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Comment by carlosjobim

3 days ago

Because people can get a login. If the best quality result is behind a login and a paywall, I still want it to be the first result. Only quality should decide ranking.

Please do tell how to get an X account? It instantly locked my account after registration and I have several friends have the same issue.

I would much prefer if Google just stopped showing inaccessible information completely.

  • I have no idea, I've never used X or Twitter. But apparently millions do, so it is not inaccessible.

Openness and accessibility should absolutely be factors in ranking, otherwise where does it end? I dk what twitter requires these days, maybe an email, password and a couple more fields, what if a site starts doing id verification? What if accounts require a subscription? What if all the best content on the first page of your search results is behind a paywall with 3 easy payments of $299

  • It ends with you paying for information. If I need some information and it is only available behind a paywall, then I'll pay for it or I didn't need it anyway.

    Google is doing the correct thing in not discriminating against content which is paid or behind login walls. Some of the most important content are on social media, and most of them only serve logged in users.

    If you want to decide yourself how search results are presented to you, you should try Kagi for a search engine.

  • You haven’t made a case for why free content should be more important than relevance.

    If the search engine orders by relevance, than I can make the decision for myself of where to trade-off with paywalls.

    I don’t want a search engine to make the decision for me because it cannot: what if the only answer to my question is behind a paywall?

    • “ You haven’t made a case for why free content should be more important than relevance.”

      I didn’t make that claim, i am contesting the claim “Only relevance should decide ranking”. I am arguing ease of accessibility should be a factor.

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