For a brief moment in time search engines were perfected. Then they veered off course. All of them did. Why though.

Remember when you could list vaguely some words related an obscure movie to Google. Then it would tell you the movie you’re thinking of. That’s been nerfed.

Tangentially related. What’s the deal with search engines of online stores. It’s like they aren’t even search engines at all. They’re doing nothing more than showing me products/sellers they want me to buy from. Digikey lets you drill down to precise specification filters. I wish all search engines could be like that.

Wires get in the way of the rest of the clutter on my desk.

A while back the conservative party of Canada was caught inserting MGTOW / Ben Shapiro tags on all their Youtube uploads. In other words they were poisoning peoples social graph in order to cause exactly what you’re talking about.

This is why I use a Google account that is only for Youtube entertainment. I keep it on a separate chromium profile. I turn on all the privacy toggles in the Google account. Only Youtube history is turned on. I curate the watch history.

You cannot tell what content might have breadcrumbs that eventually open the floodgates of far right echo chambers. They do this intentionally. So it requires active measures on your part to counter them. You’ve got to manage your account with intention. I do not use that account at all for random browsing. I usually do that in incognito on a different browser.

The basic privacy. You could post on a forum and it was just you and the people on the board talking. Today you post anywhere and it’s the whole world looking at the conversation.

That shaving razor thing. Could not mention shaving without the comment section turning into a circle jerk for that razor shave company. Reddit has always been a consumerist site for hip young tech bro with lots of spending money.

I find that niche subreddit circle jerk is quite frankly bullshit. Niche community == small userbase == easier to shill.

I"ve notice that reddit is unreliable for my hobbies at least. There’s one user in particular who spammed up the search index with a subpar product. If you go by reddit you’ll end up buying it. If you go by various other forums you’ll see the truth.

I think it’s partially attributable to Lemmy phone apps haven’t taken off yet. Phone posting is a different medium than desktop posting with regards to McLuhans “the medium is the message” principle. Phone usage appeals to the lowest common denominator. People use it as a time waste to mindlessly scroll. The cognitive load is much lower. Thus shitty content bubbles to the top because that’s all the brain power people are giving it. Phone usage is not conducive to consuming depth of content nor contributing it.

Additionally I think the lower cognitive engagement tends to lead people into greater fuckwad behavior. You aren’t on a board with human beings on the other side of a keyboard. It’s just a stupid app on your phone.

I think if I’m right then in time Lemmy with death spiral not unlike reddit if phone apps mature and Lemmy apps become a mainstream daily use type of affair. I doubt that will happen without the capitalist engine driving it though.

Plumber mixed up the intertubes.