Someone left a comment on yesterday's article...
... and ended up making the case for an Encyclosphere of podcast episodes
I got this comment on yesterday’s article:
It is clear from Jason’s Substack that he knows about the problem with excess deaths (so I don’t think this is just blatant self-promotion), but this comment accidentally ended up making the case for why an Encyclosphere of podcast episodes matters.
The VAERS test
I first searched for the word VAERS on their site.
As you can see, it does not return anything relevant to what I am looking for.
But interestingly, that website does index many of the podcasts which do mention VAERS. For example I noticed that Del Bigtree’s Highwire podcast is included in the list of podcasts.
Here are a few podcast episodes using the PodcastAddict search engine for the same keyword. Notice that the word VAERS appears in the title of the podcast episode.
I verified that the Highwire podcast is already in PodcastIndex. Why wasn’t this episode returned in the results?
There are a lot of technical reasons1 why this could be the case, and I have no reason to doubt that the folks behind PodcastIndex are doing the best that they can.
But if your search engine cannot even return results where a keyword is in the title of a podcast episode, then how exactly does it even compete with something like the Encyclosphere, which has set a clear goal to create a searchable encyclopedia?
Decentralized search
So is a bigger and better search engine the answer?
No it is not.
I will be explaining how in my next article, but one of the key requirements at the moment is a distributed (decentralized) search index, and a decentralized search engine.
Why does it have to be decentralized?
Are you familiar with the Redirect method?
If you have read my articles for a while, you would not be surprised to know that Google used this Redirect method to deflect people who were searching for Pfizer vaccine injuries on Substack.
Here is a site search result on Substack for the phrase “pfizer vaccine injury”. None of the search results go to a Substack website2. All of them go to other resources which either talk about how the vaccines are safe and effective, or defend taking the vaccine despite adverse reactions because it is still better than catching COVID19.
It is bad enough if a search engine refuses to add certain articles to its search index.
Imagine also having the gall to then redirect the search result to an article which tries to convince you that your instincts are wrong!
All centralized search engines will eventually be captured on some topic.
By the way, they are all private companies, and it is their prerogative to do so.
The answer is to create decentralized search.
And Encyclosearch, which is a part of Encyclosphere, is a step in that direction.
A decentralized search allows you to take a subset of the full search index and run a search engine on top of it if you wish to focus on a specific topic.
For example, I might choose to build a search engine dedicated to just podcasts which are discussing the topic of vaccine safety. If the search index uses an open standard (which is what Encyclosphere proposes), someone else might be able to merge my search index with other indices and produce a much more comprehensive search engine.
I hope readers now see why the Encyclosphere project matters, and how it differs from other approaches.
And some non-technical ones - for example, it is usually cost prohibitive to create this search capability if there are no giant corporations willing to sponsor the effort. And no giant corporation has an incentive to sponsor such an effort if they don’t get something back in return. And they won’t get something back in return unless they figure out a way to monopolize and centralize, thus moving all of us back to square zero. The only realistic solution is a distributed search engine based on an open protocol, which is what Encyclosphere hopes to build.
Hi Aravind, no I don't have anything to do with the two websites I linked to. I just try to be helpful when I can! I know about the Podcasting 2.0 project and Podcast index from the Noagendashow.net podcast hosted by Adam Curry and John Dvorak. They do the podcast without ads and often talk about censorship and why having advertisers is a problem to be avoided.
I had never tried to use the search function on podcastindex.org. You are right, the search on the main page has some shortcomings. I'm a little surprised at that because I use one of the recommended apps called Podcastaddict and I'm pretty sure the app uses podcastindex for its search. From the app I can search podcasts, episodes, or people.
Taking your example, I searched VAERS in episodes and got 134 hits. I think I found some new podcasts to subscribe to!
All that being said, I really like the Encyclosphere idea. I'll check it out.
Good idea.
And since DuckDuckGo has fallen, can someone recommend a better search engine?