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

telegraph.co.uk

301–310 of 390 posts

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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO / billboards / paid-for advertising is basically legal propaganda (arguably a form of mind control or more neutral we can say reality shaping through narrative structuring). I think the only place advertising should be allowed is in a marketplace setting, anywhere else is "public domain" and shouldn't be allowed in my opinion. It is the root to many evils, it is the mechanism that trends towards hacking the user…

I hate ads as much as everyone else (and actively block the hell out of it) At the same time, ads made a lot of the free web possible. I run services making money with ads: I would not be able to work on them without. Or maybe the revenue I would make is too little to bother with all the stupid EU regulations around VAT - ads offer a simple solution and you get a single B2B transaction, while providing values to Cust…

It doesn't sound like you hate ads as much as I do. :)

What I do: work a day job to make money and then give my content away for free, or charge what the market will bear. No ads, no SEO. Classic, old-school Internet.

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

#302
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was recently looking for general travel advice on Google. I found it completely impossible. Try Wikivoyage, the Wikipedia Foundation's open travel guide. Listings are a mixed bag, but the general advice is often spot on.

Everyone centralizing around a few sources to deal with the web turning to garbage is a symptom of the problem. Google should return travelogues and official websites for locales, maybe offer hotel and flight bookings, not an endless scroll of spun and AI-generated trash. They shouldn't have to site:wikivoyage.org just to find anything useful. You shouldn't need site:reddit.com to make general searches useful. This i…

You know, I don't think they can anymore.

The web is not what itwas, so they can't just "revert." They need talent, execution, ideas. IDK if websearch still has that at google. A possibility of big(ish) ideas about how websearch should be.

Innovators' Dilemma, and just general difficulty of changing core things that don't change often. Google are optimizers. Local plateaus are hard to beat.

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

#303
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me were at the forefront of making this internet medium to be better than books, voice or anything else for that matter for the transmission of information. Fast forward 20 years later. I think I've spent close to 300k on the website and team to help with it. I do…

Here's how that Twitter link describes you and your competitors vs. Kprofiles: > A few other people have noticed the quiet success of Kprofiles and have already attempted to copy them. > Some have better content, site structure, and formatting than Kprofiles. > But they just compete with Kprofile's massive backlink profile. So did Kprofiles (a somewhat purple website) come before you (Kpopping) or are you talking abo…

I was referring to the former. The waybackmachine confirms they launched around 2016, but with sporadic uptime (apache settings in there)

https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofi...

We were running a beta for that period and launched publicly in July of 2017

https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping....

Personally I think hallyuidol is even worse but that's another matter. (they are just copying kprofiles but whoever designed it has eyeballs so they have a massive advantage on that front)

Right now I have YouTube's API team giving me an audit that is compounding my already overextension on our development. They're telling me I can't do rankings or aggregate data. It's a giant mess and I have another fulltime job so it's not getting the attention it deserves -- still it's miles ahead of its competitors and I don't see how that's even debatable.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than ads, sites can make money by selling products and services. A website with information on gardening, that also sells the equipment and seeds you need. A website with travel information that also sells tours. A website with any programming and IT information that also sells software. These kind of sites make much better money than ad and affiliate sites, but people haven't understood it yet. The online ad…

> Better than ads, sites can make money by selling products and services. A website with information on gardening, that also sells the equipment and seeds you need. A website with travel information that also sells tours. A website with any programming and IT information that also sells software. That would compromise the neutrality of the site. Also not everyone who want to publish information about stuff wants to r…

> That would compromise the neutrality of the site.

So what? Competitors exist also. Brick and mortar stores exist and nobody complains that they aren't "neutral".

> Also not everyone who want to publish information about stuff wants to run a freaking retail business to support the publishing/hosting.

They can continue then with their garbage ads, if they so please. But for those who aim to make more money than paying for their hosting, I think selling some product or service is better for their bottom line and for the web at large, than relying on ads. Strictly talking about people who publish online with the goal of making money.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and a much bigger chunk was killed with it. To say nothing of the opportunity costs. They killed a lot of what was, but they’ve also prevented so much of the promise of the internet from coming to fruition. Lost time, lost talent and lives, and a gaping hole in society where a more productive internet might have been. Somehow we let them.

You are right. But the pendulum swings back.

It’s hard to swing back over walled gardens, they employ behavioral tactics to hook people into certain behaviors. When internet was new it grew organically, these tactics weren’t needed. Now all large platforms do it. Imagine how much effort it would take to unhook people off doomscrolling for example.

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

#306
The meat of this seems to be an upcoming UK AI safety summit:

The UK’s AI Safety Summit is due to take place at Bletchley Park and is expected to gather world leaders and tech entrepreneurs to address the challenges of “frontier AI” that might cause “significant harm, including the loss of life”. The two-day summit on Nov 1 and 2 is expected to be attended by top lobbyists from the likes of Meta and Google. Kamala Harris, the US vice president, is expected to attend, while a Chinese delegation has been invited.

(From TFA)

Anyone have pointers / insights on what this might entail and/or produce?

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great but there's a step 2. The sub-culture of people who like things better that way need to sustain each other and itself. Ideally, to grow in happiness and other measures of strength such that the surrounding dominant culture cannot destroy it, and in fact can influence the dominant culture to become more like it. It's that step 2 that I think we haven't figured out yet. Without step 2 we are merely opinion…

I've been thinking for some time that we could do with having a sort of private internet for the nerds. The internet itself used to be like this back in the late 90s. Nowadays 95-99% of the web is the general public which means that it has turned into what TV was - the happy happy box to keep the dummies occupied.

>>I've been thinking for some time that we could do with having a sort of private internet for the nerds.

If we only could. I'd work for free helping to build it. Count on me.

I just think we don't have to build one. We already had it in 1998. It's still there, buried beneath the landfill.

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

#308

I agree but the root cause isn't Google, it's advertising in all its forms, Google's ads just happen to be the most profitable ones. Kill advertising and the web will be fixed automatically and permanently. Using uBlock Origin is everyone's duty towards a better web. It should come pre-installed in Firefox.

> Kill advertising and the web will be fixed automatically and permanently Is the implicit logic here "kill advertising and the web will be like what it was before widespread advertising: mostly for and by nerds"?

Yes! Not just computer nerds, but nerds of all kinds.

I want to read things by recipe nerds, not people trying to make money on ads.

I want to read about cars from car nerds and home repair from home repair nerds and writing from writing nerds.

I want to read things from people who share them for the pure joy of sharing them.

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

#309

"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…

Ironically, the title of the article is literal clickbait. The first four paragraphs (out of 21) of the article are related to the title. The majority of the article (11 paragraphs) are dedicated to AI safety. I avoid companies like Google as much as possible, but is it really their fault that so many people fall for clickbait? If that's what a majority of people click on, shouldn't users share the blame?

How can you know the link won't correspond to the title and snippet? Should we just avoid all interesting-looking content because we might have been duped? The only way to avoid clickbait working is if those who have actually seen the entire page can indicate it is not worth viewing - which brings us right back to search engine placement algorithms and curation.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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 p…

Exactly!
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