• assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 day ago

    Search should be a public utility at this point.

    But then again I don’t know how you’d neutrally maintain a search algorithm.

    Regardless, depending on a private company for something so fundamental to societal functions seems bad.

    • milbyte@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      the way it worked originally, pagerank. SEO, will never cease sadly; goodhart’s law n all, but it’s better than what we have now

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      You want the government running search?! That’s an absolute horror show; you see the impossibility of neutrality.

      Here in Florida, “homosexual teen” would lead to sites about conversion camps. We might just score a Democrat in the governor’s mansion today, so that would change. And then change again. Imagine the non-stop public fight over what is and is not appropriate to show in a search. AH! (I’m actually having a giggle thinking about such fighting. “Trannie” would lead to results about transmissions one year, a transexual slur the next, banned altogether the next.)

      • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        At least there would be a non-stop public fight over it, instead of just having to swallow whatever the corpos which captured the government want to put in their search result.

          • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 day ago

            If search was provided by a government run by a functioning country with strong democratic roots - AKA the west excluding the US - political parties messing with search would cause them to lose voters. Bribery only increases that effect in an actually working structure.