[continued from previous message]   
      
   > increasingly into AI-controlled lists of establishment-approved narratives.   
   > The web standard used to be for search result rankings to be governed by   
   > 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.   
   >   
   >    
   >   
   >    
      
   Perhaps it would be good idea to start mirroring important content to   
   the Usenet and other platforms.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)