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

Apparently Google hates us now

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 272 posts

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#121

Post by bartekpacia »

twodave wrote: post #91
phyzix5761 wrote: post #42

Why would Google need to direct traffic to the website when they've already scraped and trained their models on the data? Content creators and legitimate websites were wham-bammed and thank-you-ma’amed.

Personifying Google in this way is not realistic. The search team alone at Google is made of thousands of people who are all working on different things with an over-arching mission of making the web MORE accessible, not less. Any release from any of those people could have created a side effect of this kind. Is there a chance it was an intentional policy implementation? Sure. But the odds are heavily against it.

Is this irony? Cause there’s no way anyone believes these “we want to make the world a better place” cliches anymore lol

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#122

Post by danaris »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #18

They're a wiki. Wiki spammers are relentless now. Source: a small wiki I help manage, for an obscure game with On a popular wiki, and it sounds like this one was fairly popular, I imagine even CAPTCHA's won't be enough to stop wiki spammers. If those spammers were posting more than just "buy my penis pill" garbage (e.g. they were putting links to malware sites), Google probably, and somewhat legitimately, saw them as…

How old a version? I've been running a much more obscure game (<150 players, down from ~1k in 2010) for some time, and it was using QuestyCaptcha back in...2008 or so, I think? Certainly at least 15 years ago. It's almost always been sufficient: just put in a couple of questions based on knowledge of the game itself.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#123

Post by croes »

twodave wrote: post #91
phyzix5761 wrote: post #42

Why would Google need to direct traffic to the website when they've already scraped and trained their models on the data? Content creators and legitimate websites were wham-bammed and thank-you-ma’amed.

Personifying Google in this way is not realistic. The search team alone at Google is made of thousands of people who are all working on different things with an over-arching mission of making the web MORE accessible, not less. Any release from any of those people could have created a side effect of this kind. Is there a chance it was an intentional policy implementation? Sure. But the odds are heavily against it.

The over arching mission is to make profit.

And accessibility was meant for Google so they can collect all the data to make even more profit.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#124

Post by prerok »

xp84 wrote: post #89
WarmWash wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit outside of HN's typical domain, but I wonder the treatment that top ad buyers get from Google. Like if you are the VP of advertising for Procter & Gamble, and your nephews gmail account gets banned, are these guys treated so specially that they can get a white glove unban just like that? I wouldn't be surprised for Googles golden geese if they can

I wonder about that. Part of me thinks maybe they might not bother, because what are they gonna do, just not advertise? The entire online ad market is basically Google and Meta now. You'd get fired if you pulled all your ads because Google didn't do you a favor. But on the other hand, I think they might definitely do that kind of thing as more of an old-boys-network type thing.

This. They will call up a high rank and tell them about it and then it would trickle down. It would not happen through regular support channels.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#125

Post by prerok »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #100
logicchains wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All large companies are sociopaths, but few tech companies treat their paying customers with the level of contempt that Google does.

I don't think that's necessarily true - some large companies are coöps, they don't seem to be sociopathic?

Coops usually wouldn't be, but they almost all went under some time back where I live.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#127

Post by f4stjack »

Google does not hate us... it is worse than that - it is indifferent to us. Hate requires some sort of recognition. I mean this single incident may not mean anything but overall google is heading to an _interesting_ place. In short, it was state of the art but in 20 years it became just another conglomerate sacrificing quality for shareholder gain, I think?

As a search engine, it does not work for me. I see promoted links above the thing I actually search for. Moved to Kagi and didn't look back.

As an AI it does not work for me. I am seeing an arbitrary usage limit, refreshing in 5 hours and a weekly quota given in a percentage. That is as opaque as it gets. Again, to give Kagi as an example I look at my usage details and I see how much is remaining in a clear way. Not working for Kagi by the way, I am just a happy customer.

As a cloud storage, it does not work for me. Probably some shared folder I am working with others has a spam user and/or a hacked account and they periodically spam x-rated notifications. And that's not only me (https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1azf25v/myster...). Moved to apple iCloud and done with it.

Mail is fine. After 22 years of usage, I kind of delegated it to a non-important stage in my life. The important bits have relocated to European providers anyway.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#128

Post by awesome_dude »

anigbrowl wrote: post #79
ajkjk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the dream solution is more like tree-based content: you see content that is vouched for by people you vouch for; if someone's account is compromised then their vouches get updated to not matter anymore, cutting their whole tree off at the root to make it invisible. Spammers should end up in largely disconnected components of the trees.

How does new content or content from new accounts get seen by anyone?

Same tree that gave them credentials gives them weight that is used to spread their content.

New User problem has been around for a minute though - wikipedia and stack overflow both faced it, as does every social media platform nowadays.

Reality is, though, new visitors are getting the same blast radius as early adopters got when they started, just that the early adopters now have blast radiuses that are much bigger

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#129

Post by SXX »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #18

They're a wiki. Wiki spammers are relentless now. Source: a small wiki I help manage, for an obscure game with On a popular wiki, and it sounds like this one was fairly popular, I imagine even CAPTCHA's won't be enough to stop wiki spammers. If those spammers were posting more than just "buy my penis pill" garbage (e.g. they were putting links to malware sites), Google probably, and somewhat legitimately, saw them as…

If your project is popular enough to the point where tailored automation make sense there no way to fight spam really.

If its small enough you can usually avoid all the spam bots by adding any none-standard flow in registration procedure. E.g static picture or audio of something only your audience know with like drop down option to click on picture saying "I'm not a bot". Or add one more email verification for first post or edits. Or make users watch large YouTube video at certain timespamt with correct answer, etc. Anything non-standard works.

Breaks 99.9% of automation and SERP spammers wont bother create unique one for your wiki / forum / etc.

If your site is very popular you're fckd obviously and it's just arm race. This is where you can use Hashcash or something that will burn lots of CPU / GPU / RAM / etc single time so spammers will just blacklist you.

Re: Apparently Google hates us now

#130

Post by stronglikedan »

Content creators need to accept that traditional SEO is a thing of the past, because traditional search engines are a thing of the past. None of my normie friends use search engines any longer. They just ask the AI - anything and everything - the AI has all the answers they need. The best that any content creators can hope for in terms of engagement is that they were the quoted source and the user cares enough to check sources. Content creators just need to find new ways of driving engagement now, and we're never going back so there's no use crying about it.
Post reply on HN