[continued from previous message]   
      
   >> place. For many years,  Google offered a cached version of the link you   
   >> were seeking just below the live version. They have plenty of server space   
   >> to enable that now, but no: that service is now completely gone. In fact,   
   >> the Google cache service officially ended just a week or two before the   
   >> Archive.org crash, at the end of September 2024.   
   >>   
   >> Thus the two available tools for searching cached pages on the Internet   
   >> disappeared within weeks of each other and within weeks of the November 5th   
   >> election.   
   >>   
   >> Other disturbing trends are also turning Internet search results   
   >> 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.   
      
      
      Replication IS useful in these dreadful times.   
      
      There are vast numbers of hidey-holes online, and   
      always hard media that can be passed around.   
      
      Various entities really DO want to do the "Fahrenheit 451"   
      trick. Know that and thwart them.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)