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.

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... See more