Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.
Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.
It’s not all Google’s fault though. With the obliteration of online news and forums, there just isn’t much indexable content out there that isn’t trash. It’s only getting worse with AI spitting out garbage remixes of the same crap on pages that post more ads than content. Reddit was a bastion of real content written by real humans delivered in a mostly friendly way.
So at this point, what is Google supposed to even serve? No one wants the trash content. The next “best” thing is Quora and that’s entirely hostile even if it manages to accidentally contain valid content.
Corporate has managed to destroy the Internet.
Quora feels most of time is where humans try to write like an AI.
DuckDuckGo manages it mostly fine. At least, the results are more consistent, even if there’s the 1-in-50 chance it misses something Google would get.
The cynic in me suspects that Google makes their real results worse to increase ad results which are “close enough.”
Google has the entire Deja News (Usenet) archive, more valuable than Reddit except for the older age. And they don’t let you access it anymore.
What are they doing with it?
Google is doing nothing with their Usenet archive. Hopefully they haven’t destroyed it.