THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Search algorithms on the ad-funded web are all about *selling you something you don't need or want*. Marketing in the purest sense. When the W3C opted for ad-supported web rather than microbilling to fund build-out of the internet to the general public back in 1996 they made a terrible mistake: in the 30 year time scale it may turn out to have cost us democracy.
Have never regretted the decision to make Clew (my own fiercely independent search engine) down rank pages with ads or trackers.
🅰️ ®️ ✝️ U
Yeah I just took the service down; it'll go back up in ten minutes. I'll see if that can get it a reset on the queues it's built up and hopefully get things rolling again.
We've been having issues with being DDoSed by some botnet—still trying to figure out a long-term solution.
While you're waiting, I do have a dev blog for it that's still up where you can read some stuff if you like: https://blog.clew.se
Things are up again but responding slowly. Hopefully it'll get better.
@admitsWrongIfProven @amin 502 here