#internet search

[doraminatook]

My Google search history for the latest fic I'm writing...

Save Me chapter 4 coming soon.

[catsithkelpie]

Made a heart with google's paw Easter Egg

Go on google, search "cat", and look for the orange circular paw button. Now, anywhere you click/tap will be bapped by a digital cat paw of varying colors, play a "meow" sound effect, and leave a paw print. Yes, you can finally boop the screen cats.

[shewr1tes4astarion]

Now, this is what you darlings should be picturing with the voice actor Neil Newbon as Astarion--thanks to the internet I believe this comparison will suffice...

Now, it's clear this man is truly GORGEOUS!!😀🤩🤩🤩🥵💜💜💜

Did I mention he's a sweetheart, too? 🥰

[doingitfortheexposure]

If you ever want to do a search for yourself, but don't want to get results filled with all your posts on all the sites you've posted on while using the name you're currently searching for, I'd like to introduce you to my two friends... the minus symbol and the 'site:' qualifier. You're probably already familiar with their acquaintance, the quotation marks.

.

When searching, adding the minus symbol before a search term tells the search engine to omit results that match that term.

The 'site:' variable tells the search engine that anything on that domain matches a search term.

Quotes around a phrase will tell the search engine to search for that specific phrase and not just instances of the individual words occuring on a page.

.

So...

"Firstname Lastname" -site:facebook.com

...will give you results for the complete phrase "firstname lastname", but none of the results will be from Facebook.

Important aspect: you can add multiple sites to omit from searches by adding however many "-site:sitename(dot)com" as you need.

.

I just discovered an article someone wrote that featured my Tumblr photography blog. Because I searched for my name (my photos are supposed to be credited to me) and kept subtracting any site that came up on which I had personally posted my photos. Eventually there were three results of people using my photos and/or talking about me.

[alternatively, you can search a specific site by not using the minus symbol and only entering that one site as the only site to search]

Image 1: excellent placement of credit, but it's supposed to have the license included

Images 2 and 3: poor placement of credit, but proper credit given

Image 4: screenshot of an article that has a paragraph mentioning my Tumblr photography blog

[ayjaydraws]

can someone please help identify this song? was a popular edit audio around 2017 on vine, this one is specifically sourced from a steven universe edit

[zenosanalytic]

Honestly Old Google was a genuine Utility and, while it comes with its own issues, Eminent Domaining it to hand over to some nonprofit public-entity would be infinitely preferable to letting a bunch of assholes trashify it like we are right now.

[dervampireprince]

Steam, Itch.io and the banning of explicit and LGBT+ Content. What can we do?

[All images in this post have alt/id text if you need it or want to copy paste anything]

With no warning, Itch.io, a site where many host their indie games, comics, books and more, has started purging and shadowbanning explicit and LGBT+ works. Creators got no warning. And if they were still owed payouts from these works, Itch.io is saying they won't give them their money as they 'broke the rules'. Rules that were only just set in place, with no warning, and therefore no way for creators to try and draw out their money or delete these 'offending' works before they got banned under the new rules.

So Itch.io has been the most recent to fall to the demands of a group that's been contacting Visa and Mastercard and convincing them to threaten sites/businesses with 'stop selling what we consider to be explicit content on your sites of we'll stop allowing your site to have transactions with Visa and Mastercard'. Steam folded, and now Itchio has too. And a reminder earlier this year Gumroad also stopped allowing explicit content, further back than that Patreon banned some kinks and fetishes even if it's depicted in fiction not real life, and I don't have to explain to you guys the great Tumblr explicit content ban of 2018.

And as always remember this doesn't stop with sexually explicit work as LGBT+ stories and people are often labelled as explicit and already we're seeing works being taken off Itch.io that are about LGBT+ and especially trans stories. Other non-sexually explicit works I've seen already getting shadowbanned, delisted or deleted are SFW games featuring furries/anthros, SFW dress up games (because when you take the clothes the model is nude), and the aforementioned SFW games that include LGBT+ characters and stories.

