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Perplexity is a bullshit machine

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Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#31

Post by bnchrch »

jaredwiener wrote: post #27
bnchrch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the difference is that theres nothing forcing you to abide by a robots.txt As long as that content is valuable it will be scraped and used. Theres no solution to this. So the structure of content sites will have to adapt. How? I dont know, likely will vary by publication and content type. Is it fair? Probably not Is it stoppable? No. Not without heavy, global legislation. (read impossible)

This is such a weird take. If a house is robbed, you don't give the burglars a pass and say "well their security system wasn't very good." Yes, the defensive measures probably need improvement. But that doesn't mean that the act they are defending against is wrong.

My point is that it isnt a security system.

Its a sign on the door that says "Please don't rob me" while the door is unlocked and no body is home.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#32

Post by jaredwiener »

mrkramer wrote: post #28
jaredwiener wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You might as well make a deal with the people stealing your content because they are going to keep stealing it anyway" is not a great option. Part of licensing is the implicit understanding that if the parties do not come to a deal, they cannot use the licensed content. It seems from this article that Perplexity is not operating in good faith, ignoring robots.txt, using unpublished IP addresses, and then lying about…

>ignoring robots.txt Robots.txt is not legally binding, it is a good will among web stakeholders to respect it. But if you are repeatedly breaking it, you will have an army of web masters against you. And as far as I remember, big news outlets are already suing LLMs companies or are already licensing their content to them.

Yes to all of your points, but I think you are missing my distinction between "potentially legal" and "not being terrible."

And yes, of course they are suing the LLM companies. Because they shouldn't be stealing their stuff, regardless of robots.txt.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#34

Post by jaredwiener »

bnchrch wrote: post #31
jaredwiener wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird take. If a house is robbed, you don't give the burglars a pass and say "well their security system wasn't very good." Yes, the defensive measures probably need improvement. But that doesn't mean that the act they are defending against is wrong.

My point is that it isnt a security system. Its a sign on the door that says "Please don't rob me" while the door is unlocked and no body is home.

Right. And my point is that it would still be wrong to rob that person.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#35

Post by jaredwiener »

segasaturn wrote: post #29
jaredwiener wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because technology aside, its a new group of well funded companies who act as parasites on this already struggling industry. I know HN (and probably SV at large) has an anti-journalist bent, but ultimately by draining the individuals and companies that do the reporting, they wont have new material to scrape in the future. (Disclosure - I'm a former journalist building a way for the news industry to fight back. https:…

Well, as of the last 10 years the journalism industry has just been a lazy tweet regurgitation factory. The pipeline looks something like Tweets -> Journalists -> LLMs. So maybe it would be best if we cut out the middlemen?

If that were true then why not just index the tweets?

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#36

Post by bnchrch »

jaredwiener wrote: post #34
bnchrch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it isnt a security system. Its a sign on the door that says "Please don't rob me" while the door is unlocked and no body is home.

Right. And my point is that it would still be wrong to rob that person.

We don't disagree there.

In such a large ungoverned system as the internet morals don't dictate what people do / dont do.

So it doesnt matter whats wrong / right.

What does matter is what system participants will / wont do

And they will scrape your site if you don't put up any real defences.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#37

Post by claudiulodro »

segasaturn wrote: post #29
jaredwiener wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because technology aside, its a new group of well funded companies who act as parasites on this already struggling industry. I know HN (and probably SV at large) has an anti-journalist bent, but ultimately by draining the individuals and companies that do the reporting, they wont have new material to scrape in the future. (Disclosure - I'm a former journalist building a way for the news industry to fight back. https:…

Well, as of the last 10 years the journalism industry has just been a lazy tweet regurgitation factory. The pipeline looks something like Tweets -> Journalists -> LLMs. So maybe it would be best if we cut out the middlemen?

To be blunt, this seems like a lazy regurgitation of a tweet. There are lots of organizations out there doing really good work. Look at a couple of the Pulitzer winners from the last couple years for example:

- Mississippi Today spent more than 5 years investigating and reporting on the welfare agency and uncovered huge corruption going all the way to the governor's office: https://mississippitoday.org/2023/05/08/pulitzer-prize-winni...

- Lookout Santa Cruz was on the ground reporting during catastrophic flooding this year, including setting up a text message service to get information to people because the internet was unreliable: https://lookout.co/lookout-santa-cruz-wins-pulitzer-prize-fo...

This is the stuff you lose without journalism.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#38

Post by rsynnott »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #16

The existential dread in the media is plainly apparent nowadays. I'm not saying they don't have a point (the media), or that they are publishing outright lies to debase LLMs. But something in the way the tidal wave of "LLM's are bad" articles are written just has this panicked tone of "we are so fucked" underneath them. The hostility is so plainly apparent. It's just fascinating to see it happen in real time since LL…

I mean, maybe LLMs are just bad. Like, what possible use is this website? "Google search, only it might unexpectedly make stuff up" is not a thing that anyone sensible actually wants.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#39

Post by rchaud »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #16

The existential dread in the media is plainly apparent nowadays. I'm not saying they don't have a point (the media), or that they are publishing outright lies to debase LLMs. But something in the way the tidal wave of "LLM's are bad" articles are written just has this panicked tone of "we are so fucked" underneath them. The hostility is so plainly apparent. It's just fascinating to see it happen in real time since LL…

> It's just fascinating to see it happen in real time since LLM's came seemingly out of nowhere and progressed so fast.

"Came out of nowhere" seems to ignore the many billions of dollars invested into it, and the millions of person-hours from people in low-income countries used to train it, and the enormous amount of energy required to keep the whole thing running.

Let's not pretend that LLM advancement is the work of a few plucky upstarts that have pwned the complacent legacy media. With all that said, I seriously doubt Wired magazine holds much sway in journalistic circles anymore.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#40

Post by lancesells »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #16

The existential dread in the media is plainly apparent nowadays. I'm not saying they don't have a point (the media), or that they are publishing outright lies to debase LLMs. But something in the way the tidal wave of "LLM's are bad" articles are written just has this panicked tone of "we are so fucked" underneath them. The hostility is so plainly apparent. It's just fascinating to see it happen in real time since LL…

These parasites aren't just feeding off of news but everything published anywhere. I hope journalists continue to call them out, and even though Google is doing the same, or similar, they should mark sites like Perplexity as a link farm or duplicate content.

$165M in funding and ignoring robots.txt deserves every amount of scrutiny.

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