I have been using more and more Steemit recently and I have been a little bit disappointed when I saw that the search functionality was powered by Google.
Steemit being an underdog on the social media scene with a decentralized system where writers and curators get remunerated for sharing interesting and helpful articles, I could not understand why they chose Google which is the exact opposite in terms of philosophy. Google tracks you through their numerous applications:
- their browser is tracking your searches
- gmail goes through your emails to display ads that will most likely interest you
- their android system enables their apps to do pretty much anything they want without warning you...
- their street view cars were stealing data from home wifi hubs
- module found in their browser to secretly eavesdrop on you
And these are examples among others. They use your data to make money out of it. We all are the product without getting any remuneration.
On top of it, after the different revelations from Edward Snowden and Wikileaks, we now know that our data are directly available to the different intelligence services of the USA (and the other countries part of the five eyes).
Finally, I strongly dislike any type of monopolies which is what Google is. I think it should be dismantled (just like Microsoft). Competition is good for the customer and having a single company controlling so much of the internet is really unhealthy, here are a few figures about Google’s market share:
- 80% of the online searches
- 88% of online search advertisement
- 60% of browser market share
- 90% of the mobile OS (...)
Since then I discovered DuckDuckGo which is a search engine that does not track you, does not give you personalized results, and respect your privacy. That sounds a lot more aligned with the values of Steemit.
Let me know what you think, I hope that with significant support, we might convince Steemit to replace Google Search with a search engine that means freedom not enslavement. If someone is close to the management and can pass the message, I (we?) would be grateful.
I believe we need something like AskSteem to be integrated instead of Google or any other search engine.
The problem is, when you search Google or any search engine, the returned pages are those indexed - not the ones created on the blockchain. Of course, steemit.com holds a lot of authority and almost all of the pages are indexed (Haven't done any calculations for percentage or indexing time), but there's still the risk of not finding the results you NEED.
Using AskSteem or some other form of blockchain search engine guarantees that you'll find all posts regardless their age or creation time. They are all 'indexed' naturally since they are stored on the blockchain.
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Thanks a lot, I did not know about AskSteem, I will start using it.
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My pleasure
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Nice idea ! There is also Qwant which is good 😃
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Very true, I forgot to mention it but I use too.
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Cool ! 👍
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That is a great idea, but the fact remains Google has search on the internet 'by the sh0rt and curlies'' if you excuse the phrase.
Google has insinuated it's way into our lives the way Facebook has and is taking more and more from us to give us 'free stuff'.
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yes but we have to start somewhere and I believe that if we can explain the issue to enough people, we can start a movement that will eventually snowball. I will also publish an article on how we can replace any apps from Google, Microsoft, Facebook or Apple by open source apps that respect our privacy.
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Nice suggestion. Thats great that we aim to improve steemit even more!
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Yes I have a few ideas on how we could improve the platform and really like that the community has a say in it.
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Not using it. How is the search function? Is it good enough?
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It's actually pretty terrible. When the results are displayed, if you click on an article and try to go back to look at the others, the page is blank and you have to search again...
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I was very surprised when I found out Steemit is using Google.
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Your opinion on Google is correct, but DuckDuckGo is no different. I discovered DuckDuckGo when I learnt that it is the recommended search engine by Wikileaks. I decided to study what it was all about. And I couldn’t believe Wikileaks naivety for recommending DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo sends your data to you-know-who, just like Google, Facebook etc. It is only that DuckDuckGo is more cunning.
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