Discussion · bonfire.cafe

There used to be this deal between Google (and other search engines) and the Web: You get to index our stuff, show ads next to them but you link our work. AI Overview and Perplexity and all these systems cancel that deal.

And maybe - for a while - search will also need to die a bit? Make the whole web uncrawlable. Refuse any bots. As an act of resistance to the tech sector as a whole.

PonyXPS

@PonyXPS@sigmoid.social replied · 2 months ago

@tante I have been exploring the concept of a Universal Tax on Energy or Universal Energy Tax (UTE or UET??) Tax ALL USE of energy regardless of source. Put that money to work making more efficient and environmentally friendly infrastructure. Convert measurements to KWH. Most of the tracking is already in place. Could be initially trialed voluntarily. AI does not care. Its future is already secure. Slow AI like the Slow Food movement.

danbri

@danbri@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@tante there was web search for years before it became clear how much money ads would bring into the system. It wasn’t particularly good search but it was there!

Dec.tar.gz

@dec23k@mastodon.ie replied · 2 months ago

@tante
I have a very simple deal with search engines. They send useful traffic (human visitors) to my sites from results pages, or their crawlers get blocked.
And abusive spiders (for example Cuil --now defunct-- and MJ12 and AHrefs) that crawl excessively get blocked first, ask questions later.

Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

@mro@digitalcourage.social replied · 3 months ago

Hi @tante,
💯. Seit Jahren schon https://blog.mro.name/robots.txt - vorher sogar ganz ohne Ausnahme.

Världens bästa Kille™

@thelovebing@mastodon.nu replied · 3 months ago

@tante search is dying for sure, curation will be big. Forums, wikis … trusted sites will be the thing. Possibly portals will be popular again. Brands (not necessarily commercial) will be back in style. Because ”search” doesn’t begin on the web. It begins in your head.

That’s what I think.

Andres

@Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it replied · 3 months ago

@tante It'll be interesting to see if forums and similar sites bring back search results. Many forums gave up on search in the 2010s years ago, replacing it with a "site:<url>" google result (or worse, a text snippet saying to just use google).

:jan:‍:abreath:🌬️:dandelion:

@Crazypedia@pagan.plus replied · 3 months ago

@tante human reviewed\rated webrings could come back

Nicole Parsons

@Npars01@mstdn.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante

There are a number of practices used to give guidance to transgressive "I don't have to follow the rules" childishness.

They also increase in scope, if the conduct persists.

Natural consequences means letting fascists have a taste of the results of what they've done.

Ostracism. Time outs. Constructive criticism & feedback. Loss of access. Withdrawal of privileges. Exclusion. Mandatory reporting. Regulation. Oversight. Lawsuits. Sanctions. Fines. Audits.

Gustavo

@qgustavor@urusai.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante So, with this in mind, what to expect from the web? I guess crawlers will eventually adapt to things like Anubis, so websites will move to be login-required like platforms like Instagram and Twitter?

SpaceLifeForm

@SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange replied · 3 months ago

@tante

You do not need search engines much if you are here.

Someone here probably knows the answer to your query.

#Fediverse #SEO

Ryan J. Yoder

@ryanjyoder@techhub.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante
I know this is a pipe dream but given information is a public good, I wish the government would just subsidize content creators so this data could be available to everyone no matter how they want to consume it.

cuNha

@mudaste@mstdn.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante

su_liam

@su_liam@mas.to replied · 3 months ago

@tante Sounds like a pain in the ass, but I support it. Maybe bring back webrings and lists of pages among friends sharing other pages they’ve found useful.

Drop into community

@dropout_artist@troet.cafe replied · 3 months ago

@tante

I wish we had a fedi-style fix for web search.

Can you or anybody else in this reply section say whether #YaCy (https://yacy.net/) by @orbiterlab could be a way forward?

(Haven't had the chance to install and try it myself yet)

ZephyrXero

@zephyrxero@layer8.space replied · 3 months ago

@tante maybe Yahoo was onto something and we need a new set of directories to browse through instead of search

Jess👾

@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange replied · 3 months ago

@tante Bring back webrings and human curated web directories!

LAUREN :bacall_fire:

@noondlyt@hellions.cloud replied · 3 months ago

@tante

This is good

Claudius

@claudius@darmstadt.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante bring back webrings.

Fusselwurm

@fusselwurm@berlin.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante how do you make the web uncrawlable without breaking the web for people, too?

Marcel Nowicki

@blindi@marctodon.marci.one replied · 3 months ago

@tante make flash sites great again

Caspar C. Mierau

@leitmedium@tldr.nettime.org replied · 3 months ago

@tante Ich hole den GIF-Maker raus und wir machen einen Banner für einen Webring!

pettter

@pettter@social.accum.se replied · 3 months ago

@tante Or manually register to useful and ethical search engines like @marginalia

zweifeln

@zweifeln@chaos.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante Search being this bad these days is the main reason, why AI tools are this popular. It is the only way to get some infos from the web, if you don't know exactly where to look.
Arguing search should even be worse is basically saying all non-tech folks shall stick to social media and skip the actual web altogether.

saxnot ➡️ HOA, GPN

@saxnot@chaos.social replied · 3 months ago

@tante yeah agreed.
be anti-crawlable

bonfire.cafe

A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate

bonfire.cafe: About · Code of conduct · Privacy · Users · Instances

Bonfire social · 1.0.0-rc.3.21 no JS en

Automatic federation enabled