I'm compiling here information I've seen around various social medias, mostly Bluesky, because I haven't seen all these things shared over here.

I don't personally have explicit content on itch, but I had been considering one day selling things on there and I do currently have explicit content on my Patreon, my main source of income, and am terrified that Patreon is going to fold next (if anyone knows alterative for hosting audio content behind a paid subscription service please let me know so I can start maybe making a back-up in case the worst happens). Because for me personally if Patreon goes next, it's not like I can go out and easily get another job. Not only because in general finding and getting a job is difficult enough, but I'm autistic and have chronic pain and have been constantly getting sick or new pains over the last few years and don't feel safe being trans in the UK right now and all of that combined rules me out of a lot of jobs and makes me feel unsafe to apply to any. I'm so grateful I've been able to make a community around my work, but if Patreon caves next and I just leave my SFW posts on Patreon... 10% of my Patreons are signed up to the SFW tier, 90% are signed up to the explicit tier... I know if Patreon caves I will go from someone living comfortably who's searching to move out of my parents so I can live in a safer environment to someone who can no longer even afford the rent I pay to my parents. I'll try and get an alterative found and set up in case that happens and I can only hope you guys will follow me to whatever other site I have to set up... but it feels unlikely that people will get a whole new account on a whole new payment provider just to support me on a website they might never have heard of...

But what can we do right now?

A petition you can sign (international but you do have to give your name, email, and postal/zip code):

Get calling:

Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372

MasterCard (UK): 0800 964 767

Mastercard (International.): +1-636-722-7111

Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911 / 1-800-VISA-911

Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440

Visa (UK) : 0800 891 725 or use their international call collect +1 303 967 1096

Visa (International): (call collect - it costs them $): +1-303-967-1096

PayPal (US): 1-888-221-1161

PayPal (UK): 0800 358 7911 from landline, +44 203 901 7000 mobile

PayPal (International): 1-402-935-2050

(numbers gathered from these posts X X X )

Don't know what to say on the phone? Here's a script written by timidtanuki:

Creators have had their work removed off Itch.io with no warning and since it's been removed for 'breaking the rules' (rules that were suddenly in place with no warning) they aren't entitled to get their payouts. Just like other sites such as Youtube and Twitch and Etsy, Itch.io hold onto money from their users in a wallet and then give them payouts. So there is money creators have made, are owed, that Itch.io is not giving to them.

People are recommending that if you still have works on Itch.io to turn down the revenue sharing to 0% so that Itch.io no longer takes a cut or your money if you no longer want to support Itchi.io finically but don't want to remove your works from their platform. X

Other Bluesky posts and calls to action I've seen:

radiantg.bsky.social is asking for anyone on Itch.io who got their game deindexed, removed , or payouts turned off to reach out to them (espeically if you make explicit and/or LGBT+ games) for a piece of journalism about what is happening.

sleepyhart.bsky.social is making a thread of all the games that Itch.io has censored/removed from their site search function. Obviously be aware this will include 18+ only games, games with sexual content and other dark or heavy themes.

thetransfemininereview.com wants you to reach out to them if you're a trans creator on Itch.io who is being affected by this so they can make an accurate report. they say 'authors' in their post and I'm unsure if they also want game devs to reach out.

dropdownbear.bsky.com wants you to reach out if you have purchased things on Itch.io that you can now no longer access because of this ban. they can include them in a report being filed with the Australian Consumer Commission as this may be a violation of Australian Consumer rights. If you are Australian you can no longer access things you purchased of Itch.io you can report directly with this guide.

It's a scary time for adult creators and sex workers. It's a scary time to be trans. Support creators. And if anyone knows of any alternate payment providers that allow explicit work, and/or alternate websites to Itch (and in case things get worse, also give me Patreon alternates please) where people can host, sell and/or offer paid subscriptions to writing, images, videos, audios, games and more please leave them in the replies. And please help share this post, the posts I'm linking too, and any other resources you can find.

