Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

travellemming.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 175 posts

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#121

Post by philistine »

flenserboy wrote: post #72
fidotron wrote: post #5

> Google plans to use AI to consume and replace the open web. They've been boiling the frog here for a long time. The "open web" is a euphemism for the Google Chrome monoculture walled-garden-in-waiting. Google exert so much influence there that building on the web is in practice barely different than building on say iOS. You can do what you want if you don't want to make money, but if you do then you will have to pl…

the funniest part here is that if G+ is part of the reason, they still don't understand why people didn't want to use it, making any decisions which follow wrong &/or misguided. while I'm not terribly in favor of breaking up companies, there is far too much incentive for Google, given its ad business (which is really what the company now is), to have any voice in the future of the Web. Chrome must be spun off, & fire…

> they still don't understand why people didn't want to use it

That's what OP is saying. Google knows it doesn't understand, knows it cannot compete on even ground, so it is pulling every lever of its monopoly so that no other entrant can ever rise from the web. Only serfs, no lords.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#122

Post by jorvi »

FinnLobsien wrote: post #101
jorvi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neal Postman. It's painful how apt it is for current times. For what it's worth, I've started to reintroduce friction in my life where it makes sense. My phone defaults to a "dumbphone" profile that only has messaging, music, maps, etc. and specifically no browser or YouTube. I only turn on my smart lights with wall buttons and use the smart function purely to tune the…

> You should read 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neal Stephenson. It's painful how apt it is for current times. Assuming you mean Neil Postman? And yeah, I am also wanting to get print magazine subscriptions. Luckily I already live in a neighborhood with a very 1950s vibe where I know the baker, the coffee guy, the butcher, sandwich shop guy etc. I just want to remove my compulsive internet usage. Even if I'm readin…

> Assuming you mean Neil Postman?

Yes, my bad. Edited!

> I just want to remove my compulsive internet usage. Even if I'm reading The New Yorker, it's still because I've defaulted to consuming media on the internet in an empty moment.

That's the skill of allowing yourself to be bored. Another thing you can learn, with enough effort.

Making your browser much less accessible on your phone helps a lot. Either lock the use to 30m per day with digital wellbeing settings, or just make it a chore to get to it (always force close, put it a screen away / in a folder / in another profile).

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#123

Post by sceptic123 »

maeil wrote: post #102
gorjusborg wrote: post #39

I can't get past the sloppy and inflammatory use of English here. This is not 'censorship'. It probably isn't banning, nor is it 'shadowbanning'. Google tunes its algorithms and lets the chips fall. Some win, some lose. While I understand how Google's dominance in search can have outsized effects on Internet commerce, the writer has near-zero credibility with me based on their writing. Honest people making honest sta…

And I'm tired of this sort of sloppy and inflammatory discrediting. It fits 'shadowbanning' to an absolute tee. Without any kind of notification, or any recourse, a switch is flicked to "off" in a single moment, putting a domain on the shitlist. This is now very well documented, including by this post, and incredibly obvious from the graph.

Certainly not what I understand as shadowbanning.

> the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user

(from Wikipedia)

I'm not saying what they are doing is good, just agreeing that it doesn't seem like shadowbanning, it just looks like downranking.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#124

Post by ancillary »

Barrin92 wrote: post #99

The alleged economic incentive suggested in the article, that Google wants to deal with "established big players" is literally nonsensical, something that the article itself arrives at, weirdly enough. "But we later realized the shadowban really was about the type of website we are (i.e., small and independent). While Google gives large publishers an appeal and recovery process, small and independent publishers have…

Yeah, the world in which human-generated indie content is noticeably better (in terms of clicks) than blogspam or AI content seems better for Google. Each of those indie players is happy for some traffic, and they're unlikely to muscle together and negotiate hard. Why would Google want to destroy that world to negotiate against players more comparable to its size?

My guess is that differentiating human- and AI-generated content at anything approaching Google scale has become hard, and Google's best option is to prioritize known information sources, which are necessarily large firms with some amount of reputational proof (though I'd also say that Forbes is not my go-to example of a good actor in this space).

