I don't know how to browse the internet anymore | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how to browse the internet anymore

manuelmoreale.com

42 pointsrapnie41 comments

Google Search now is just links and links to SEO-optimized, keyword-stuffed meaningless blogs and articles. It feels like more and more of it is GPT3 generated

There's so much affiliate marketing garbage it's unbelievable. I can't understand the motivation on Google's side. I'm sure it's good for YouTube if people are forced to use those types of platforms for content discovery, but then you're going from being the dominant player in one market (web search) to one of many in another market (content creation).

I'm sure that having search become absolute trash is great for Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, etc., but I just don't get how it benefits Google. Do they not realize it? Does the SEO optimized junk make it so hard to rank for keywords that people just buy AdWords?

Based on my own experience, I think it's easy to say that Google search is much worse than it was 10 years ago. Search in general is so bad that I actually use Bing and Google when I need to find things. I guess maybe that's market growth and I'm just the sucker that tolerates it. Lol.

> Based on my own experience, I think it's easy to say that Google search is much worse than it was 10 years ago.

My suspect is not that Google is much worse now but rather than people are, overall, writing much worse content—from a user perspective—because they try to optimise their content for money and SEO first and then _maybe_ people second. Maybe.

As a result, if you're trying to find, for example, a genuine review of a product it is close to impossible to find an article written by someone who simply wants to share his or her thoughts.

And it's honestly quite depressing to see.

It benefits google because crap organic results means you are more likely to actually click on an ad. They are already a virtual monopoly you and I might use Bing or Duckduckgo but it hardly makes a difference.

What kind of stuff are you searching for? If it's as crap as you say it is, doesn't this just mean there's a massive opportunity to create some genuinely useful content around the stuff you're talking about?

I don't know if there's much opportunity in terms of creating useful content that's ranked well by Google. I agree there's an opportunity to build better content, but I don't think Google will work as the main source of discovery.

I run into the issue most when I'm searching for solutions to tech problems. A good example would be to search for instructions on how to upload PSTs to MS365 or how to perform a server to server IMAP sync when migrating from a legacy mail provider to MS365.

You'll find a ton of "blogs" that claim to have instructions, but usually the instructions suck and the entire point of the blog is to sell 3rd party software that does the same thing as Microsoft's built in tooling.

"Feels like" being the key phrase. The reality of the modern Internet means there's no need for GPT3: You don't need AI that can write like a human when humans are being pushed by market forces to write like robots.

I browse the Internet the same way I browse the physical world. I put on my favorite browser or shoes for the day, and I set off to browse.

Some places don't work that well with my browser or shoes, e.g. I'm not wearing tall boots today so I can't go wading through a pile of manure, and I'm browsing without JS on a slower than average device today, so I can't go to sites which have a thick layer of crappy JS on it.

Am I losing anything by not visiting those sites? I generally think it's a net gain for me, because that type of setup correlates with low-grade content in my experience.

> Am I losing anything by not visiting those sites? I generally think it's a net gain for me, because that type of setup correlates with low-grade content in my experience.

I agree entirely. If a website fails to function if it can't run JS, that's a very good indicator that I won't find the website useful anyway.

I agree. The web has been generally degrading for a long while now, in my opinion, and as time passes it gets harder and harder to find good content.

It's still possible to find awesome sites.

For example - I searched for some obscure detail about Korg DW6000 synthesiser and I came across site of Legowelt - an techno producer and naive painter. Very oldskool looking site full of texts about obscure synths, free drum samples to download, paintings, 90s style webzines and general 90s aesthetics.

Most of the time that type of website will not show up on search results at all. Does it really matter that it's "possible" 1% of the time?

One way to browse to 'worth-reading material' is to bookmark such sites, however you find them, to add to your collection.

This can get complicated in a browser, after a while. (Their bookmark library 'scheme' is usually pretty crude.) One way to handle that is to organize them outside of the browser. That way you can navigate to pages you know are useful on a topic.

One way to do that is grouping them in self-created HTML pages. You can re-organize and prune them as you see fit. Then bookmark your pages in your browser.

Yes!

I've been doing this for years, and advocate it strongly. I run a private little website just for me that is a bookmark manager that I can easily add and follow links to. I use online-bookmarks (http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/ That website doesn't seem to be responding right now, so I'm not sure if it's still active or not.)

Anyway, using something like this, I have access to my collection on any machine that has internet access.

I didn’t know how to browse the web in 1994, either.

Or, more to the point, once I poked around randomly for a while, finding things like the last page (you have reached the end of the Internet), etc., I stopped browsing, and started either searching like I do now or visiting bookmarked sites like I do now or following trustworthy recommendations like I do now.

