebula and peertube find their footing, but I can't help but suspect that youtube has and will continue to find the successful path in this social media era. I'm not a youtuber or anything, so I don't really know any details about how it works, but the way they seem provide a platform with monetisation and brand building possibilities built in seems pretty effective/pragmatic for a platform that needs to find someway to work within capitalism.
I like Google products but the search engine really has become shit. I'm not sure there's anything they can do about it though.
They simply need to change the way relevancy is measured. They need to implement some mechanism that can evaluate the quality of the page. The algorithm should penalize sites that have content very similar to other sites (like those that scrape github or stackoverflow), low effort sites, or sites that are infested with too many ads.
And since so much quality information is in youtube videos, and they already generate transcripts, why can't you search through those?
Yeah. The whole 'search engine optimization' scam has really messed things up.
I feel like, aside from a top few sites, most results just spit out content mill bullshit.
Ever notice how just about every explanatory article is structured the same way? They're trying to repeat the same shit as much as possible to get higher in search results.
"What is X?"
"Why would you want to do X?"
"Here's how to do X."
I just want to know how to do X, guys. Enough with the fluff.
I avoid Google products as much as possible these days, especially anything launched within the last 2-3 years, because it will soon be abandoned and unsupported. Their search results are worse than they have ever been. The only Google app I actually like is Google Maps.
Maps is also seriously going down the gutter.
Yeah the search has gone to shit. I've been using Duck Duck Go but I guess that is Bing based?
Also been trying out Kagi. The format is unsettling at first but it is nice to see the results I am looking for at the top instead of a bunch of bullshit ads / sponsored results and whatever along with crappy results below the fold.
I've been using Kagi for two months now and I can't recommend it enough. Whatever I search is always on the first results, no need to filter SEO crap.
Also it's incredibly fast.
I'm not a heavy search user so their lowest tier (5$, 300 searches) is more than enough for me. I can see how the costs can add up for someone that is a heavier user tho
Try magic earth instead of gmaps
All the alternatives work great for cycling, driving etc... but collapse instantly when you try and use them for public transport
Yeah, I find Maps the best for getting around regardless of the mode of transportation.
Only thing I really dislike about Maps is that it doesn't make it very easy to explore businesses. Like, try to look at a random strip mall and it won't show you what all the store fronts are. Some things only seem to show up if you search for them (not if you look at exactly where they are).
Google Maps saved me when I had to work in Japan for several months without knowing not a lick of Japanese. I just bought a Suica card and just stood on which color Google Maps told me.
there’s been a shift to entertainment-based video feeds like TikTok — which is now being used as a primary search engine by a new generation of internet users.
I hate when journalists use data from Arse Research Institute to boost sensation
But if that last 25 years of Google’s history could be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb, it is now starting to feel that the search engine is finally losing pace with the hijackers. Or as Marwick put it, “Google has gotten shittier and shittier.”
“To me, it just continues the transformation of the internet into this shitty mall,” Marwick said. “A dead mall that’s just filled with the shady sort of stores you don’t want to go to.”
Worth citing
Dash is one of the web’s earliest bloggers. In 2004, he won a competition Google held to google-bomb itself with the made-up term “nigritude ultramarine.”
DarkBlue.com is not Google
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225539/http://dashes.com/anil/2004/06/nigritude-ultra.html
translation: Google Search is still an important tool, but it is no longer the only way people find information.
In fact, the site’s original name, BackRub, was a reference to the backlinks it was using to rank results.
Oh, I'm so gonna be using the original name from this moment on. "Have you backrubbed it?"
Too long. We need to shorten it. I know... "I can't find any information on grasshoppers." "Have you rubbed one out?"
"What ingredients do I need for thick pancakes again?"
"Hang on, I'm rubbing one out now?"
I wish. Unfortunately it will probably live on for all eternity like Facebook is somehow living on.
The only thing I still use from Google is their Pixel phones, and then I immediately flash them with GrapheneOS. That, and Google maps which I can't find a good replacement. I've tried every single OSM app and none of them remotely compare.
I hope it's true, but honestly I don't believe sites and opinions that have to do with google from sites like the verge.
Because sites like the verge are in reality rivals to google. For example verge is owned by voxmedia which has an advertising company and a web advertsing platform. They are rivals to google which also is an advertising company. They hate google because they want google's money lol. I seriously doubt they can be objective especially to google.
It's far from over
We had some good variety of search engines back in the day. Alta vista, Hotbot, Infoseek, Yahoo... Now it's just Google, or slightly worse versions.
I know people say to use DuckDuckGo but I never get as useful results there as on Google. I just have to scroll past a lot more ads on Google to get to the actual links.
