Search engines came into existence back in the late 90s as a way to replace human-curated indexes of content so that the CPC (cost per click) for display advert

Search engines came into existence back in the late 90s as a way to replace human-curated indexes of content so that the CPC (cost per click) for display advertisements could be reduced. Twenty years later, we are still realizing the price that we pay for universal indexing of all human-created content: we have enabled hate groups to congregate safely under anonymous identities, while simultaneously enabling the complete loss of having a "private life" away from the prying eyes of others. Yahoo's human-curated index, and the many "books about the Internet" that were published back in the day, certainly did not have the breadth of coverage that search engines did. But in return for that, every site you visited could be assumed to have at least the value the index stated it would have. Topical, relevant, curated. And safe. This article isn't the best at expressing this point, but they're realizing the same thing that few of my tech friends wish to consider: Stripping away the human review and approval process of maintaining a "card catalog" index of websites may have been profitable, but it comes at the cost of our humanity.