AmbitiousProcess

I’d actually found them to be better than Google for a while, but coincidentally after the AI craze started really taking off, search quality significantly degraded. Maybe that’s not so much of a coincidence after all.

Presearch is not fully decentralized.

All the services that manage advertising, staking/marketplace/rewards functionality, and unnamed “other critical Presearch services” are all “centrally managed by Presearch” according to their own documentation.

The nodes that actually help scrape and serve content are also reliant on Presearch’s centralized servers. Every search must go through Presearch’s “Node Gateway Server,” which is centrally managed by them. That removes identifying metadata and IP info.

That central server then determines where your request goes. It could be going to open nodes run by volunteers, or it could be their own personal nodes. You cannot verify this due to how the structure of the network works.

Presearch’s search index is not decentralized. It’s a frontend for other indexes. (e.g. it outsources queries to other search engines, databases, and APIs for services it’s configured to use) This means it does not actually have an index that is independent from these central services. I’ll give it a pass for this since most search engines are like this today, but many of them are developing their own indexes that are much more robust than what Presearch seems to be doing.

This node can return results to the gateway. There doesn’t seem to be any way that the gateway can verify that what it’s being provided is actually what was available on the open web. For example, the node could just send back results with links that are all affiliate links to services it thinks are vaguely relevant to the query, and the gateway would assume that these queries are valid.

For the gateway to verify these are accurate, it would have to additionally scrape these services itself, which would render the entire purpose of the nodes pointless. The docs claim it can “ensure that each node is only running trusted Presearch software,” but it does not control the root of trust, and thus it has the same pitfalls that games have had for years trying to enforce anticheat (that is to say, it’s simply impossible to guarantee unless presearch could do all the processing within a TPM module that they entirely control, which they don’t. Not to mention that it would cause a number of privacy issues)

A better model would be one where nodes are solely used for hosting to take the burden off a central server for storing the index, and chunks sent to nodes would be hashed, with the hash stored on the central server. When the central server needs a chunk of data based on a query, it sends a request, verifies the hash matches, then forwards it to the user, thus taking the storage burden off the main server and making the only cost bottleneck the bandwidth, but that’s not what Presearch is doing here.

This doesn’t make Presearch bad in itself, but it’s most definitely not decentralized. All core search functionality relies on their servers alone, and it simply adds additional risk of bad actors being able to manipulate search results.

Is there truly an audience for “I don’t want any proof, just answer my question”?

More people than I think we’d like to admit. Most people don’t spend time verifying whether or not what they’ve seen is true, they just believe what they see first, especially if it conforms to their existing beliefs.

After all, these models are quite literally plausibility machines. Their entire goal is to generate text that sounds plausibly accurate, because that’s how manual content reviewers fine-tune them. Their sole purpose is to generate whatever sounds plausible, not what’s necessarily correct, so if there’s one thing that will convince the masses that what it says is correct, it will be these “AI” models.

Which privacy first smartphones would people recommend for US users

If you want to run GrapheneOS, then you can only use a Google Pixel.

If you want to run Calyx, you can use any phone on the CalyxOS “Devices” list, which includes Pixels, Fairphone, and some Motorola phones too.

I personally recommend Pixels because they tend to get the fastest and longest-lasting OEM-provided security patches (e.g. the Pixel 8 and later get 7 years of updates from when they were released) and Android releases, and they actually have a pretty decent selection of self-repair kits available for if you need to do a repair yourself, or if you want a repair technician to not have to go through a complicated ordering process for spare parts.

how does it work putting it on a network?

Make sure to buy one that’s not locked to a carrier, otherwise you’ll be unable to install the custom OS in the first place, since the bootloader will be locked. You can still set it up with any carrier you want once it’s unlocked. (this essentially means you need to buy the phone directly from the manufacturer. Don’t buy through your phone plan, or through a trade-in/upgrade with your carrier)

Your carrier, once you request it, will either mail you a physical SIM card you can put in your phone, or a digital eSIM you can activate immediately. I prefer eSIMs for convenience, but it’s entirely up to you. (you can check out this list of pros and cons if you’re interested. They’re mostly negligible.)

Do they go on the regular networks like at&t, sprint, Verizon etc?

Yes.

Now, if you’re going to install a custom OS, definitely make sure you watch a couple videos and read the official guide for the OS you choose on how to install it. You definitely want to make sure you don’t screw it up.

For example, if you’re installing GrapheneOS, you might want to use a chromium-based browser (chrome, ungoogled chromium, brave, etc) over something like Firefox, because it sometimes has issues installing via the WebUSB installer, while having no issues with chromium based browsers.

These little details are something you’ll want to pick up from those resources so you can actually feel confident when you flash the OS to your phone, and make sure you do it correctly. Plus, you get the upside of knowing more about how exactly the OS protects you compared to stock android.

I personally recommend GrapheneOS if you’re good with using a Pixel, since it seems to have some of the strongest security guarantees on top of its methodology around privacy. (Google has very strong hardware security measures that other phones don’t always have, which GrapheneOS takes full advantage of)

I don’t understand why anyone uses any of their platforms.

The answer to this question about almost any shitty platform is almost always the network effect.

Leaving Meta’s platforms means leaving where most of your friends and family spend their time digitally, which makes it harder to connect with the people you know. No one can collectively agree on an alternative platform to all simultaneously move to, so in most cases, leaving Meta practically means cutting yourself off from your entire social graph.