John Battelle's Search Blog Marketers Have Given Up on Context, And Our National Discourse Is Suffering

The fact is, brand-centric content is optimized for driving revenue, not for the quality of original content.

Search engines — the window into the web for many people — top their results with pages containing thousands of words of auto-generated nothingness, perfectly optimized for search engine prominence and to pull in money via ads and affiliate links while simultaneously devoid of any useful information.

Social networks have become “the web” for many pe... See more

When everything is measured in terms of engagement, content will be optimized for addictiveness. Not entertainment or artistic merit. Not intellectual substance or creativity. Pure, plain addictiveness.

what I’m really mourning here is the death of independent media: opinions that aren’t created as clickbait, hot takes that aren’t manufactured for views, and recommendations that aren’t paid for—ultimately I’m looking for people I can trust.