We need SEO companies to realize they will go out of business if they continue to generate crap filler content for their clients.
We know Google won't do it. We need influence. We need effective results.
Self-hosted is cute but ineffective at best, selfish at worst.
Need is a strong term and it is likely doing a lot of work in that claim. We, technically, do not need much bar food, water and shelter. In that sense, the post is absolutely correct. Realistically, there is zero need for self-hosting, or linux, or anything much really.
But even if we get past the need claim, why is setting up a duopoly a preferred option to people actually running their own preferred setups ( and maybe even learning something in the process )?
More importantly, why on earth would I want yet another giant corporation in charge of my digital life?
<< create proper website incentives so the Internet stops sucking.
Interestingly, linux tinkerers and self-hosters are likely one of the few reasons web does not suck AS much as it otherwise could have. In a sense, the incentives are there.
<< We need SEO companies to realize they will go out of business if they continue to generate crap filler content for their clients.
Business is just that.. a business. I don't expect mosquito not to bite me. If anything, the whole premise is wrong. SEO companies defer to google's wishes and google heard the pleas of the ad industry and declared war on adblockers.
<< We need influence. We need effective results.
Zero disagreement.
<< Self-hosted is cute but ineffective at best, selfish at worst.
I dunno. It might be selfish, but I am ok with that if that is the worst. I would worry about it being ineffective, but.. I like my various instances. They serve a purpose to me.
Their search is much, much cleaner, that's for sure. But what made me stick (and mostly ditch DDG, which btw is also much cleaner than google), was how well their fastgpt works as a search tool.
Summaries are very good, it includes recent events and news, it goes through pdfs, always cites it's sources. Does hallucinate for me sometimes, but I always can tell it's incorrect by the response itself. Plus it usually gives me links that easily clear out the confusion. Especially in IT field I can tell I'm fed with the source of my trouble (like initial GitHub issue that introduces broken functionality, source pdf of a study) and less discussion around it.
Their search has some neat features as well, as you can simply choose to see less/no results from given site straight from list of search results.
