"I found it very weird that there essentially is no way to browse the web in an open manner. So that's what I am trying to build," the founder of Stract said.

“I found it very weird that there essentially is no way to browse the web in an open manner. So that’s what I am trying to build,” the founder of Stract said.

  • Chris@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    To save reading the paywalled article, the site is at https://stract.com

    I’ve only done a single search but it gave me a summary at the top, and some discussion forums in a different format. I’m impressed so far!

      • Chris@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Tbh I just saw it needed a login and scrolled back up to the link without reading further, so was obviously a bit hasty in my assessment of it being a paywall.

    • Evkob@lemmy.ca
      1·
      10 months ago

      They’re fully within their rights to restrict access to their content, just as everyone complaining is fully within their rights to not give up their email to access content.

      I realize independent media financing is a huge struggle right now, and the quality of journalism has been in a downwards spiral for decades now. Clearly, the current system is unsustainable, I agree with 404media on that much. I wholeheartedly disagree with restricting access to information as a solution, as that seems completely opposed to what journalism should aim to achieve.

  • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.org
    0·
    10 months ago

    For anyone wondering about how they’ll eventually address financial sustainability if Stract takes off:

    Stract is currently not monetized in any way, but its website says it will eventually have contextual ads tied to specific search terms but that it will not track its users, which is similar to the system DuckDuckGo uses. Stract also plans on offering ad-free searches to paying subscribers.

    I’d pay for independent, non meta, ad-free search. I bet a more straightforward approach is more energy efficient as well. In the meanwhile the big tech are running a gazillion processes on our data to suck every bit of wealth they can out of our existence through their free (in it’s littlest sense) products.