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Google has reportedly removed much of Twitter's links from its search results after the social network's owner Elon Musk announced reading tweets would be limited.

Search Engine Roundtable found that Google had removed 52% of Twitter links since the crackdown began last week. Twitter now blocks users who are not logged in and sets limits on reading tweets.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google reported 471 million Twitter URLs as of Friday. But by Monday morning, that number had plummeted to 227 million.

"For normal indexing of these Twitter URLs, it seems like these tweets are dropping out of the sky," Schwartz wrote.

Platformer reported last month that Twitter refused to pay its bill for Google Cloud services.

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[-] darkevilmac@vlemmy.net 2 points 1 year ago

I feel like Google is going to have to find a way to effectively index federated content at some point. The only way to really get human information is from sites like Reddit and Twitter. And both of those platforms seem to be dedicated to completely imploding at the moment.

[-] FlagonOfMe@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

There's nothing about the content being federated that makes it hard or impossible to index. Each instance is just a website with a public webpage that a bot can read. That all a search engine needs to index it. The worst case scenario is the bot will find the same content on multiple instances.

I did read that the website is loaded entirely through JavaScript and that maybe the Google bot doesn't execute JavaScript so can't see the text. I don't know if that's still a problem in 2023, though.

This article says it's not a problem, but I didn't read past the tl;dr, so maybe there's a caveat. Like maybe it has to use a popular framework like React or something to work.

https://searchengineland.com/tested-googlebot-crawls-javascript-heres-learned-220157

[-] DM_ME_SQUIRRELS@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Isn't it automatically indexed? I mean, I can go to lemmy.world in a browser and see the content, wouldn't Google's indexing bots do the same?

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Fuck Google, if Lemmy continues to take off we can just develop better search tools within the fediverse. The wider internet has been colonized, the path forward cannot rely on big tech corporations.

I'm not a programmer/developer so I don't even understand the scale of the work that has yet to be done. But I am deeply committed to upsetting the status quo, and this platform feels distinctly revolutionary. Can't wait to see what the future holds for Lemmy.

[-] hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Ask and ye shall receive. Just saw this post!

https://lemmy.world/post/963301

[-] darkevilmac@vlemmy.net 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's all well and good to have a revolution, but if nobody knows you're having one then nothing really changes. There are still benefits to centralised services, one of which being scale. To effectively index so much data you need scale, which is why smaller search engines tend to be just white labels of things like Bing.

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[-] Pissy_Badger@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago

That post image.

Is it just me, or is Elon looking more and more like a movie villain as time goes by?

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

I keep seeing it used for media articles because it's fucking perfect and accurately displays his disdain for the poors. The fact that anyone with less than a billion dollars in net value thinks he cares about them is both baffling and hilarious.

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

his disdain for the poors.

Correction: his disdain for everyone who isn't himself. He doesn't even treat his own kids well. His trans daughter changed her name to not be associated with him.

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago

But he'll gladly suck some Saudi dick if it marginally increases his net value.

Side note; I'm so glad that one of his daughters is trans because it helped expose him for the absolute fucking bigot he is. I stopped being a fanboy after the whole 'pedo guy' incident, and it's been nice to have people finally come to the same realisation I've had and apologise for trying to defend him back then.

[-] Amilo159@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Except for Bill Gates.

[-] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

It's one of media's best tools for passive-aggressively shaming someone they don't like. So more than anything his appearance over time is an effect of media turning on him.

[-] niktemadur@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You've heard of a "walled garden".
But this... this has become a "walled right-wing dumpster".

[-] frozengriever@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

They've always wanted to build a wall. Hopefully they wall themselves off from the rest of the world.

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[-] bluestribute@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Has anyone noticed too that if you put AI Blockers on your website Google delists it from their search?

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It's part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism's status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

The specific moment we're in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn't be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

[-] Dash11@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I like this take, but this is a conspiracy theory take. Change a few words and this would be something regurgitated by Q fanatics.

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[-] Ruorc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Blocking users who are not logged in has farther reaching consequences that aren't readily apparent. For example, there was an AMBER Alert a few days ago with a short link to see more info. The link goes back to a Twitter account/tweet. All that time sensitive, useful information was behind a wall where you can't see it unless you log in. Most people aren't going to create an account just to do that.

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[-] Raymend@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Queue the person on the forums telling you that it’s your fault and not the search engine because somehow you’re doing it wrong.

[-] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago
[-] Maul535@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

One of my coworkers absolutely loves Musk and I can't understand why... The guy's a joke. I feel like people think Musk is smart just because he's eccentric and has money, I hope eventually everyone comes to see just how normally intelligent he actually is

[-] Bruncvik@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Musk is very good at what he's doing, but few people realise what he's actually doing. He's a showman, and the eccentricity is part of it. He pretends to be a smart entrepreneur, to obscure the real source of his income: government contracts and grants. The Boring Company and Hyperloop are directly going for government contracts, and even though no big contracts have been signed yet, you can bet that money is trickling in via various studies and proposals the companies are doing. Tesla is a sponge for government grants. Via Starlink, Musk went as far as blackmailing governments. And Twitter was purchased via foreign money (Saudi, Russian), and Musk is just doing what he was paid to do. Some may think that he's just a useful idiot, but I firmly believe he knows what he's doing. He's good at dealing with governments and doing their bidding.

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[-] Binderfullofpizza@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

So much for that ad revenue

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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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