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Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

reasonablypolymorphic.com

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Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#122
post #28

> My last point: websites are penalized for even linking to low-ranking pages! No they aren't.

That was my impression also. My understanding is that your page "quality" is 1 + the sum of the quality all pages that link to your page, divided by the total number of outgoing links. So the quality of pages with incoming links matters, but the quality of pages linked to doesn't, just the number.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#123

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

GPT-3 prompt:

I really love the vibe of Koh Lanta in Thailand. It has tourist amenities without really being touristy. I find it charming, slow and cheap. Is there a place in Croatia like it?

Completion:

There is no exact place in Croatia that has the same vibe as Koh Lanta in Thailand. However, there are places in Croatia that have a similar charm and slower pace. These places include Hvar Island, Korcula Island, and Istria. While these places do have some tourist amenities, they are not as touristy as Koh Lanta and still offer a more authentic Croatian experience.

Another:

There is no exact equivalent to Koh Lanta in Croatia, but the small town of Nin on the Dalmatian coast comes close. Nin is a charming, slow-paced town with beautiful beaches and a relaxed atmosphere. It is also quite inexpensive by Croatian standards.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#124
post #105
post #90

It's not just google. In the past, Mr Joe Blogs was into a passion, he would write about it on his own shoddy blog with gif links to other blogs part of a blog ring of nerdy stuff he cares about. Nowadays, Mr Joe Blogs writes on Medium, shares on Facebook and potentially has an outdated instagram account with 4 pictures of his passion. All buried down by algorithm to never be found, because his passion "isn't sexy".…

>Nowadays, Mr Joe Blogs writes on Medium, shares on Facebook and potentially has an outdated instagram account with 4 pictures of his passion. All buried down by algorithm to never be found, because his passion "isn't sexy". From what I've observed, the opposite tends to be true more often than not. Plenty of people have been able to create communities around niche interests because platforms bring something independ…

Yeah but you get no independence that way. Slip up and post the wrong "badspeak" phrase of the month? Shadow banned. As long as content is sitting underneath a huge lingering banhammer, the content will never be as raw and authentic as content was back in 2006. This reinforces the echo chamber issue and also makes the internet feel contrived and soulless.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#125
post #8

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

It did used to be possible to craft searches that'd find that kind of thing, with Google. Not in natural language, but you could guess enough unusual words that might show up on a page that had that info to zero in on it. Their apparently paying a lot less attention to certain things (like link text—"what might someone use to describe a link to this resource, but which might not appear on the resource itself?" used t…

It's absurdly common for Google to completely ignore the first term I include in a search. It's not like I typed it just for fun!

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#126

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

I asked GPT-3 "What is a place in Croatia similar to Koh Lanta?" and the answer was "A place in Croatia similar to Koh Lanta is Hvar."

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The fact that Google has such a power over the shape of web traffic, along with a few other websites, absolutely re-shapes the Internet to fit whatever its standards make a website rank well. It's in many ways almost exactly the same process as natural selection. Whatever works gets traffic and gets copied by other websites, whatever doesn't fades away.

yes but we can build our own query tools, for ex. Im using `$ so graphql vs sql` and such terminal commands more and more these days

Sorry, unrelated, but your comment hit a pet peeve of mine.

I love GraphQL, and I think it has a number of features that make it better and more usable for most APIs than a RESTful interface.

The thing I despise about GraphQL is they put "QL" in the name, so legions of software developers think that it is somehow comparable to SQL, or somehow is a generic query language for data.

GraphQL has absolutely nothing to do with SQL. Comparing "GraphQL vs SQL" is like comparing "HTML vs Java".

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#128

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

GPT-3 prompt: I really love the vibe of Koh Lanta in Thailand. It has tourist amenities without really being touristy. I find it charming, slow and cheap. Is there a place in Croatia like it? Completion: There is no exact place in Croatia that has the same vibe as Koh Lanta in Thailand. However, there are places in Croatia that have a similar charm and slower pace. These places include Hvar Island, Korcula Island, an…

The next problem is verifying all of that information.

It will require multiple dozen auxillary Google searches and reading through countless articles and message boards.

GPT-3 is a great research tool as a brainstorming engine, but sadly cannot currently be formally trusted to output truthful information, even with conditioning.

It takes someone with prior knowledge or subsequent research in order to make use of the result. I'd say this isn't what the author was intending.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#129

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

GPT-3 prompt: I really love the vibe of Koh Lanta in Thailand. It has tourist amenities without really being touristy. I find it charming, slow and cheap. Is there a place in Croatia like it? Completion: There is no exact place in Croatia that has the same vibe as Koh Lanta in Thailand. However, there are places in Croatia that have a similar charm and slower pace. These places include Hvar Island, Korcula Island, an…

I'd be super interested to see if these other places actually fit the descriptions it gives, or if it essentially just generated a likely pattern of text to be seen after the first part saying there's no exact match and then filled in random known Croatian location. I honestly don't have any intuition of which of those is more likely!
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