[verykryptonitegardener]

recherche sur internet

[trendynewsnow]

U.S. Government Moves to Break Up Google's Search Monopoly

U.S. Government’s Bold Move Against Google’s Monopoly Last month, the U.S. government took a significant step by requesting a federal judge to compel Google to divest its ownership of Chrome, the most widely used web browser globally. This drastic measure represents the Justice Department’s most aggressive approach to tackling Google’s dominance in internet search following a landmark ruling in…

[4furiousracoon]

Anyone want to talk about how Amazon search results work? Work might not be the right word.

[setokaibapetty]

Monday's Muse: Writing Prompt

Your first internet search when you find yourself in an alternate universe.

[i-dont-watch-movies-or-tv]

I feel like the age of having a "burner email" is gone. Out of curiosity,

[warningsine]

A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” according to the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

Judge Amit Mehta’s decision represents a major victory for the Department of Justice, which accused Google of illegally monopolizing the online search market. Still, Mehta did not agree with all of the government’s arguments. For example, he rejected the claim that Google has monopoly power in one specific part of the ads market. He agreed with the government, however, that Google has a monopoly in “general search services” and “general search text advertising.”

It’s not yet clear what this ruling will mean for the future of Google’s business, as this initial finding is only about the company’s liability, not about remedies. Google’s fate will be determined in the next phase of proceedings, which could result in anything from a mandate to stop certain business practices to a breakup of Google’s search business.

Google plans to appeal the ruling, president of global affairs Kent Walker said in a statement. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”

DuckDuckGo, whose CEO testified against Google in the trial, applauded the decision, but recognized the fight isn’t over. In a statement, SVP for public affairs Kamyl Bazbaz said, “The journey ahead will be long. As we are seeing in the EU and other places, Google will do anything it can to avoid changing its conduct. However, we know there is a pent up demand for alternatives in search and this ruling will support access to more options.”

Mehta rejected Google’s arguments that its contracts with phone and browser makers like Apple were not exclusionary and therefore shouldn’t qualify it for liability under the Sherman Act. “The prospect of losing tens of billions in guaranteed revenue from Google — which presently come at little to no cost to Apple — disincentivizes Apple from launching its own search engine when it otherwise has built the capacity to do so,” he wrote.

He said the framework from the last landmark tech monopoly case, US v. Microsoft, was in fact relevant to the current case against Google. While Google argued that, unlike Microsoft, it maintained pretty consistent actions before and after it became dominant in the market, Mehta said that’s irrelevant since the same conduct can be exclusionary when done by a dominant player, even if it’s not when it’s done by a smaller one.

He described “Google’s monopoly in general search” as “remarkably durable,” writing that it increased from about 80 percent in 2009 to 90 percent by 2020. Bing, by comparison, has less than 6 percent market share, Mehta added. “If there is genuine competition in the market for general search, it has not manifested in familiar ways, such as fluid market shares, lost business, or new entrants,” he wrote.

“The market reality is that Google is the only real choice as the default GSE,” Mehta wrote, referring to an acronym for general search engine. He cited a quote from Apple SVP Eddy Cue, who said during the trial that there’s “‘no price that Microsoft could ever offer [Apple] to’ preload Bing.”

Mehta underscored the idea that even the largest businesses in the US have no real alternative to Google. “Time and again, Google’s partners have concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch default GSEs or seek greater flexibility in search offerings because it would mean sacrificing the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars that Google pays them as revenue share,” he wrote. “These are Fortune 500 companies, and they have nowhere else to turn other than Google.”

On search text advertising, Mehta wrote that Google’s exclusive agreements enabled it to raise prices on that product “without any meaningful competitive constraint.” While Google argued that the price for its search text ads, when adjusted for quality, has decreased, Mehta wrote that evidence “is weak.” That’s because even Google has recognized how difficult it is to determine “the value of an ad to its buyer,” he wrote. “This evidence does not reflect a principled practice of quality-adjusted pricing, but rather shows Google creating higher-priced auctions with the primary purpose of driving long-term revenues.”

