💡About
"Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious."
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users... we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers... Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results."
What is the Problem You Intend to Solve?
Current internet search is dominated by Big Tech with their opaque attention driven ranking algorithms. Big Tech Search is ultimately about selling ads and collecting personal data (under the guise of more effectively targetting ads) and not finding and exploring information. These clear economic incentives defines and shapes the narrative of who can see what as well as what remains invisible. The result: reinforced filter bubbles, polarization and a surveillance race.
Why Do You Think It Needs to be Solved?
We think that free access and pluralism of information als well as inclusion and privacy are prerequisites for an open democratic society. This is not possible with the current search paradigms.
How Will You Solve it?
By rethinking search. Instead of a linear list of top hits we see the process of Internet search as a recursive exploration and propose a new multi-modal model for search: re:search. Instead of a one size fits all query model we offer a multitude, including for power users an expressive predicate logic based language. Rather than deploying secret and opaque rankings we offer a user selectable range of open algorithms that are 100% open source, transparent, and community driven. Instead of costly and energy hungry data centers we also have an alternative model for computation based on decentralization and user participation. This frees search from its dependency upon advertising and allows it to focus on what matters: information discovery. To make this all happen and scale we also propose a democratic organization structure: the DAO.
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