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This reeks of “communism is when capitalism” to me, because: >A publicly run search engine would not have those incentives and would be at if anything graver r
by nehal3m 1y ago
This reeks of “communism is when capitalism” to me, because:
>A publicly run search engine would not have those incentives and would be at if anything graver risk of a "tragedy of the commons" type scenario where the engine is overtaken with spam.
But then how come that is exactly what is happening with modern search engines? It’s just always advertising that comes along and fucks up a good thing.
- hnbad 1y agoIf "the government" were to run Google Search, it would be bad because nobody cares about making it good because profit is the only motivating force for organizations. Because Google runs Google Search, it's instead only bad because profit motivates Google to push its services, increase ad impressions/interactions and incentivize users to not actually leave the search engine result page (e.g. by citing or summarizing content of the related web pages on the result page). And because competition is good that means Google actively competing with the sites it indexes for the attention of its users is a good thing even if those sites losing out and failing would result in worse search results over time. Hang on, maybe "content stealing" really already was a problem before LLMs made it their entire MO and those greedy newspaper publishers were onto something when they complained about Google lifting their news feeds even if it provided "exposure" for them.
- cbsmith 1y ago> But then how come that is exactly what is happening with modern search engines? ...because there are systemic forces driving this outcome, and those forces don't much care whether the company is a public service or a privately held one.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]