THE WEB as a source of accuracy-assured or validated information -- or any meaningful information at all (like investigative journalism) -- died a few years ago. Many 'articles' are just referrer spam (or Amazon affiliate marketing). A lot of so-called 'news' sites are in the business of selling out. Some PR agents contact them to publish "plugs" on clients' behalf. That's not news!

"Weaponising the Web (for spreading malicious but self-serving lies) isn't just the 'trade' of nation states. Corporations and oligarchs do the same."As we noted this morning, even Google News ("Gulag Noise") became a hub of Microsoft misinformation and revisionism (basically corporate propaganda sold as "news"; ZDNet hasn't even mentioned the big news from Germany!). We're meant to think it's "normal" to search for Linux news and instead get shilling of a password stealer from Microsoft as the top result! As an associate told us an hour ago, Microsoft "will be working overtime to promote revisionist histories concerning Munich: saturate, diffuse, confuse..."

Newer articles are prioritised over older ones that are more accurate, so one can game the system and distort memories. "They will try to muddy the water and delay at the very least," the associate continued, "and articles older than a few years are omitted from search results completely."

Weaponising the Web (for spreading malicious but self-serving lies) isn't just the 'trade' of nation states. Corporations and oligarchs do the same. Nothing is beyond their reach; not even social control media, which is all about manipulation (it's the business model).

In many ways, the Web has outlived its usefulness and it actively does harm too, e.g. by inciting people, based on falsehoods, or leading people into deep debt in pursuit of social acceptance (social control media like Facebook leads to insecurities). Earlier this year we ended up moving to our own IRC network and to Gemini (self-hosted from home) -- things we had planned last year but never found the time to properly implement. The Web should never have had a near monopoly on hypertext; there's more to the Internet than HTTP and HTML/JavaScript (some sites are nowadays more JavaScript than HTML; they're like Flash with ActionScript). We need to keep reminding people that having an Internet connection means more than just access to "Web" or "Web apps" or "Web browser". IRC, for instance, needs neither Web nor "app". It's also widely supported by many devices, includes decades-old devices.

The same is true for Gemini (many client implementations exist already; all of them are Free software) and based on the "Daily Stats" in Techrights we'll have exceeded 400,000 pages requests over gemini:// in just 23.5 days of November. Misinformation and advertisers have thus far been off limits in gemini://. Even if they attempted to infiltrate "Geminispace", they would easily be shunned and marginalised because cross-capsule scripting (akin to XSS or sharing between domains) isn't possible and the layout, which is strictly enforced, is chronically unsuitable for ads. ⬆