Pete's Log: How Do We Fix This?
Entry #2713, (World Wide Web)(posted when I was 46 years old.)
I feel relatively certain that a few years ago I was able to perform a search for a variation of "ORD TSA wait times" and get a top hit that was an official site with live information. I have no evidence that this memory is true, but I distinctly recall checking both traffic and security wait times before heading to the airport to see if we needed to leave earlier.
When I took my parents to the airport last week, I checked traffic and then tried to check security wait times, but the top results were all from ad-filled sites at domains like tsawaittimes.com, waittimesnow.com, and tsa.report. Half-way down the page there was a result from the official TSA site, but it wanted me to download a mobile app.
It's remarkable, though, that the ad revenue appears to be sufficient to cover the hosting and other costs for multiple sites of this nature.
I was reminded of this because on this day a year ago, I wrote
I really like the idea behind the The Disenshittify Project. My only concern is that those enshittifying their services have more motivation to game their versions to the top of search results.
And I feel more convinced of my concerns than ever. One of the Disenshittify projects is a QR code generator. It's nice. It's clean. It has no ads. And it doesn't appear anywhere on the first few pages of results on any of the search engines I've tried.
The Google results include three sponsored results, so these sites are even paying Google to show up first. That a QR code generator can make enough money to pay for a domain name and Google Ad placement is just beyond me. Especially when there are plenty of free tools. And it's not just one! There are dozens!