Comment by marginalia_nu
2 years ago
On the one hand, I'm not sure the data corroborates that. If this is a web problem and not a search engine problem, then I'd expect every search engine to have the same pattern of scam results.
I'd also argue that finding relevant results among a sea of irrelevant results is the primary function of a search engine. This was as true in 1998 as it is today. In fact, it was Google's "killer feature", unlike Altavista and the likes it showed you far more relevant results.
Relevant is a difficult concept to agree on. In 1998 it was more about X != Y, that is being shown legit pages that just were not the correct topic.
These days the results are apt to be the correct topic, but instead optimized for some other metric than what the user wants. For example downloading malware or showing as many crypto ads as possible.
I don't expect every search engine to have the same scam results. Scammers target individual search engines with particular methodologies. Google does a lot of work to prevent crap on their engines, the issue is the scammers in total do far more.
If the web is being polluted by a nefarious search engine provider that is excluding the polluted pages from their algorithm, you wouldn't see the same pattern across search engines
Not saying or even suggesting that's happening, but the logic isn't airtight
Well, there's always the Münchaussen trilemma, by which no reasoning is airtight.