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Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#171

Post by holoduke »

jorvi wrote: post #137
dalbasal wrote: post #121

"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…

“site:reddit.com” saves the day, but I feel very uneasy doing so ever since they did their nasty API + demodding ploy.

I always add +forum and end up at conpletely unknown personal websites with sometimes great advice.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#172

Post by rendall »

Gareth321 wrote: post #60
leobg wrote: post #31

Recipe blogs are the most horrible example. The amount of BS you have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

“I know you’d like this recipe for potato salad, but first, let’s explore the history of the humble potato. Where did it come from? What is its cultural significance? Could this mighty spud someday change the world? Hi, I’m Leslie Snark, and I’ve travelled the world eating delicious food to bring you the best recipes.”

Looking for the ultimate potato salad experience? When it comes to potato salad our potato salad is a game-changer in the world of potato salad. Made with farm-fresh ingredients, this potato salad recipe will elevate your potato salad picnic to a gourmet potato salad feast. Whether you're a potato salad novice or a potato salad connoisseur, our potato salad recipe is guaranteed to impress. Don't settle for ordinary potato salad, indulge in the best potato salad ever. Come explore the potato salad possibilities with us! Potato salad has never been this exciting, potato salad.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#173

Post by tpmx »

jorvi wrote: post #137
dalbasal wrote: post #121

"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…

“site:reddit.com” saves the day, but I feel very uneasy doing so ever since they did their nasty API + demodding ploy.

Many product/brand-specific subreddits are infiltrated by marketing teams.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#174

Post by speleding »

toldyouso2022 wrote: post #123
Roark66 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the desktop search world, google used to respond with large comprehensive articles on subjects that not just answered peoples questions but also educated them on the subject around their question. This was the golden age so to speak IDK, for me it seems the worst plague are the sites that when you search for something like "how to reverse a pushed commit in git" don't give you a single sentence answer you seek, b…

Cookie law is seriously underrated in how much damages it has done. No visible gains for privacy either.

I agree, but it's mostly in the poor implementation where that law fails, the idea behind it wasn't bad.

I think it can still be fixed by stipulating: if the browser sends you an X-Privacy header with some well defined content then you are not allowed to show a popup and you should use the content of that header instead. The exact content of that header needs to be fleshed out but should offer a lot of customisation to keep 90% of the people happy. I'm sure mod builders and browser makers would come up with a convenient way to set that header just once and then the problem would go away.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#175

Post by the-dude »

leobg wrote: post #31

Recipe blogs are the most horrible example. The amount of BS you have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

This is not because of SEO per se :

Recipes are not copyrightable ( ? is that word ), but bullshit is.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#176

Post by DoingIsLearning »

This reminds of Palihapitiya "regreting" helping Facebook become the social media beast it is today and all the social damage it has caused.

They somehow never grapple with these ethical issues when getting payed.

Edit: I don't disagree but feels hypocritical and obviously on a newspaper to advertise their new ventures.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#177

Post by heresie-dabord »

mobilio wrote: post #21

https://archive.md/fQPTD

Thank you.

Let's recognise the irony of your link. The need for ^^^ such services is a symptom of the problem.

We are all taking measures to circumvent the rubbish.

I don't believe that every link that I click should contribute revenue to any billion-dollar corpocracy. I definitely do not want rubbish content to be intermingled with valid information.

This is not the Internet that we want.

If an entity wants money from me, let it prove its value from the basic requirement of quality.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#178

Post by ryanjshaw »

MourYother wrote: post #129
ryanjshaw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the growth of large language models is only going to amplify this practice dramatically. Do you mean LLMs will be used to generate more SEO content that is irrelevant? Doesn't it work both ways? You can use LLMs to filter out irrelevant content better than ever? A lot of the time I use ChatGPT-4 it's as a search engine - and I don't even mean with the Browser plugin, I mean it's quicker to ask ChatGPT-4 for its enc…

GPT4 is trained on mostly garbage optimised for SEO though.

Maybe, but there is plenty of non-garbage information encoded so I don't understand the argument.

I only ask it questions whose answers I can verify e.g. if I ask it how to do something in F#, a language I'm not very familiar with, I can easily confirm whefher the code does what I need it to or not.

You can pump as much SEO garbage out as you want, it doesn't change the value of LLMs to me in this context.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#180

Post by nabla9 »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Enshittification, also known as platform decay,[1] is a way to describe the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. The term enshittification was coined by Cory Doctorow in January 2023 in a blog post, later republished as an article in Wired, in which he wrote:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

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