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Is Elon Musk the greatest visionary or the greatest snake oil salesman of our age?

Smangus said:
I thought it was because my parents succumbed to one of the most primeval and basic instincts of the animal kingdom. :hmm: Spose they did push certain boundaries mind. :D
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Yes, that and all the technological and medical advances that hugely increased the chances of them existing in the first place.
 
NoXion said:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has done real harm to our ability to find useful and reliable information online, as opposed to finding places that want to sell you shit. I wish a lingering and agonising death upon any and all people involved in pushing SEO.
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That depends on your definition of SEO

SEO is originally stated more as a method of making your site more readable to search engines. So the search engines better understand your site. This of course morphed a bit into trying to manipulate search engines to promote your site more than it 'should' be. However even that is not even that bad.

The worst bit is when you ask what is a search engine for? Is it there to show you what you want to hear or what you should hear.

If it is driven by capitalism it will show you want you want to see to drive engagement.

If it is to show you what you should see it needs someone to decide what that should be.


Actually the flip flip side.of it all is it sometime shows you stuff you hate as that draws more clicks. Anger is an energy.

Shall we go back to web directories? Can those cope with the modern web?

Technology is moving faster than our understanding of what it does to us and legislation is geologically slow in comparison.

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Chz said:
400px-khan.jpg
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Shippou-Sensei said:
That depends on your definition of SEO

SEO is originally stated more as a method of making your site more readable to search engines. So the search engines better understand your site. This of course morphed a bit into trying to manipulate search engines to promote your site more than it 'should' be. However even that is not even that bad.

The worst bit is when you ask what is a search engine for? Is it there to show you what you want to hear or what you should hear.

If it is driven by capitalism it will show you want you want to see to drive engagement.

If it is to show you what you should see it needs someone to decide what that should be.


Actually the flip flip side.of it all is it sometime shows you stuff you hate as that draws more clicks. Anger is an energy.

Shall we go back to web directories? Can those cope with the modern web?

Technology is moving faster than our understanding of what it does to us and legislation is geologically slow in comparison.

View attachment 416555
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I'm using the contemporary definition of SEO, in which grasping cunts try to game the system by flooding the internet with garbage webshites in an attempt to pollute search results with their irrelevant money-grubbing efforts.

There was a time when search results were more useful and interesting, but then that got hit with the enshittification stick. You used to be able to do things like use quotes to find exact results, and put a minus sign in front of search terms in order to exclude things, but this ability has been greatly weakened, if it even works at all any more.

Avoiding rage-bait is one of the reasons why I'm very diligent in curating my YouTube feed; anything that smells of reactionary bullshit gets immediately hit with the "Don't recommend Video/Channel" button, and I never touch the dislike button or give in to the temptation to leave a snarky comment, because the algorithm counts that shit as engagement. I don't hate-watch shitty content creators, I only give my eyeballs and other engagement to channels that I actually like and want to see get a bigger audience.

I stopped using Facebook and Twitter (even before that Musk cunt took over) because both sites turned out to be just an endless sewage pipe of shite that hooks into your dopamine and cortisol receptors, and my mental health was suffering as a result.

It's also why I've installed a browser plug-in that hides search engine results from websites I know are just total fucking garbage, such as Quora.

I don't know that we have to go as far as back as web directories, I'm pretty sure there was a period between then and the current awful situation, when things were more advanced and clever but without being quite so enshittified as they are now.
 
NoXion said:
You used to be able to do things like use quotes to find exact results, and put a minus sign in front of search terms in order to exclude things, but this ability has been greatly weakened, if it even works at all any more.
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You still can. Go to Tools, All results, then click Verbatim. This will remove the "smarts" and make your quotes/booleans work properly.

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Saul Goodman said:
What's it even for? It looks like a platform for clueless fuckwits to spout shite to like-minded clueless fuckwits. Actually, that makes it sound a lot like the rest of the internet.
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It used to be a place where people could ask questions and get informative answers. It even had subject matter experts helping out, which was cool. But then it went downhill. This article provides a decent rundown:

slate.com

One of Our Best Websites Died While No One Was Looking

The once-thriving site used to answer our most specific questions. But users are fleeing.
slate.com slate.com
 
Rob Ray said:
It's mainly a clunkier version of Reddit aimed at people with extra-inflated egos.
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That's exactly how it appears. It's what I imagine a school would look like if you took away the teachers and any figures of authority, and let the pupils make it their own.
 
Saul Goodman said:
That's exactly how it appears. It's what I imagine a school would look like if you took away the teachers and any figures of authority, and let the pupils make it their own.
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Tbf schools have been run quite well without figures of authority, but yes a free-for-all of competing pompous dickheads is probably not the most ideal of learning environments.

Edit: I'd also say it's functionally obsolete regardless of what they do with it in future. If it was originally built for a world where open social media was too chaotic to find expertise so a bespoke offering made sense. But its open generalist approach is incapable of holding off said chaos and has been supplanted by a social move towards dedicated zones of knowledge (specific discord servers, paid-for communities etc - even places like Urban) blocking out unwanted spam/trolling/grifting/conspiracy bollocks.
 
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Saul Goodman said:
What's it even for? It looks like a platform for clueless fuckwits to spout shite to like-minded clueless fuckwits. Actually, that makes it sound a lot like the rest of the internet.
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Very occasionally I've found it a source of great entertainment. At the start of last year I discovered the little communist essays written by contributor 'Lonely Cantonese Sith Lord'. (I suspect that might be a pen name). Here are a couple of examples:

Lonely Cantonese Sith Lord's answer to Is it possible for an SJW to be anti-communist? - Quora (archived)
What is a globohomo? - Quora (archived)

Saul Goodman said:
That's exactly how it appears. It's what I imagine a school would look like if you took away the teachers and any figures of authority, and let the pupils make it their own.
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:thumbs:

Xlv4p0a.gif
 
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