ffmike

And just like DEI teams, ethics teams will be easy to cut back on if a company runs into economic trouble.

Their web site is down, but their Github account is currently still available, with 3D printing files and software for their microlab.

Yep, I get it. Effectively block ads and javascript and it doesn’t much matter what a site wants to do. I skip the few that have actually effective paywalls (as opposed to just putting a div over content on the page - as far as I’m concerned, if it’s downloaded to my computer, I am allowed to read it). Of course, the sites that load up on ads tend to be pretty low-quality content anyhow.

This is why I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, and Firefox with a few selected extensions that ensure I almost never see an ad. I would be shocked if Google enabled any long-term ad-free experience.

In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we’re also improving how we rank results in Search overall, with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience. Last year, we launched the helpful content system to show more content made for people, and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we’ll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search.

That seems like just a step in the inevitable AI arms race.

It’s not just about the information though, is it? Web forums can offer a sense of community that his preferred alternative (long-form Medium articles with comments) just can’t match, in my experience.

In my opinion it’s unreasonable to think anything can truly be deleted in a federated system. Even if the official codebase is updated to do complete deletion & overwrite, it’s impossible to prevent some bad actor from federating in a fork that just ignores deletion requests.

Seems sensible to just not post anything that you don’t want to be available for the lifetime of the internet.