Bad article. Weak, had a chance to put actual offenders on blast with their platform but just softballs it with “general concepts” they feel are shitty. Aside from google stuff like search that is the most softball answer. And more likely google isn’t one of their advertisers
Even the part about Google Search only highlights the AI crap and skips over the real problem of increasingly worse search results. The whole article is more of a rant from a user’s perspective and there aren’t any real insights.
Another space where they avoid offending advertisers, who are the real thing that ruined google search (along with seo bullshit).
Like if the only change to google search was the ai blurb I don’t think people would care nearly as much. They care because the actual results are heavily weighted to be sponsored results above all else for the entire first page, and the second page is designed to redirect you to images or other things that push you to start a new search (thus seeing new sponsored results). What you wanted to find is meaningless, it’s solely about shoveling products and services down your fucking throat
Ars itself has become pretty enshittified. It doesn’t hold a candle when compared to itself 10 years ago. Also, they mentioned Doctorow several times but apparently they couldn’t be arsed to put even a single link to his blog… why?
