[PLUG] web search post filtering

[brooks at netgate.net]

I couldn't agree more. But other than raising some cash to start yet 
another search engine I'm not sure how to solve the problem. And it's not 
just the search engines, it's Amazon, FB, Walmart and the rest of the 
holders of user profile data. Search is simple, the web as a data set 
isn't. If the search engine itself isn't salting the results with "cruft" 
the website owners themselves will try to skew results in their favor. The 
Internet, and more specifically the web - is a bit of a mess.

As a group of technical leaders in the community, and likely early 
adopters, we should all help the effort to build something better. Better, 
meaning an Internet that better protects user data and privacy. An 
Internet that allows you to decide with whom or what you share your data. 
If you haven't, please take a look at some of the projects attempting to 
create some new models:

The MIT (Tim Berners Lee project) solid:

 	https://solid.inrupt.com/
 	0 production apps - but they just finished their React SDK.

Built by an engineer who led a network protocol team at Google:

 	https://sandstorm.io/
 	74 production apps

Sandstorm seems a bit like ubuntu snaps but with more data sharing 
and security features:

 	https://snapcraft.io/store
 	Thousands of production apps

Some people think we can rebuild the web on top of blockchain. That's 
crazy crypto cash talking. Sure gRPC is cool, sure a permissioned or 
permissionless distributed ledger with immutable records is cool. But web 
3.0 it's not.

Today we face the problem of vendor lock-in, not due to proprietary 
formats, but due to cloud service lock-in. With all the software giants, 
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. offering their services 
primarily as free cloud services, this cloud lock-in issue is going to 
become more severe in years to come.

It's a new war the software industry needs to fight. It can't be addressed 
just by one person, one project or one organization. It needs 
collaboration from the entire community.

Unfortunately, I doubt any of this will lead to "better" search results 
on the current web.

Kevin