Beyond the monopoly questions, Mehta declined to impose sanctions on Google for failing to preserve chat messages relevant to the case — something the Justice Department characterized as destroying evidence. The requested sanctions “do not move the needle on the court’s assessment of Google’s liability.” But Mehta said the decision “should not be understood as condoning Google’s failure to preserve chat evidence ... Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one.”

The decision is the first in a wave of tech monopoly cases brought by the US government in recent years. While two decades passed between the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its next tech anti-monopoly case against Google, filed in 2020, several more such cases quickly followed.

Amazon, Apple, and Meta all now face their own monopolization lawsuits from the US government, and Google will go to trial against the DOJ a second time this fall over a separate challenge of its advertising technology business. That makes Mehta’s decision in this case even more consequential for how other judges may consider how to apply century-old antitrust laws to modern digital markets.

Mehta oversaw a 10-week trial in the Google search case last fall, which culminated in two days of closing arguments in early May. The trial, which took place in DC District Court, convened many big players in Silicon Valley, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple executive Eddy Cue.

The DOJ argued that Google illegally monopolized the general search advertising market by effectively cutting off key distribution channels for rivals through exclusionary contracts. For example, Google has deals with browser makers like Mozilla and phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to make its search engine the default on their products. Google also makes default status for some of its apps a condition of access to the Play Store for phone makers using its Android operating system.

Google argued throughout the trial that it has not acted anticompetitively and that its large market share is a result of creating a superior product that consumers enjoy. It contended that the Google search business should be compared to a much larger range of peers than the government proposed in its market definition, suggesting it competes directly with other platforms where search is a big part of the business, even if they don’t index the web (such as Amazon).

One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness for Google let slip that the company shares 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari with Apple. In 2022, Google paid Apple $20 billion for the default position.

During closing arguments, Mehta homed in on those payments, wondering how other players in the market could possibly displace Google from that position. “If that’s what it takes for somebody to dislodge Google as the default search engine, wouldn’t the folks that wrote the Sherman Act be concerned about it?”

The next antitrust trial between the DOJ and Google is set to begin on September 9th in Virginia. That case will focus on whether Google has illegally monopolized digital advertising technology.

[corseque]

The final song in the Solavellan ending, when Lost Elf reappears, that is not on the soundtrack

[kbjones]

Sour Cherry Muffins Recipe

I inherited SO MANY sour cherries recently. Here's my #muffin #recipe. https://wp.me/pLP9Y-5cI #sourcherries #chocolatechunk #yummy #mildlycriticalofothers

With a Chocolate Chunk Sour Cherry Variation My father-in-law recently passed away. My mother-in-law proceeded him in 2021. With both of them now passed, my husband and his siblings are in the midst of settling the estate, cleaning out the house, and selling most of it. Among other things, I inherited a freezer full of frozen sour cherries. There were gallons and gallons of them going back to…

[abundantchewtoys]

Meanwhile, “<celebrity name> death” will always be such a common search suggestion, with no correlation at all to the celebrity’s actual alive/dead status.

Anecdotally, one of the big differences between pre-Internet and post-Internet popular culture is a sharp reduction in misinformation about bizarre celebrity deaths.

Back when the Internet wasn't a thing and most people had very limited access to current information about anything that wasn't covered on the evening news, basically any time a notable celebrity dropped out of public view or a year or two, rumours would start circulating that they'd died in a bizarre accident – and sometimes, those rumours became accepted common knowledge, at least until the celebrity in question made their way back into the news cycle.

(There were weirdly specific recurring themes, too: I can think of like three otherwise-unconnected celebrities who "everybody knew" had died while attempting to jump a motorcycle over the Grand Canyon!)

One of the big consequences of Internet access going mainstream is huge numbers of people suddenly becoming aware that a bunch of celebrities they'd been led to believe had been killed in unlikely ways were in fact alive and well. For all that the Internet facilitates the spread of misinformation, it killed this one very particular type of popular misinformation stone dead.