News Feeds Overview

Introduction

In the rich broth of media in the 21st century, it is often difficult, if not impossible to gain a clear picture of current events from tradition sources of news. No news agency is without bias, indeed, the whole concept of unbiased news was almost gone by the end of the 20th century. No media agency in the world attempts to distance itself from its corporate master, and no 'alternative' source is without its own, often narrow, bias. The sheer volume of information is also overwhelming. There are thousands of stations available, some even for free, and almost every one has its primary broadcast within the Matrix. There are millions of independent media sources, from the rogue one-man news reporters to the loner kid with a 20 nuyen block of virtual real estate, from every corner of the globe. How does one sift through this?

SearchBots

Many of the core concepts of the SearchBot were developed in the Stone Age times of the Internet. Search engines, many of which still exist, were developed. Google and Yahoo! (Now known as Renraku HAI!) were designed to sort through the millions of pages of the Internet and return the result. Viral programs, typically simple strings of text, were developed to exploit primitive console 'shells' and either damage information or steal information. SeachBots are the 21st century version of those trends. They are, in essence, free standing search engines, often designed to be spawned at a data request, retrieve the data, and disapeare when done. These Bots are much weaker that the full search engines against counter-measures, buyt often respawn when destroyed. They have limited AI capacity, and are usually only able to capture three or four information 'feeds'. SearchBots are cheaper than corporate-sponsored Engines, and are less likely to take a look at their customer while doing a search. While some information about the search is stored, there is typically an anonimity which does not exist with the Engines. Posession or use of some SearchBots is a crime in some localities. SeachBots can be accessed anywhere there is a Matrix access point, and where secure transactions can take place.