Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️

RE: https://xoxo.zone/@ilovecomputers/116275772384259836

Remember when "Google Fu" was a thing? Google perfected internet search, and once every competitor had been driven out of the game, they very intentionally killed internet search, and it has never recovered.

1:37pmWeb
Show threadThe VHS Wizard 🦝📼🧙13h ago
@RachelThornSub It's honestly where a bunch of my "wizardly" powers come from - remembering how to search for things in the days before Google.
Show threadMycotropic13h ago

@RachelThornSub

#AltaVista actually worked.

Show threadBoyd Stephen Smith Jr.13h ago

@RachelThornSub I use ddg now, but I still think there's a bit of "Google-Fu" that I have and benefit from that some of my family and community don't have.

Your thesis is undeniable tho. Search has enshittified, and it sucks.

I wonder if there's some way to decentralize the original PageRank and how legal that would be.

Show threadcognitively accessible math13h ago
@RachelThornSub I can sometimes makethings happen with DuckDuckGo (like finding the right lyrics to a song that somebody w/ 2 subscribers had put on YouTube in 2020).
Show threadPeter H. Fröhlich13h ago
@RachelThornSub Only a few of us remember those days... 🧓 (Or that's what it seems like anyway.)
Show threadts 🚇12h ago
@RachelThornSub I think I was too young for this, but it sounds tragic. We have so much potential
Show threadCaden11h ago
@RachelThornSub using uBlacklist liberally helps a little bit
Introduction | uBlacklist

uBlacklist is a browser extension that filters Google Search results, available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Show threadA_Minion10h ago
@RachelThornSub The biggest mistake was giving it to business, We built it, We pay for it, We should have kept it. I started in Teletype, saw one of the first mainframes at 12yo (It was so slow an Abacus calculated faster). Saw what the field did in the space race and with Darpanet to HTML and the net we have today. It should have been managed by the Librarians with access through the schools and accessed freely with restrictions on what business could do. Now it's just one huge sales pitch.
Show threadReece6h ago
@RachelThornSub May I ask a - possibly stupid - question.
Some people once created what we now know as the internet. It is going a wrong way due to business affairs taking it over. Isn't it possible to create another one with rules avoiding this mistake?
If not - why do you think so?
If yes - how can we achieve this?