I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!
A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google ā which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic ā suddenly turned into a pile of shit.
Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:
But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:
Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:
Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.
This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:
Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works ā just that it works for people stupider than them."
And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system ā The Algorithm (TM) ā in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."
Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.
A viral post by Housefresh ā who review air purifiers ā describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:
https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ārigorous testing process,ā their ālab team,ā subject matter experts āthey collaborated with,ā and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."
But these grandiose claims ā like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab ā result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.
Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the ā extensively documented ā tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like āthe Tesla of air purifiers.ā"
One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.
BH&G's competitors commit the same sins ā literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.
But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.
A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).
Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.
Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"
They broke the deal.
Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.
Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.
In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.
An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh ā through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all ā so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.
Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested inā¦making more botshit:
Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.
That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.
When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.
Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground ā and endless temptation ā for scammers.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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Hi, Bitches, long term reader first time asker. I am in a very lucky position to have money to use on my future. I wanted to think about retirement and my bank is trying to push me to invest, make an IRA, or do an annuity, but I'm very risk-adverse. What should I do? I'm 30 and want to be good to retire when I'm 60 or 65 if I so choose.
I have a 401k with work (not matched sadly) and put 10% into that. I also have a CD going and a money market, but this is to keep up with inflation. I have big purchases coming (tuition, new car, etc.) So I am hesitant about any big moves but wanna think long term.
Yours truly, Stressed Grad Student
Hello my sweet! You're wise to be hesitant to dive into anything your bank is urging you to do. Getting some outside advice from a neutral party is always smart.
So here's said advice from your favorite neutral party:
Put what you'll need for tuition and the new car in a CD or HYSA, depending on when you need to access it. It'll be safe there until you're ready to use it and you won't be tempted to spend it.
If there's anything else left over, start an IRA (individual retirement account). While it's great you have a 401(k) through your employer, it's always good to have more than one retirement investing vehicle. An IRA has slightly different tax rules from a 401(k), and it can be kind of a "home base" for your money if you ever need to roll over an old 401(k). Yes, it's invested in the stock market and will therefore fluctuate with economic cycles. But you're far enough from retirement that that's a perfectly reasonable risk to take.
Here's more info on all these kinds of accounts, peaches:
From HYSAs to CDs, Here's How to Level Up Your Financial SavingsĀ
Procrastinating on Opening a Retirement Account? Here's 3 Ways That'll Fuck You Over.Ā
Dafuq Is a Retirement Plan and Why Do You Need One?Ā
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire
Please put on your N95s. The same ones used for covid will filter particulate pollution. I lived in a city with yearly winter pollution levels like this. If you can pay for it, you might as well get an indoor air filter to sleep in.
I had to do a little digging for this. The article leaves the victims name out but mentions a go fund me.
I was able to find an article mentioning his name that directly linked to his gofundme https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/larsen-sohail-muslim-utah-stabbing-b3015105.html his name is Sohail if you have any money to help his recovery
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-sohails-recovery-after-hate-crime-attack please keep him in your thoughts and donate if you are able
Sohail is a devoted husband and father who has always worked hard to suppā¦ Luna Nunez needs your support for Support Sohailās Recovery After
Y'all better quiet down! I've been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help! And you all don't do a goddamn thing for them! And they write STAR, not the woman's group! They do not write women, they do not write men, they write to STAR! Because we're trying to do something for them! But you all tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs! I will not put up with this shit! I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job, I have lost my apartment for gay liberation, and you all treat me this way?! What the fuck's wrong with you all?! Think about that! I believe in the gay power, I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights, that's all I wanted to say to you people. Come and see people at STAR House on Twelfth Street, the people that are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to our white middle class club! And that's what you all belong to! Revolution now! Gay power! Know the gay power!
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Theyve mobilized faster against this than anything in the past 10 years and to me that pretty much says it all and justifies what so many have said about them.
I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:
Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.
the food bank at St Mary's appears to have an "application" process that involves sending me a .doc scan of a very old two-sided paper document and expecting me to fill it out and return it, somehow. the second side of the paper is not included in the scan so its not actually possible to 'see back of page' to answer many of the fields on the front, nor would this be possible to interact with if i wasnt a person with one or more of the following: a house, a printer inside the house, mailing envelopes and stamps and mailbox access, a scanner, or alternately the software, hardware and know-how to edit a non-interactable digital document, resave it in a new document, and then attach it to email. so i have to assume everyone who uses this food bank is a 35 year old IT professional
i love the metadata it tells such a rich story. also i take this back, it isnt a scan, it appears to be an actual word document. so where is the second page??
edit: did you know that rligious charities are not required to be ADA accessible either digitally or in their facilities? they're exempt. i was just looking that up for no particular reason
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i like "social ergonomics" bc like yeah. furniture is usually made in a way that's like "we think this is probably what is needed for a human to immediately perform any given task" and often we are wrong about what types of furniture or spaces will have a detrimental long term impact on our bodies. ergonomics ideally looks at the evidence of the impact on bodies and then works backwards from there to come up with design.
social ergonomics should mean looking at social structures and analyzing the outcomes they have re: human welfare, and then taking that information back to the design board and redesigning things to hurt people less.
this should also be a zine. someday. but that would require me being able to sit upright
My partner is a game designer. He crafts experiences intended to elicit specific behaviors from thousands of strangers as his full time job. He often looks at social structures from this perspective in his free time and we talk about it a lot. and hoo boy are a lot of our systems not doing what they are officially meant to do.
if youāre genuinely interested in game design you should check out Radiator Yangās game The Tearoom (NSFW, unless you work at the Sucking Off Dudeās Guns factory).
I realize itās weird to show up on someoneās post to say āyou like game design. Have you played this game about giving head in a bathroom?ā but itās a really thoughtfully made game (see the artistās statement, which is also NSFW) that is also about the effects of surveillance on communities. when, after about half an hour of play, I realized what mindset the game had deliberately cultivated in me, I had to turn off my computer and stare at the ceiling for ten minutes. and thatās Game Design, to me
so my favorite boba tea kiosk in the mall was completely gone just a patch of empty floor which is very sad BUT I got this adorable pokemon stationary at a store that just opened up in the old joanns so I think we can call this a successful outing
š¬ 273Ā Ā š 26558Ā Ā ā¤ļø 29393Ā Ā·Ā SMALL UPDATEĀ Ā·Ā Still haven't heard back from the unemployment office, but a few days ago I ended up telling this
yeah so fun fact when I saw that post last week(?) I went ha ha what if that's my local mall. what if that's my favorite boba place at my local mall. sure looks like mall floor. but that's silly because all mall floor looks like mall floor! there's so many malls! there's no way it's my mall!
turns out
it was definitely my favorite boba place at my favorite mall. I sent op an ask with this photo when I was leaving the mall earlier (I don't think they've seen it yet but I was astounded)
you guys would all have loved my (not on tumblr) spouses reaction when he went "oh no the kiosk is gone" and I immediately said LOST JOB FROM TUMBLR?!?
we went to a different tea place by the new store in the old joanns building and I read him the whole saga aloud while we sat and had our drinks
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the impulse to hide what I'm doing at my computer still sits so deep even tho I'm literally never looking at anything objectionable , the door will open and I'll hurry to close the page like oh fuck no one can know I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for the Balkans
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