In a sense anything behind an app, is an app that only runs on a smart phone or similar, but not an ordinary computer, thus closed off from the ordinary World Wide Web, it isn't really included in the trouble this article alludes to.

Logging in isn't something one should have to do to see the web. Again the search results in question should be in regard to the WWW, ie anything like twitter, just what faces the WWW for open viewing.

Primarily it's the problem that in wanting to know something that should be easy to find out - in a given town, when are various events on and where ... since most regions have at least one official site with an event planner buried somewhere in their site, for when certain functions are on or who is holding an event, that the search engines don't duly return a link that's fulfils the request by selecting the region's given list of events ... more often, barely even tries to, barring focusing on the user's history / location and triggering suggestible businesses that have paid for advertising, or who knows, for some other reason. Yes it should be something a good search engine can work out, the person is looking for events or functions, and the algorithm should have long worked out at least one of the better results is from the list of events most local authorities in a given region post up to the web eg [1] but not left for the person to try and focus themselves what words might help herd the search engine to coughing up a more suitable result.

I guess you meant appeal to authority ... well, I can't help that if you see someone who claims as such who actually does have vast experience using search engines. Yes you don't have to believe a word I say, nor trust me. I am however rather comforted that others who are of my vintage, who'd recall computing.net in its golden years at the start of the 00s, would likewise resonate with the view these issues were beginning to plague search results some time in the early 10s, though we might not agree on when it got to the point of annoyance. I guess it depends on soon the likes of google started to fight against those who always used focused a search entry for every request.

It's not just one thing though, sure it seems like search engines aren't trying so hard lately, but it certainly doesn't help that so many websites have shut off simple html access to all visitors, and created for permitted crawlers, some texty BS to capture interest ... so it's little wonder amongst many other problems why it's hard for basic search engines competing with the web's leaders to do comparable job.

As for censoring by various means, I've struck it many many times, more commonly the tactic has been artificial sites, burying hundreds of red herring results posted to different areas of the web to hide real results. I've also seen large forums wiped without cause or reason apart from someone disclosing "apparently harmless" titbits on something technical and perhaps protected under copyright, but finding none of the forum was cached at google afterwards is certainly odd when previously google used to cache various results from the forum. Again I'm not asking for anyone to believe me, I don't need to, those who did what I did for some time have already bumped into it for themselves perhaps to a larger extent depending on what areas they were searching ... no doubt they would insist they could have said similar as I've written with much less words as well as better - they're probably right. But I do say this from the many many years of being on the net doing little else but conducting searches, a boring existence but much for the benefit of other people, some of it for professionals (locating old drivers for MS3.1 onwards) and as well as lending my limited expertise to various hobby areas like music identification forums and help forums like computing.net back in the early 00s.

[1]https://whatson.townsville.qld.gov.au/