this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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This is exactly the reason I've been considering if it's possibly the time to start and launch a brand new search engine, especially now subscription based systems are so common.
With at the core a pledge to not record and/or share any user data or interaction and supported by a subscription service for who wants to pay and really oldschool tier selfhosted "sidebar" ads for the rest.
None of this "insert ads into content" shite.
For the algo, also far more oldschool "less intelligent", where keywords and content matter (backed by a curation of good/bad sites) and options for users to report sites, that will then be re-curated.
For adding sites, allow subscribers to suggest sites that then get listed to other subscribers (or if it grows large enough to support employees, subscribers AND employees) for validation.
If a site is then later found to be questionable, everyone that suggested and validated it can get a negative validation score, which will be used for future reference when selecting users to validate new sites.
Something like they get +1 for every validation they do.
But -1 for 1 bad validation, -11 for 2, -31 for 3, -61 for 4, -101 for 5, etc, so if they validate 100 sites and validate 5 incorrectly, they are no longer allowed to validate new sites.
And for validation, once there are enough subscribers, you take 100+ random subscribers, of which 50% needs to respond to validate and if 90% of responders validate positively, it passes. If less than 90% validate positively, it goes for manual review by the administration.
Etc etc.
The problem with search engines isn’t the search engines themselves. The problem is that sites game the system. Everybody want to be at the top of the search results, so they do whatever it takes to get there.
You can start a brand new search engine, but if it get popular enough it will also be gamed to the point it’s useless again.
There just needs to be actually human eyes on this kind of shit. Especially if it's a subscription service like dude was saying. Algorithms will get gamed. Everything will get gamed. But a gamer can spot another gaming faster than anything I know of. You need a bullshitter to call ballshit on any and every letter-not-the-spirit of the rule, bad faith motherfucker out there. Ban hammer vigilance almost always wins out, and besides a person's data can be cross referenced to pings in cell towers. A crafty bot (maybe not entirely leeeeegal) can auto block from IPs around marked IMEIs, so wherever bitchass goes, if he's got his phone, no go.
And if you wanted too, by the time they got wise and got a new number, you'd already know their habits and have deduced the number switch anyway. People are amazingly, and frighteningly easy to identify by just a few repeated locations in a week.