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#125

Post by toss1 »

rapnie wrote: post #85
itchyjunk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam Shazeer says it at some point in the Dwarkesh Patel podcast. Edit : Saw multiple people comment by the time I hit sent. Was it also memorable for you guys? I think it was just the way he said it or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0gjI__RyCY

It was the giddy techbro optimism that struck me most with a "Hey, if all this quadrillion dollar value comes to Google it surely will greatly benefit all of society". While we are talking here effectively about a near-monopolistic advertisement moloch that is the epitomy of surveillance capitalism.

Small quibble: Google is at the top of the food chain of surveillance capitalism, but Palantir, quietly aggregating every bit of available info to profile and make predictions about every person, is truly the apex predator of that food chain

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#126

Post by gorjusborg »

eviks wrote: post #77
gorjusborg wrote: post #39

I can't get past the sloppy and inflammatory use of English here. This is not 'censorship'. It probably isn't banning, nor is it 'shadowbanning'. Google tunes its algorithms and lets the chips fall. Some win, some lose. While I understand how Google's dominance in search can have outsized effects on Internet commerce, the writer has near-zero credibility with me based on their writing. Honest people making honest sta…

> Google tunes its algorithms and lets the chips fall This is even more sloppy and could be easily applied to any real censorship, where some (censored) lose and some (not censored) win If you're "tuning" your algorithm with the goal of blocking all small independent websites, then yeah, you're doing the shadow (if you don't tell the sites about it) banning. By ignoring the intent of the policy and replacing it with…

Censorship is about filtering out messages that are somehow 'undesirable'.

That is not what is happening here. What's happening here is that someone has built a business that relies heavily on search hits from Google, Google made changes that negatively impact the number of hits.

I'm not trying to minimize what is clearly a significant problem for the author, I'm just saying that misusing words like 'censorship' can water it down to the point that it has no impact.

I abhor censorship. This isn't it.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#127

Post by eviks »

Aldipower wrote: post #110
eviks wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can living in a dark cave be seen in a positive light?

I depends on the angle you are looking from. The current situation with Google _search_ is looking very dark too me, so looking away from Google makes the world a little bit brighter.

But if you're looking from a very dark place into an even darker place (which manual typing links is), no angle will make it look brighter?

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#128

Post by FinnLobsien »

tndibona wrote: post #117
FinnLobsien wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not saying we all have to innovate or perish but how did our rules based order allow Google to get to this point. Well millions of people learned how to game the Google Search algorithm and created long-winded, hollow content that would rank on the first page to the point that people no longer trusted Google's results. Then the perfect technology to solve that exact problem came along—one that let Google cease…

Yes, this is true that all the click bait and unoriginal content deserves to perish. But, what about the carve outs for people putting money on original content. Like perhaps a local news gazette with paid journalists. They need google to be found, they also can't afford to get scraped and be AI-regurgitated up. Let's take a practical example, if you searched for let's say "Whats the latest research on intermittent f…

Yeah I totally agree! But I think it's a reaction on Google's part to the SEO industry. I mourn the loss of independent media, blogosphere etc. and the trend to everything being either more generic or more outrageous.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#129

Post by storus »

How is Google going to survive? Their search quality tanked, the AI is too expensive to run for every single query and they cut off people that made their advertisement model possible. Are the advertisers themselves going to form a consortium to buy Google at some point? What is the end game? I only see them bleeding money in the medium term.

Re: Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine

#130

Post by FinnLobsien »

jorvi wrote: post #122
FinnLobsien wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should read 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neal Stephenson. It's painful how apt it is for current times. Assuming you mean Neil Postman? And yeah, I am also wanting to get print magazine subscriptions. Luckily I already live in a neighborhood with a very 1950s vibe where I know the baker, the coffee guy, the butcher, sandwich shop guy etc. I just want to remove my compulsive internet usage. Even if I'm readin…

> Assuming you mean Neil Postman? Yes, my bad. Edited! > I just want to remove my compulsive internet usage. Even if I'm reading The New Yorker, it's still because I've defaulted to consuming media on the internet in an empty moment. That's the skill of allowing yourself to be bored. Another thing you can learn, with enough effort. Making your browser much less accessible on your phone helps a lot. Either lock the us…

I think I'm too compulsive for any of that to work lol. But what's worked in the past is not bringing my phone at all. I should get back to that.
Post reply on HN