[continued from previous message]   
      
   user behavior, links, citations, and so forth. These were more or less   
   organic metrics, based on an aggregation of data indicating how useful a   
   search result was to Internet users. Put very simply, the more people found   
   a search result useful, the higher it would rank. Google now uses very   
   different metrics to rank search results, including what it considers   
   “trusted sources” and other opaque, subjective determinations.   
      
   Furthermore, the most widely used service that once ranked websites based   
   on traffic is now gone. That service was called Alexa. The company that   
   created it was independent. Then one day in 1999, it was bought by Amazon.   
   That seemed encouraging because Amazon was well-heeled. The acquisition   
   seemed to codify the tool that everyone was using as a kind of metric of   
   status on the web. It was common back in the day to take note of an article   
   somewhere on the web and then look it up on Alexa to see its reach. If it   
   was important, one would take notice, but if it was not, no one   
   particularly cared.   
      
   This is how an entire generation of web technicians functioned. The system   
   worked as well as one could possibly expect.   
      
   Then, in 2014, years after acquiring the ranking service Alexa, Amazon did   
   a strange thing. It released its home assistant (and surveillance device)   
   with the same name. Suddenly, everyone had them in their homes and would   
   find out anything by saying “Hey Alexa.” Something seemed strange about   
   Amazon naming its new product after an unrelated business it had acquired   
   years earlier. No doubt there was some confusion caused by the naming   
   overlap.   
      
   Here’s what happened next. In 2022, Amazon actively took down the web   
   ranking tool. It didn’t sell it. It didn’t raise the prices. It didn’t do   
   anything with it. It suddenly made it go completely dark.   
      
   No one could figure out why. It was the industry standard, and suddenly it   
   was gone. Not sold, just blasted away. No longer could anyone figure out   
   the traffic-based website rankings of anything without paying very high   
   prices for hard-to-use proprietary products.   
      
   All of these data points that might seem unrelated when considered   
   individually, are actually part of a long trajectory that has shifted our   
   information landscape into unrecognizable territory. The Covid events of   
   2020-2023, with massive global censorship and propaganda efforts, greatly   
   accelerated these trends.   
      
   One wonders if anyone will remember what it was once like. The hacking and   
   hobbling of Archive.org underscores the point: there will be no more   
   memory.   
      
   As of this writing, fully three weeks of web content have not been   
   archived. What we are missing and what has changed is anyone’s guess. And   
   we have no idea when the service will come back. It is entirely possible   
   that it will not come back, that the only real history to which we can take   
   recourse will be pre-October 8, 2024, the date on which everything changed.   
      
      
   The Internet was founded to be free and democratic. It will require   
   herculean efforts at this point to restore that vision, because something   
   else is quickly replacing it.   
      
      
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)