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The internet is at a crossroads. As centralized platforms face increasing scrutiny about opaque algorithms, data misuse and bias in content curation, people continue to express their frustration and dissatisfaction with the Internet.
Currently, most online platforms run on Web2. Meta, formerly known as the Faang company (formerly Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet), was previously known as Google, controls data, serves ads, and tracks users for profit. Users are ultimately products, and these companies added billions of dollars in market capitalization by turning users into products, which is far from the best model for creating sustainable knowledge engines like the Internet. Participants in the Internet ecosystem are beginning to awaken to the fact that this model doesn’t actually work for anyone other than fan companies.
These issues are not as obvious as the search. Search is at the forefront of “GateKept Content” as it is one of the most basic activities on the Internet. If the Internet is truly our collective knowledge engine, search is the first step to acquiring that knowledge.
Given that the click-through rate of the first results on Google Pages exceeds 25% and the 10th results have a proportionally only one tenth of a tenth, it is even the last and only step to gaining knowledge using the internet. Perhaps a small portion of that fraction will even be the second page of the results.
Next, consider Google’s prominent position in all searches. Last year, Google’s search market share fell below 90% for the first time in a decade, but is within the total popularity polls of Third World dictators. Therefore, one true result provided by Google’s algorithm is to get a quarter of the search engine traffic that is still held somewhere in an area of 90% of the search engine market share. It is a lot of opaque and centralized electricity, centered around one private company.
Competitors like Duckduckgo and Bing are trying to carve out some of their own market share by offering AI-powered search and increased privacy, but just like centralised companies, Google offers fundamentally without market share. The integrity of search results is more important than ever, and you cannot leave it to Web2 structures to become a highly integral administrator, especially if the prioritization of structures to protect users can turn on DIME.
The solution is here: Enter Web3
How can we bring the information back to the user’s hands, especially since search engines promise to be even more inexplicable with AI implementation and source obscurity?
One possible way to bring that power back to the user’s hands is something that has been built up so far in Web3. Web3 allows you to build a decentralized, community-driven search engine while participating in a truly open and unreliable search ecosystem. A distributed, node-driven ecosystem can ensure fair, fair and censor-resistant search results that are free from the agenda of companies that have shaped traditional search engines.
Instead of relying on businesses, the Web3 platform is unauthorized, sovereign and decentralized. They feature blockchain and smart contracts instead of centralized corporate servers that open vulnerabilities and data unstable users. Web3 allows users to control their data, identity, and digital assets.
There are many other ways Web3 can empower users. These include self-robbery without fear of forfeiture, unauthorized control of assets, self-supporting staking and revenue, access to unbanked peer-to-peer transfers, and perhaps most importantly, fundamental decentralization.
There is also no behavioral profiling, centralized control, or data tracking. This does not mean a search experience that respects censorship risk, suppresses competing voices, and a user’s privacy.
Users need to work to get back power
Today’s search engines act as gatekeepers of information, and centralized platforms determine content that is amplified, suppressed or monetized based on user profiles and company interests. Users deserve a fairer and ultimately a better search experience, as their ranking algorithms are not affected by personal data, past behavior, or profit-driven agenda.
The problem should get worse as AI races get hot and businesses are looking for new data sources to train these AIs. Whatever the centralized company promises it has done to users about not tracking or using data, these priorities can shift very quickly in things like a reorganization of AI technology. The beauty of Web3 is that the structure of the technology itself prevents such exploitation.
Web3 may seem abstract right now, but it’s not that different from the kind of technical and volatile users needed to acquire when you migrate from a personal computer to a Web2 network computer computer. Users will essentially need to exchange encrypted passwords shared with central web services for encrypted wallets (and know other places). The advantage of having full control over assets and data is far above, whatever the stumbling blocks on this learning curve.
Users are shown to be willing to trade many exchanges for convenience, but perhaps they reached a breakpoint at that bargain. Now is the time to use Web3.
