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.
@cstross They'd have figured out how to infiltrate and reuse the "free" command and control surface presented by the WWW, no matter its funding source.
@afeinman Different incentive structure, though. It's the clicks-per-view metric (for ad views) that drove our social media to prioritize outrage and dopamine boosts over quality content. It's the keep-their-eyes-on-our-site-only that's driving Google to kill the public internet and Facebook to build walled gardens.