Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
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Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
Linked doco by Dan Olson. Strong recommend.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#3Usually pretty scam savvy but dropped my guard and bought an absolute garbage AI translation of The Little Prince on Amazon. Now I research anything before buying
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#4Example #732453111 of how the 2000's-era dreams of technology-enabled infinite scaling were misguided and potentially damning for the Internet.
Turns out scammers and spammers can technologically scale their side too, and can even do so in a way that the host profits from so that the host is disincentivized from doing anything about it until it's already gone too far.
Now everything is flooded with noise and supported by ads and meaningful human participation in content approval or customer service is infeasible because we're already on the far side of the transition and they can't match the established scale.
Whoops!
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#5The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses, but I think Amazon deserves more scrutiny. They enable this entire ecosystem of fake books and fake products.
I have to imagine that with the amount of data Amazon collects, they could do a lot more to counter the epidemic of fakes.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#6Stick to checking out books from your library / Libby. You'll save money and might end up making discoveries you otherwise wouldn't.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#7Example #732453111 of how the 2000's-era dreams of technology-enabled infinite scaling were misguided and potentially damning for the Internet. Turns out scammers and spammers can technologically scale their side too, and can even do so in a way that the host profits from so that the host is disincentivized from doing anything about it until it's already gone too far. Now everything is flooded with noise and supporte…
Clearly we didn't think this through back then.
It should have been obvious to us that it is easier to create noise than it is to create signal.
The idyllic dream of a free internet with long tails would be replaced with a steadily worsening signal to noise ratio.
We cheered on when Google supplanted Yahoo! because the computers were better at curating than humans.
Man, we clearly sucked at choosing the right path. Dreams of utopia always hit hard when they fall.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#8Example #732453111 of how the 2000's-era dreams of technology-enabled infinite scaling were misguided and potentially damning for the Internet. Turns out scammers and spammers can technologically scale their side too, and can even do so in a way that the host profits from so that the host is disincentivized from doing anything about it until it's already gone too far. Now everything is flooded with noise and supporte…
This is why gatekeepers are still a good thing, and now the gatekeepers are themselves somewhat democratized. Lots of people now have their favorite YouTuber / Podcaster / etc. and get book recommendations from them. And there is now a much bigger selection of gatekeepers to choose from given the variety of content on those platforms. It’s not perfect, but overall it is an improvement in many ways.
Now yes I would agree that a fully flat, bottom up, “everyone is a publisher” world where everyone is on equal footing (including the spammers) is impractical, but then again who ever said that would happen or work if it did?
It remains to be seen what effect genAI has on all this, though. Long term, it seems likely that the need for gatekeeping will only increase due to the inevitable flood of more and more generated junk.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#9Stick to checking out books from your library / Libby. You'll save money and might end up making discoveries you otherwise wouldn't.
At my library you can check out sewing machines and power tools as well.
And CA libraries have access to courses on Coursera.
Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
#10The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses, but I think Amazon deserves more scrutiny. They enable this entire ecosystem of fake books and fake products. I have to imagine that with the amount of data Amazon collects, they could do a lot more to counter the epidemic of fakes.
How about this account for a "polymath" who manages to churn out a "book" almost every week on topics from AI to installing cabinets and a whole bunch of pseudo science woo woo:
https://www.amazon.ca/stores/D.R.-T-Stephens/author/B0CC62LX...
They buy a lot of ads so I guess Amazon likes them.