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Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

theluddite.org

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Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#351

Post by itsoktocry »

tonyarkles wrote: post #60
oakashes wrote: post #46

It's a fair point about how awful recipe sites look without ad blockers, but this part is just plain incorrect: > You can tell just by looking at the URLs that those sites are going to be worthelss blogspam. At least two of the three results in the screenshot are from legitimate baking sites (Cookie and Kate, Sally's Baking Addiction) which are generally trusted sources online. I don't know anything about the third.…

I just looked up Cookie and Kate. On my iPad I had to flick 7 times to get past the exposition on Crispy Roasted Chickpeas and find the actual ingredients. When I found the ingredients, they occupied a small squeezed sliver of the page. As I was counting the number of simultaneous ads surrounding the ingredient list (4 separate ads), a pop up covered them all and suggested I sign up for her newsletter. The recipe loo…

>I also think the site counts as "worthless blogspam".

This is a strange complaint. You're visiting the blog of a woman who writes about cooking. Can't speak to the ads (I block them), but her site looks pretty good. Why do you think she should list her recipe like some kind of index? Perhaps she blogs for her own enjoyment, not for yours?

Have you ever read popular cook books? They aren't simply listings of ingredients, either.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#352

Post by perlgeek »

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #205
wickedsight wrote: post #197

Last year a friend and I made a website about the Nurburgring. It provided basic info for first time visitors that we were missing on our first visit. My friend spent a lot of time creating a UI with a custom map for displaying locations and routes. I wrote a bunch of content that was thoroughly researched. At a certain point we ended up being invited by one of the largest rental companies to see whether we could wor…

How might you see solving this problem? How could we distribute the task or goal of curation amongst individuals? How do we incentivize and enable discovery of maven/curators?

> How might you see solving this problem?

Break up google, disentangle AdSense from Search. Then the search division doesn't have incentives anymore to prioritize websites based on AdSense presence.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#353

Post by Repulsion9513 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #81
Repulsion9513 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have to be on them to come up with an alternative instead of... like... acknowledging that monopolies and businesses approaching them are harmful to both consumers and businesses?

Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. Even if we're restricting ourselves to ads, there are other ad networks, and you can find your own sponsors. The OP is a self-admitted lazy commie and just wants to say "Google bad".

> and businesses approaching them

> but it isn't a monopoly!!!11

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#354

Post by Repulsion9513 »

bruce511 wrote: post #133
Repulsion9513 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok,I'm simplifying here, but what ads do you think -should- be shown to your visitors? Ads derived from their browsing history of sites that do intuit user context? Political ads? Ads targeted towards Americans (think cereal or whatever else why might see on national TV)? Crappy low-paying ads that aren't significantly targeted? Literally anything?

Do you think this site gets enough traffic to make that sort of advertising appealing to any actual advertisers? Plus, the auction value for spots on that site must be beyond tiny.

If it doesn't get enough traffic to make advertising appealing to any actual advertisers then how is Google advertising on it?

Oh right advertisers pay a price based on the amount of traffic so less traffic means even less cost for them.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#355

Post by codetrotter »

beretguy wrote: post #201
codetrotter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a word for things that are both hilarious and tragic? Yes, tragicomic. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tragicomic

> tragicomic - of, relating to, or resembling tragicomedy —— I hate it when i see such useless explanations

I’m referring to the second definition

> manifesting both tragic and comic aspects

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#356

Post by Biganon »

petepete wrote: post #117
codetrotter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a word for things that are both hilarious and tragic? Yes, tragicomic. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tragicomic

I've never heard that word, perhaps it's more of an American expression? In the UK we'd probably say bittersweet.

It's used a lot in French

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#357

Post by pixl97 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #336
pyinstallwoes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How might you see solving this problem? How could we distribute the task or goal of curation amongst individuals? How do we incentivize and enable discovery of maven/curators?

The fix is a decentralized search network with nodes linked to people or legitimate businesses. You manually distribute trust to friends and businesses you like, and you can manually revoke that trust, with some network level trust effects occurring based on spammy/malicious behavior.

You know why you don't see systems like this at any scale

Because they don't work.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#358

Post by cess11 »

shiomiru wrote: post #324
cess11 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because JavaScript is the last thing you need to serve a blog post consisting of plain text and a couple of images. Forcing more powerful technology than necessary on readers is the polar opposite of what a luddite would do. It's almost as ironic as the author of an "anticapitalist tech blog" complaining about the hoops they must jump through to sell their users' attention to one of the largest corporations on Earth.…

Maybe you've gotten luddites and carthusians mixed up.

A luddite is a socialist that refuses to allow the capitalist to use technology against the formation of self-organised labour, i.e. a person depriving the owner class of the means of production with the aim of the working class taking control over them. It's not a cloistered order or something like that.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#359

Post by Twisell »

pixl97 wrote: post #357
CuriouslyC wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix is a decentralized search network with nodes linked to people or legitimate businesses. You manually distribute trust to friends and businesses you like, and you can manually revoke that trust, with some network level trust effects occurring based on spammy/malicious behavior.

You know why you don't see systems like this at any scale Because they don't work.

Except the whole fediverse... ahem...

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#360

Post by cess11 »

elorant wrote: post #277
allendoerfer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did. In your above post.

A SEO company represents a plastic surgeon. They offer money to a news site to publish an advertorial. How's that spam? And that article about how to properly wash your clothes that suggests a few washing machines is also paid. That's how news media works for ages. So by your definition all these legitimate companies are spammers? Would you care to inform me how should PR be performed then?

What do you mean, "legitimate companies"?

You seem to have misunderstood the difference between an advertising agency and a SEO company. What you're describing is what advertising agencies do, SEO companies are spammers that sell access to their spamming tools. It's similar to the difference between an agency practicing law and having them send a cease-and-desist, and buying a DDoS.

Not that I'm particularly fond of any of that, though I have lawyers practicing in another area as customers.

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