Adjustments

[degringolade]

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the internet.  I very much appreciate the access it gives me to information.  But more and more I need to spend time and effort winnowing through what appears to me to be a very corrupted data set.

I am beginning to think that the big corporations that provide access to the services available might be in the core of the problem.  I am trying to figure out how to work around this problem.  

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>But more and more I need to spend time and effort winnowing through what appears to me to be a very corrupted data set.<<

It is increasingly corrupted. Worse, the search engines are declining in accuracy and usefulness. When they treat "-topic" as something to search for instead of exclude, they're just plain useless. And so is an internet of a trillion pages, if you can't find the one you need. >_<

>> I am beginning to think that the big corporations that provide access to the services available might be in the core of the problem. <<

Not the only part of the problem, but certainly a large part of it, so core works.

>> I am trying to figure out how to work around this problem. <<

Some tactics I use:

* Search for older content, which is less corrupted.

* PDF files are static and not subject to pop-ups or other problems.

* Watch for reliable sites and favor them. Frex, I get a lot of my science links from Earth.com and ScienceDaily. Freethoughtblogs is a good source of outspoken opinions.

* Small sites or platforms are more likely to be valid than bigger ones; independent sites are more likely to be valid than corporate ones. Search "indie web," "small web," "old web," etc.

* Watch for crowdfunding. As the overall corruption spreads, more people are saying "Fuck 'em, I'll do it myself." So there are indie crowdfunded news sites, and indie crowdfunded environmental sites, and so forth.