Enshittification

I wish I was getting paid for this.

Me too!

Apparently people simply don't like mentions of subscription services

That’s true, especially for news it seems. Of course my suspicions didn’t arise from simply seeing mentions, but suspicious patterns. (Again, not to the level of anything provable.)

Using a Google proxy isn't going to make Google's results any better. But by all means everybody, keep using Google while complaining about how shit it is and then downvoting anybody who mentions any options.

Proxying it certainly isn’t sustainable (see adblocking & YouTube, or Nitter the Twitter proxy that was crippled). Options are good. Didn’t personally downvote you btw! And I can tell ya, SearXNG image search is inferior to Google’s for my needs… but Kagi’s seemed equivalent. Do believe voting with your wallet for paid search seems a sustainable and sane move. Good on you.

Also I wish the only conceivable options for reducing [suspicions of] astroturfing weren’t all so horrific… like submit your Social Security Number to a third party verification service, and let them try to dig into all your relationships with companies or something before vouching for your online accounts. Even that wouldn’t eliminate the problem though (can pay cash to strangers you meet via encrypted messengers). For now hope the reasonably suspicious amongst us can be regarded as appropriately skeptical.

Simply hating every single paid service for having the gall to charge slightly more than it costs to operate, though, is definitely a little too much :)