The big differences between now and then are no more USENET (really good sources of trustworthy links, at least in some groups) and commercially focused search results.

It did and still does take time to search through search results to find the good ones.

Back then, just browsing, following random links, was entertainment, not really useful.

Now, it just isn’t really useful.

> I have nine different browsers installed on this machine

Why?

Because I’m a silly web developer and I like to test on a bunch of different browsers. Current and Dev versions plus a few quirky experimental browsers I have installed just for fun.

Redundant Array of Independent Browsers

Users flagged a comment by the actual author of the blog post, answering the question honestly.

Classy, HN. Real classy.

Nope, [dead] but not [flagged] or [banned] implies that the comment was killed automatically. Remember to vouch for [dead] comments you think shouldn't be [dead].

I see. My mobile client only shows a flag icon. That's my fault entirely though. Thanks.

I find most (quality) content I read through HN, via the HN Blogs newsletter [1], which lists blog posts that haven't hit the front page.

[1] https://hnblogs.substack.com/

I also publish a list of (subjectively) interesting articles, most of which come from the HN newsletter:

https://francoisbest.com/reading-list

Interesting to think we could start seeing the resurgence of curated web directories, like Yahoo! circa 1997.

My team is working on this right now - a web browser for making browsing fun. What do you think would make the experience better for you?

Honestly, Opera circa mid 00s, but not everyone is or was a fan.

Fast browser, lots of features baked in that would be extensions with all their shortcomings in other browsers.

I know Vivaldi exists, but it's not the same, performance wise at least. Also has the drawbacks of chrome based browsers. Ah well.

Those were the peak days for web browsers! I can't find a modern web browser that I think is actually great. I use a "least-bad" one instead.

It's less about the browser and more about the search engine results.

A timeline for seeing what tabs were open yesterday at any hour

OK - so a smarter browser history? So you can go back to things more easily that you were researching/working on across tabs? Is that the use case?

The problem isn't the browser, it's the web.

I don’t see what social media has to do with it. I browse websites that offer good material based on my interests, like the New Yorker or HN. I don’t need anyone else to tell me what’s good, except friends occasionally

Isn’t HN expressly a medium for crowd-sourcing what’s interesting?

Yes, true, but somehow I see HN as the exception. The problem is the quality numbers have been dwarfed by the mega quantity of noise

silly post -- Fine, you don't want to use social media (even tho most everyone knows twitter replaced RSS about 8 years ago)

So find some of the key 'curated' blogs, and subscribe to their RSS or newsletters or just check them daily. I'm talking about kottke.org etc, that kind of thing with interesting links that send you off on rabbit holes of the latest this and that around the 'net. Done.

I hope you’ll allow me to indulge in silly posts. They’re occasionally very fun to write.

I strongly disagree with you when you say that Twitter has replaced RSS. Twitter is a minefield. And I don’t remember RSS being a constant fight to avoid content while that’s pretty much a requirement on Twitter.

As for your proposed solution, sure, following something like kottke could “solve” the problem but the reality is that you’re simply sweeping the problem under the rug.

Also the joy of discovery is completely lost when I do that, at least for me.

But hey, to each their own. I’m not saying everyone has to struggle with this as much as I do.

I don't think it's a silly post at all. I think that it's expressing something real. The web has changed from a largely people-driven place to a largely commercially-driven place.

Something is always lost when that sort of shift happens, and recognizing or even mourning that loss is not silly.

The old internet was largely user-agnostic. It involved a bunch of tools that were genuinely just tools, that people could use as they liked. As a result, all kinds of communities sprung up, and there was a lot of humanity on the net.

New internet is dominated by tech giants, who want to make money. In order to do this, they fuck with their user's minds at every opportunity. As a result, no "tool" is really a tool anymore. Google search doesn't exist to serve you. Same with maps, or Gmail. Same with Facebook, Twitter and on and on. These are not tools. They're machines to collect data on you, so you can be understood, so you can have crap sold to you. Or, more sinisterly, so you can be controlled in any number of ways.

A shadow of the old internet still exists, spread across fragmented digital ghettos here and there. Places run by humans, rather than SV companies. Places whose aim is still community, education, or just genuine fun, rather than running endless non-consensual psychology experiments on their users. But who knows how much longer any of these will endure. Most are already showing cracks.

> A shadow of the old internet still exists, spread across fragmented digital ghettos here and there.

Yes. When I talk about the real web, this is what I'm talking about. It's not dead yet, but it's certainly on life support. It's a real shame.

The new, corporate, web is basically television in web form.

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