I have zero pity. Zero. Because what kind of metric is this?
- Google is invented and brings lots of traffic to publishers for many years.
- Publishers drink from the firehose, getting used to a lot of traffic. To get even more traffic, quality goes down, SEO spam goes up.
- Publishers give zero fucks about readers privacy and install a gazillion trackers (personalized ad networks)
- Google makes AI snippets with similar quality to the SEO spam on publishers websites resulting in less traffic.
- Publishers whine, because they realize that their spammy unsustained business practices kinda suck for readers and most readers weren’t loyal after all.
- Publishers blame Google, because they felt entitled to this low-quality traffic they got so used to because of their SEO spam.
Anyways. We can talk about the necessity of a general purpose search engine. We can talk about Google‘s role in stealing content from websites. But these are different topics and for now, I’m sick of whiny publishers.
Biologist123 · 4h ago
Can I sketch out one future of news for input?
- Personalized
- No adverts
- No hidden dopamine hooks
- Assigns probability of accuracy
- Explains relevance to you personally
- Explains emerging news events and context, highlighting propaganda/news manipulation where relevant.
drawfloat · 4h ago
This is like a news editor suggesting a future of development: zero bugs, never goes down, can be used anywhere, usable be anyone. Yes these all seem nice, but they're just a wishlist that is borderline impossible in practice.
Also personalisation of news is almost the number one 'hidden dopamine hooks', and in many ways the most insidious in its impact.
- Google is invented and brings lots of traffic to publishers for many years.
- Publishers drink from the firehose, getting used to a lot of traffic. To get even more traffic, quality goes down, SEO spam goes up.
- Publishers give zero fucks about readers privacy and install a gazillion trackers (personalized ad networks)
- Google makes AI snippets with similar quality to the SEO spam on publishers websites resulting in less traffic.
- Publishers whine, because they realize that their spammy unsustained business practices kinda suck for readers and most readers weren’t loyal after all.
- Publishers blame Google, because they felt entitled to this low-quality traffic they got so used to because of their SEO spam.
Anyways. We can talk about the necessity of a general purpose search engine. We can talk about Google‘s role in stealing content from websites. But these are different topics and for now, I’m sick of whiny publishers.
- Personalized
- No adverts
- No hidden dopamine hooks
- Assigns probability of accuracy
- Explains relevance to you personally
- Explains emerging news events and context, highlighting propaganda/news manipulation where relevant.
Also personalisation of news is almost the number one 'hidden dopamine hooks', and in many ways the most insidious in its impact.