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@tante This reminds me of the quote:

"I think we can learn 2 things from this: 1) Don't take everything you read on the internet at face value & 2) Google takes everything it reads on the internet at face value."

- @TechConnectify in 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbHBHhZOglw&pp=ygUidGVjaG5vbG9neSBjb25uZWN0aW9ucyB0b3VjaCBsYW1wcw%3D%3D

@tante

as big tech (meta, alphabet, apple and ms) has achieved total market capture of the internet; it has become theirs to craft as they wish. the only entity of any power pushing back is the EU- and i have to wonder how long that will last.

Our choices have become: Participate, segregate, or leave for irl.

The social net is already sus because of ai. W/o irl validation, you can never really be 100% about *what* you are communicating with online. Human? Maybe? probably? I hope so? 😬

@tante I'm a bit confused about the long game here.... If google cuts off the reason for people to visit websites, won't people stop, you know, making websites? And if that happens, doesn't their AI engine become outdated at best, and potentially worthless?

@tante Currently I use Startpage, but AFAIK that's essentially just an anonymised version of Google - and they've recently been pushing their own ai slop service as well. Sometimes I use DuckDuckGos no AI search - but I hear theyre in Googles pockets nowadays, too.

Does anyone have a decent, non-AI sloppified, non-Google alternative they could reccomend?

@tante it is...inevitable.

@tante Absolutely this

@tante AMP v2. They want to control the message, and hide the sources. Basically we can’t trust anything it outputs.

@tante

We do know we are in for some really amazing horror stories. The difference is you can’t share a link anymore.

That’s the craziest shit.

How do you share a link? you can’t

@tante the people I need to hear / read this possibly don't read English good enough for me to serve this to them.

And my translation powers are not good enough for your output.

Could you possibly write this in German?

@tante capitalism is founded on taking something that is free and readily available and charging people for it.

I've been warning people for years about this. no one seemed to listen. Their "ads" are pay to play and now with AI adoption it is even more so. They own the browsers you use and the phones you use them on. Only thing they didn't control was the content, now they own that too.

@tante @static

Time to sell off Google Stock

@tante thanks

@tante Stop spreading fear, its impossible to shut down the internet lol. Servers sending shit over HTTP ports will exist forever and both browsers and server software are open source, never mind there is the dark web that I regularly use and as long as you dont accidentally open/download illicit content or run some dumb executable from is relatively safe.

@tante this wont afect China or Russia. Google owns decilliins of $$$ on fines for Russia

@tante Yea I have been working towards degoogling for a few months now. This takes some real focus and effort, and some investment which money is tighter than ever now!!

@tante The really weird "Fediverse telepathy" effect at work here (more correctly C. G. Jung's synchronicity) is that I found myself writing in a text file last night, before the story we all saw broke: "Gradually grind away the Google" in relation to moving away from GMail for my private offsite backups, where there are tells (not conclusive proof) that they are illegally sharing training on private email content with Meta in violation of the GDPR and UK DPA.

@tante those in control of information control power and given our current societal situation this not just bad for the web, it will affect all facets of life.

I just reread Animal Farm and the parallels are too close for comfort.

@tante which alternative search engines have an independent search index that does not rely on Google or Microsoft/Bing?

@tante exactly that. Never used a google service (I know of as many pages just load these even with blockers activated) since 10 years as they became worse and worse. But all the time I missed something in case of search engine. Finally found @kagihq and are happy now. No more nonsense/ads/seo.

@tante
"De-Googling" our minds is urgent. They are using the open web as free raw material for AI, turning active participants into passive consumers in a closed, monopolized digital environment. Wake up before we end up in a sloppy AOL-style walled garden.
🦁🦁🦁

@tante I think that this needs to be more widely known and it poses the question: how can you communicate this clearly to lay-people.

Here we are in a kind of echo-chamber with a techie bias. Many valid points are raised about subjects with broad impact, but I realise that a lot of the language and concepts are difficult if you are not experienced in the topic.

Note that this is not a plea to dumb down. If the message is so important, can we amplify it and spread it using language which a non-tech person would get without corrupting the meaning?

This applies to using the fediverse as well - how can it be communicated and made more accessible?

@tante

Information and data are the new means of production, and Google and many other Big Tech companies have spent decades building monopolies to act as the paid gatekeeper.

Buy a set of hard copy maps and encyclopaedias before they no longer exist.

@tante ok so we're at war with ... (checks notes) Google? Not Meta? Not Microsoft? Not Amazon? Not Oracle? Not Palantir? Not Apple? Not Tesla? Not X?

@tante switch to a different search enginr. Did thst long ago when google search rrsults started to be crap already.

@tante Google blog article, https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/sundar-pichai-io-2026/#agents

"Search in the agentic era"

@tante Yea I think their dream is to have a device with only one interactable IA and nothing more, like if that were the lamp genie who searchs and make everything that the user wants when prompted. I think they are aiming in that direction. Not having an GUI or apps, only IA that will make everything.

@tante this is all stock driven. if investors don't bite, these plans will just disappear.

@tante We saw this coming with how much they break the social contract of the World Wide Web. Those who have a say on this kind of thinking need to wake up.

@tante is there an alternative to google scholar out there? unsure if they will do anything to that imminently but that's where I find journal articles