In early 2019, Presearch announced the implementation of a new feature via an article posted on Medium: the Rewards Verification System. In a nutshell, this is an automated algorithm supposed to analyze user behavior and determine whether or not their use of the search engine is "authentic". The algorithm tries to track down users who are just searching to earn tokens instead of actually using Presearch to look for stuff on the web. It then assigns users a PRE Level, from 0 to 10, and the higher the level the higher the withdrawal minimum of PRE tokens. Basically, if you're a "good" user (PRE Level 10), you can withdraw all of your tokens, and if you're a "bad" user (PRE Level 0), you can't withdraw any.
On paper, this sounds pretty good and honest. In practice however, it raises a lot of questions.
I joined Presearch after this was released, so I don't know how it worked before, but I know the first time I noticed this on my account, I was at PRE Level 10, but I was not using it as my main search engine yet. After I learned more about the project, I decided to support it more so I set it up as my main SE and I now use it absolutely every day, for everything I need to search and find on the internet, be it personal or professional. And I recently discovered that, for some reason, I was now at PRE Level 7, meaning I lost 3 (!) levels and now only 70% of my tokens are eligible for withdrawals.
It's been a few months now, I'm still at 7, and I'm asking myself the same question every day: why?
What do I do that makes an algorithm think my searches are not natural? Have I been using the internet wrong my whole life? Am I actually a robot? I genuinely use the engine only for actual searches, so I guess my online behavior is not authentic enough for Presearch for some reason?
In the Medium post, Presearch defines an unauthentic search as "...running automated programs or bots designed to earn rewards, doing searches more frequently than you would under normal circumstances in an attempt to earn rewards beyond those which would typically be provided, or creating multiple accounts to bypass account limits and restrictions". I can definitely understand wanting to prevent that, it makes total sense as a business.
But I can also say for a fact that I definitely don't do any of that.
What bothers me the most, however, is this sentence in that same Medium post: "An authentic search is done when you have a real need for information about something you are interested in." How can they possibly know what I am interested in, while Presearch claims to be safe and respectful of their user's privacy, assuring they're not building any user profile? I previously wrote an article about how private they are, and it actually appears to be pretty good, so this is genuinely concerning. Let's pretend for a second that there's a private way for them to know what I'm interested in, will the algorithm think I'm trying to cheat it if one day I search for something completely different? The whole purpose of a search engine is to be used to access any and all kind of information, so judging searches seems to be impossible to do, especially by an algorithm, and determining if a search is legit or not based on what we're "interested in" or not makes absolutely no sense on the internet, the one place where you can look for absolutely anything. I understand tracking down bots and repeated "fake" searches in a very short period of time, but since I don't do any of that, the algorithm must be tracking other kinds of behaviors. I also haven't found anything in the whitepaper about this feature, which is even more concerning.
I find it paradoxical, extremely annoying, and almost offending, that a robot deems my behavior unnatural.
What scares me is that, since my usage of the tool has not changed and my PRE Level has gone down, I fear that it might keep going down with no more explanation as I keep using it.
I asked them about it on Twitter a few weeks ago and no one acknowledged it.
I want to support the project, that's why I set it up as my main engine even though, let's face it, the results are not always the best, but if Presearch acts like this with its users, what else could go wrong? Is it even worth it to keep investing time and possibly money in this project? If it aims to be fully decentralized at some point in its existence, more transparency on this Rewards Verification System algorithm is a must in my opinion, otherwise whoever wrote this algorithm will technically be the sole decider of who gets tokens and who does not.
Have you experienced the same changes in your PRE Level, or do you have any more information about how the algorithm works? Let me know in the comments!
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