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As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

thewalrus.ca

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Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#121

Post by watwut »

no-name-here wrote: post #103
JKCalhoun wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. When my kids wonder why I don't hate AI the way they do I tell them it's because I hate Google even more. To be more precise, I hate the SEO shithole the internet has become, that Google serves up, that Google facilitated, indirectly created. (I really don't have any tears to shed if there is a death of the Corporate Internet™.)

Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization?

Google did not really lost to optimization, they enshittified to make you spwnd more time on search (and see more ads)

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#122

Post by Eisenstein »

no-name-here wrote: post #117
Melatonic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One you pay for yourself ! Very happy with Kagi personally

>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization? > One you pay for yourself ! SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in…

> SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results.

They do this because they benefit from their site being visited or the information they are providing being noticed.

> If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in your search results?

I see no reason it would have that effect. It does, however, create different incentives for the search provider to improve the signals indicating page relevance since the user is the priority instead of advertisers.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#123

Post by nsonha »

comrade1234 wrote: post #7

I spent the last three days (off and on) using Gemini to configure my edge router 4 with my iOS devices on a vpn and it's been awesome. In the past I'd do a google search and read a few sources of documentation, do another google search and read another set of documentation. Now, Gemini aggregates multiple pages together so all of the work of reading source docs from multiple locations is now n a single step. Oh, I s…

Imagine someone making an indie router and sell it too you then the AI not be able to surface their doc

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#124

Post by Eisenstein »

badestrand wrote: post #106
dualvariable wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're probably going to figure out how to aggressively monetize and enshittify LLMs at some point. We're likely at the "golden age" of LLM-assisted web searching and summarization. Hopefully open models keep it cracked open, but expecting enshittification is always the safe bet these days.

For the free to use LLMs, for sure. But if I pay $20 monthly, why should they enshittify it?

The amount of money you pay is irrelevant if you don't leave the platform once they starting adding revenue streams that degrade your experience.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#125

Post by nairboon »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #97
satvikpendem wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People write and create regardless of profit motive, it has been that way for thousands of years.

Actually no. The original copyright laws were created in part because of the realities of needed profit motive to have high value writing done, time consuming compilation work done. It was even titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". The thousands of years writing you are talking about was often funded by patrons, who kept the output in their private libraries to show off (and maybe lend out) for prestige.…

It's not copyright that caused cheap access. The printing machine allowed for cheaper publications, that's what spawned the new age of knowledge. The raw materials and the duplication of knowledge was the bottleneck. With digital systems this cost is minuscule, but still there.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#126

Post by no-name-here »

watwut wrote: post #121
no-name-here wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization?

Google did not really lost to optimization, they enshittified to make you spwnd more time on search (and see more ads)

Ah, the argument is that Google intentionally avoids showing you the best results, so that you spend more time searching (and being exposed to ads)?

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#127

Post by no-name-here »

Eisenstein wrote: post #122
no-name-here wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization? > One you pay for yourself ! SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in…

> SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. They do this because they benefit from their site being visited or the information they are providing being noticed. > If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in your search results…

Ah, the argument is that Google intentionally avoids showing you the most relevant results, or at least avoids "solving" the problem of webmasters who attempt to 'game' the system.

>>>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization?

>>> One you pay for yourself !

>> SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results.

> They do this because they benefit from their site being visited or the information they are providing being noticed.

>> If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in your search results?

> I see no reason it would have that effect.

Agreed.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#128

Post by [deleted] »

no-name-here wrote: post #117
Melatonic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One you pay for yourself ! Very happy with Kagi personally

>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization? > One you pay for yourself ! SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in…

[deleted]

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#129

Post by csnover »

no-name-here wrote: post #117
Melatonic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One you pay for yourself ! Very happy with Kagi personally

>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization? > One you pay for yourself ! SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results. If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in…

I don’t agree with the parent that the solution for SEO spam is paying for the search engine (I think there are other good reasons to do this though), especially since people have been doing things like naming their company “AAA Auto Repair” to be first in the phone book since before computers ever existed. But the person you originally replied to does have a point in blaming Google for the problem. Most SEO spam sites make their money from ads, and Google are the ones who run the ad network, which means Google are the ones funding them and creating an incentive for them to exist.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#130

Post by Grimburger »

neuralkoi wrote: post #87
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the information Gemini surfaced was created with human effort and published on the internet with the expectation that humans would visit the website and the creator would get some reward - advertising dollars, bragging rights, popularity, subscribers or whatever else. If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? For how long can we continue to re…

I've seen websites put up some draconian measures to try and get a grip on the scraping. So much for the sub-second loading experience when you have Cloudflare, Google, Anubis, and all these other captcha services trying to see if you're a human. It's made the web browsing experience so much worse. Some of the proposals to address this include charging bots for access to web resources, but they will also have repercu…

Cloudflare specifically has a block for LLM and AI training bots now.

Not sure of the effectiveness but it's there.

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