Start Up No.2683: search results are being slopified, German court rules against AI Overviews, NSO keeps spying, and more

The enforced silencing by Meta of former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams at the Hay Festival has seen her book sales rocket. CC-licensed photo by Luke McKernan on Flickr. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. A selection of 9 links for you. Sing it, Barbra! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome. Your search results are getting sloptimized • The Atlantic Will Oremus: » According to Shopify, the best e-commerce platform is Shopify. On its blog, the company has published at least 60 different ranked listicles, including “10 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business in 2026,” “11 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Your Business in 2026,” “The 11 Best Cheap Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business (2026),” and “Best Ecommerce Software 2026: Compare 11 Top Platforms.” The…