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

41–50 of 175 posts

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

#41

Post by fidotron »

amaccuish wrote: post #31
SecretDreams wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hunch is Google never psychologically recovered from Facebook absolutely wiping out G+, and they have been on a mission to ensure nothing like that ever happens again. Same for Microsoft with phones. That's why Google and Microsoft are trying to use AI to crush us while Apple is like "I'm pretty content with how much money I make".

Ye, Apple just doesn't support PWAs fully because they're "pretty content with the money they may from the app store".

Apple web app support for home screen apps is better than Android PWA today.

Prime example being push notification support, where Android has random 10 minute latencies added because they don't want to fix the service worker startup problem.

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

#42

Post by conartist6 »

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…

[flagged]

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

#43

Post by HamsterDan »

Aldipower wrote: post #13
thedevilslawyer wrote: post #3

The article treats as axiom that organic traffic is a right. It's not. Most people don't want to read an article on travel advice when AI gives us much better and specific advice, with references, when we want it.

And where the training data for your AI advice comes from?

That cat is out of the bag, don't you think? Even if the US passes a strict law protecting copyright owners from having their works used to train AI, China is not going to obey that law, so US companies will just fall behind.

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

#45

Post by rs186 »

Relevant: Sundar Pichai recently gave an interview to The Verge, full transcript here: https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/67...

> You’re always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etc., like app developers and platforms. That’s not on the web, etc. There’s always going to be — when you’re running a platform — these debates. I would challenge, I think more than any other company, we prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer emerging companies, where they openly talk about it as something they’re not going to do. We are the only ones who make it a high priority, agonize, and so on. We’ll engage, and we’ve always engaged.

> There are going to be debates through it all, but we are committed to, I’ve said this before, everything we do across all... You will see us five years from now sending a lot of traffic out to the web. I think that’s the product direction we are committed to. I think it’s what users look for when they come to Google, and the nature of it will evolve. But I am confident that that’s the direction we’ll continue taking.

Sounds like he wants to be nice with publishers and direct traffic to them like "for over 25 years" (a phrase he used many times in the interview), but it remains to be see what their action is.

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

#46

Post by bgwalter »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #3

The article treats as axiom that organic traffic is a right. It's not. Most people don't want to read an article on travel advice when AI gives us much better and specific advice, with references, when we want it.

Stealing other people's output and then cutting them off from discovery isn't a right either.

Since politicians do not protect us from these criminals, we are fortunate that no one except for CEOs under the influence of cocaine wants "AI".

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

#47

Post by wilde »

> It was hurtful to hear Google thought our site was of “little value” to the web.

I read some of the guides. Google is right that there’s little unique content here.

Perhaps this is the right tone for a letter to the FTC. I find it hard to sympathize with the author with this style (even though they are likely right that Google is killing the web)

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

#48

Post by nialv7 »

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…

if using algorithm to promote some information and suppress some other isn't censorship to you, then honestly your definition of censorship is narrow to the point of being useless.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

blinding-streak wrote: post #25

> As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.” This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this. Regardless, while the article makes some good points, it is also dripping with entitlement. Google gave you incredible moneti…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by helsinkiandrew »

blinding-streak wrote: post #25

> As one Google executive recently explained: “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore. What’s cool is a quadrillion dollars.” This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this. Regardless, while the article makes some good points, it is also dripping with entitlement. Google gave you incredible moneti…

> This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this.

Quote is from Noam Shazeer (of transformer fame) in the Dwarkesh Podcast: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer

Post reply on HN