I haven’t used Google as a default search engine for 15 years, so odds are I haven’t witnessed its enshittification as gradually as most people. To me it is a surprise when I see new bugs and errors. Have these errors simply increased so imperceptibly over time that people just accept them? This […]
Read More… from Google searches aren’t straightforward any more
As Autocade World is a relatively new site, it has been interesting to see how some of the search engines have fared. It is a Wordpress site, which experience tells me presents a set of issues when it comes to search. Mojeek: barely anything. Four links to date, though an interesting mix of the home […]
Read More… from How the search engines fared with a new site
Another thing I experienced before others: “AI” scraping causing a substantial increase in bandwidth, notably at Autocade in 2023. In Wikipedia’s case, this happened last year, as the “AI” bots sent their bandwidth up 50 per cent. Casey Newton writes: Post by @caseynewton View on Mastodon The bots steal, do not give attribution, and […]
Read More… from “AI” bots drive Wikipedia traffic up 50 per cent—as we already witnessed in 2023
Got to love the irrepressible Bob Hoffman. In his March 23 newsletter, he notes that Adlook studied target segments from popular data providers, and asked the people in those segments about themselves. I won’t spoil Bob’s entire list but the top two are: 47 per cent of the people who the data said were women […]
I’ve been saying this for many years, certainly for at least five, but the most ready example I can find on my blog was from August 2024: we have seen repeatedly how dishonest Big Tech conduct, which is often left unchecked, festers into something appalling, whether it’s anticompetitive conduct or the genocide of Rohingya Muslims […]
Read More… from I’m no longer alone in calling for Big Tech to face bans
Now that the world is waking up to Big Tech and its shenanigans, there is less need for me to post about them. Finally, what was once very evident to me is becoming mainstream thought, from Big Tech’s kowtowing to the suppression of a free press. I posted because it was frustrating to see everyone […]
Read More… from It’s finally mainstream to report what Big Tech has been about for over a decade
I don’t know how much more abundantly clear we can make things on our sites when we say, for instance, at Lucire: ‘We receive multiple enquiries from SEO or “outreach” companies about paid or guest posts each day, and if you fall into this category, please do not contact us: it’s going to be no.’ […]
Again, things I’ve been pointing out for over a decade—heck, even over two decades, if you consider early concerns I had over Yahoo!—are now mainstream thought. Ed Zitron’s latest newsletter begins: A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the end of the world—watching as the growth-at-all-costs, hyper-financialized Rot Economy seemingly tarnishes every […]
Read More… from Everyone now sees the rot economy—and we’re beginning to understand what’s behind it
Former journalism academic Dan Gillmor writes: Post by @dangillmor View on Mastodon People are waking up. Such warnings have been on this blog for over 15 years. The Facebook ones started a bit later when it became evident that they were a bug-filled privacy danger zone, then Twitter. Dan is right: ‘You never […]
Who was the quickest at indexing any part of Autocade World? January 17: Google—probably because I had obtained an SSL certificate January 21: Internet Archive, because of ‘certificate transparency’ [January 30: First public mention by me on Facebook to get our members off there] January 31: Bing February 2: Mojeek Yandex, Baidu, Brave […]
Read More… from Testing the search engines: quickest to index, more site: searches