In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?
Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.
These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.
Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.
Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.
Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.
(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)
By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.
Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.
And for a time, it worked.
But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.
And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.
My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?
Do we really want to search every single website on the web?
Or just those that aren’t filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?
Or just those that don’t feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your “free trial” subscription?
At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?
And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?
@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM
@ajsadauskas @degoogle definitely something o be thinking about. More and more I’m using my followed hashtags, mastodon lists, and links to resources other people provide rather than just finding useful things in search results. But the big gap is still when I want to find quality info on a new topic. Cannot trust any of the damn results searching for how and how often to clean my kid’s new aquarium, for example. So much LLM and SEO crap info.
Don’t clean his new aquarium for like months.
If you can see this response (this half baked Mastodon integration annoys the shit out of me), I’d be happy to talk you through it.
@TheOctonaut Hey, I’d LOVE some “kid’s first aquarium” advice!
I used to keep African Cichlids in a custom 90-100gal tank, but that’s more than 25 years ago.
We right now have a betta in a 15L BiOrb and it seems well, but the tank just went cloudy yesterday.
@Johannab
I had a 55gal that required little maintenance. Walstad method and a couple sponge filters managed biofiltration. Mystery & nerite snails to keep algae off the glass.
I eventually had to retire it for a move, but it ran for years with little more than feeding. Water conditions stayed stable after the initial setup.
@TheOctonaut
@TheOctonaut What do you mean by aquarium?
@degoogle @ajsadauskas @Johannab