Right now, I'd even settle for a competitive, interesting marketplace of corporate search engines.
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 3:17 AM, Jesse R. Taylor <[email protected]>wrote: > Recently there has been a lot of focus on the importance of developing > more secure alternatives to email, instant messaging, browsing, etc. ... > but I've seen very little focus on the need for development of alternatives > to corporate search engines. > > Corporate/state control of the Internet involves a three pronged strategy > of: mass surveillance, censorship/criminalization of undesirable ideas, and > traffic shaping (i.e. directing people away of things you don't want them > to see, and towards things you do). Corporate search engines are implicated > in all three of these, i.e. they: > > 1) Monitor what we are searching for > 2) Censor websites by removing them from search engine indexes > 3) Shape traffic via non-transparent algorithms that can sort search > results in a way that grants prominence to certain types of sites > (corporate media, etc.), in order to suit the interests of multinational > corporations and governments. > > ... so obviously, developing alternatives to corporate search is every bit > as crucial for protecting privacy and free speech as encrypting our > emails/chats, and anonymizing our browsing ... > > But I've seen very little information about practical/simple options that > are available for anonymous and decentralized Internet search software. > I've only been able to find a few examples like YaCy, but they all seem > overly complex and unusable by the vast majority of users. What are the > major barriers to creating simple tools (e.g. a plugin for Firefox) that > would enable users to perform anonymous, p2p web search (even if it's much > slower than centralized search) and break away from using corporate search? > Which current efforts to create decentralized search seem most promising to > you from a privacy/security standpoint? > > -- Jesse Taylor <http://www.interference.cc> > -- konklone.com | @konklone <https://twitter.com/konklone>
