Well, a bit of a storm in a cup.
If you had the enormous resources to code and run a search engine for the whole world wide web, you'd probably come up with something similar.
When you get a search query you look up the terms in your inverse file and come up with statistics on how many pages may contain them. That may give billions. It's basically any page that contains any of the search terms.
Then you use the stats in the inverse file to calculate cosine similarity or any metric and sort some of those results, like say 100. Then you recover the full text (or whatever summary you stored for those pages, run some filters
to check relevance (some pages may contain the search terms all contiguously in the same order, or in other order or far away, or just some, or synonyms, or with typos or case swtiched, or...), maybe even refresh the content if your copy is old (probably not, too expensive),
With that you can parse a little better to calculate relevance and give some number of pages. You decide some are not really relevant (why should you show a page that just contains one search term which may even be a common word?), some are abusive (you can have filters on adult content, language, or country or anything so you also have to and some bitmaps or whatever, depending on user settings). And you render and paginate what's left.
In the case of google, that's a business. Why should it show you a page you didn't pay (money) to find, the page owner didn't pay to find, and noone decided they want you to see to influence your cognition into being an addict and make you buy, vote or believe what someone actively pays or passively promotes ? The page might be what you were looking for, but that's nobody's business. Why were you expecting google to help you ? You pay with your data, but if they really tried to help you they couldn't control you, and then what would they want your data for ?
I mainly use the internet because I am addicted.[...]
These days current events are primarily a drain on my emotional energy. Why am I getting upset about all these things that (a) I have no control over and (b) probably won't ruine my lIfe?
Because you are an addict and your dealers are controlling your hormones, of course. Some dealers have a lab and sell people drugs they manufacture (or buy from those). Some use the lab in your body to have you produce substances that change your mood, and they need to control the information you process to achieve that. They know what content to promote, what color schemes, what rhythms, everything, to give you dopamine, adrenaline or whatever.
Or not all of them know the precise biochemichal chain, they just play with the knobs they have and see what their popullations do and machine learn from that.
If you were happy you wouldn't stay there looking at a screen. You would sing or kiss or dance or jump or run or sleep. So making you afraid, sad and taciturn is a precondition to keep you hooked. Then they can start to
sell you things, or recruit you to spread (online or offline) feelings to the people that would never trust them but would trust you. For those feelings to work for them they also need to keep people overflown with information, so
they don't have time to sit and think, and have to take decisions from feelings alone.
Look at me. I'm just playing along by complaining of the internet in the internet. Why am I getting upset about all these thing that (a) I have no control over and (b) shouldn't be able to ruin my life ?
Because they build a virtual world and give you the illusion you have more control on that virtual world than in real life. If I spoke to a neighbour about what I'm saying here I would most likely be ignored.
So I select what online circles I visit and preach to the choir. I'm solving nothing, it's just onanism. The trick is making you unsure of whether (a) you can influence the situation (by getiing or raising awareness, at least) and (b) you need to
do something about it because it will ultimately affect you, if only by making you a misfit. Once you are there, if someone can control the flow of messages to profile, filter or throttle them, then they have control.
This is basically why internet is gratis, and it will never be otherwise because nobody would pay for such a crap.
