[GoLUG] What is a 'Free' Internet?

[Steve Litt]

Barry Fishman said on Tue, 04 Jul 2023 10:24:53 -0400

>On 2023-07-04 03:26:25 -07, Syeed Ali wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Jul 2023 03:41:26 +0000
>> David Billsbrough <kc4zvw at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>  
>>> Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts
>>> July 2, 2023
>>> 
>>>   https://matt-rickard.com/google-searchs-death-by-a-thousand-cuts  
>>
>> Scraping and it's use in search engines or AI should be recognized as
>> illegal and the data then purged.
>> ...  
>
>I, for one, depend on search engines to get a perspective on what is
>going on in the world. 

I can't imagine a world without search engines, and I'm glad I don't
have to.

>The claim against search engines are usually based around two
>arguments.
>
>1) That the scraped information make visiting the site less needed and
>therefore robs the original publisher of advertising of subscription
>income.

Let me respond to this based only on my operation of
Troubleshooters.Com, an information-heavy site that exists to sell
books and courseware I sell, and before the pandemic, in-person
courses.[1]

Subjectively, with very little objective evidence, I think people are
coming to Troubleshooters.Com from search engines. They might not stay
here very long, but they come here. This being said, back in the
1990's, when search engines weren't so prevalent, I got a heck of a lot
of traffic from link trades, and the traffic was higher quality. But
then again, I did a lot more sales and marketing in the 1990's than
after 2005. But then again, maybe that's because it's more
straightforward to establish link trades than to jump through search
engine hoops with "SEO".

Anyway, subjectively I think more people who wouldn't have come to
Troubleshooters.Com come here because of search engines than people who
would have come here who avoiding it by reading search engines.


>
>2) That private information about individuals is made available, or can
>be identified by putting together multiple sources of information,
>which although not secret individually but taken together, or merged
>with other public information can be use to deduce what the person
>would not like published.

What kind of dam fool puts his personal information on the Internet?
When my daily blog described my basement laboratory where I
successfully created Covbola, a respiratory spread hemorrhagic virus
with a 40% mortality rate, I knew full well that all other websites,
news organizations and government three letter organizations would
repost it.

A more ethically thorny problem occurs when others put information
about you on the Internet. For instance, this morning I had a 4th of
July celebration in my back yard where I showed off my gun type nuclear
device, and a couple of the celebrants set off a 6 pound gun type
Plutonium device that failed to explode but simply heated up and
drilled a 1/2 mile deep hole in my yard. Several people were snapping
pictures and uploading them to the Internet, so now there's a boycott
against Troubleshooters.Com.

Unlike dispensing your own information, This problem of others
dispensing your information is not a self-inflicted wound, and I don't
know what to do about that.

[snip]

>Another driving factor is the lack of government control over
>monopolies.

Barry, raging monopolism, plus lack of campaign spending limitation
laws and anti bribery laws, and over-population constitute the root of
most of society's problems, not just the Internet's.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm