Post ASTm3Y4fO542WqlL9s by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) More posts by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
 (DIR) Post #ASTUHMTLWOkZQQk8DA by Retrograde@oldbytes.space
       2023-02-07T21:36:34Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       JFC, I'll take a slew of half baked 2000s era Under Construction 🚧​ websites any day to this utterly barren internet wasteland of search results that are machine generated copies of other sites that are machine generated copies of other sites that are machine generated to only appear in my search in order to attempt to sell me something.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASTUHN11VBgl6sV1hg by jskists@oldbytes.space
       2023-02-07T21:37:56Z
       
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       @Retrograde I miss web-rings...
       
 (DIR) Post #ASTUHNsCJUDtlnNUaO by kittychandler@wandering.shop
       2023-02-08T00:16:02Z
       
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       @jskists @Retrograde I was just going to say this.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASTUHOIQjxCt59eRTU by Graycot@fosstodon.org
       2023-02-08T08:54:14Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @kittychandler @jskists @Retrograde Webrings are still around! I've even open sourced the code behind my webring to make it easier for others to start their own. Here is a great write up by Brisray on the current state of webrings along with half a dozen active and high quality rings: https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm
       
 (DIR) Post #ASTm3XaXC6xf1OfHBw by wordshaper@weatherishappening.network
       2023-02-08T16:13:27Z
       
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       @Retrograde The 2000s era web was actually littered with this crap. I worked in QA for one of the many search engines that didn't survive (pour one out for the late, lamented Northern Light) and even then there was a huge amount these autogenerated interconnected link farms trying their best to scam people -- it was everywhere, because even briefly slipping past a search engine's spam filters could get people a huge payoff. It was easier to identify the spam back then, since the autogenerated pages were less natural, which was the one saving grace for the spam filters. That's become harder and harder to do as the gap between webspam and actual (honestly pretty crappy) content narrows to indistinguishability.I'm pretty sure if we *did* actually filter this properly we'd get the same level of backlash you get when you properly filter terrorist and nazi stuff, and for similar reasons.
       
 (DIR) Post #ASTm3Y4fO542WqlL9s by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
       2023-02-08T19:26:41Z
       
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       @wordshaper @Retrograde Oh, yeah, I definitely remember the link farms. I found them reasonably easy to avoid. Then people started using blog comments for the purpose, which really damaged the utility of search engines.