5 ms·

Since establishing provenance is such a big problem for Google, perhaps it might be a good idea for Google to offer a time-stamping service itself?

by Osmium 11y ago

dsjoerg 11y ago
It's not directly a problem for Google — it's primarily a problem for sites that create original content.
- ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
  Not quite. The quality as a search engine could improve dramatically by letting true authors let Google know the content is coming before it's been available anywhere on the web.
- what_ever 11y ago
  Well, I think Google would prefer to send the traffic to StackOverflow instead of it's clone as it's better source?
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  It's a problem that would disappear if content creators were compensated regardless of serving point. We don't have that. We could. Universal content syndication + broadband tax. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...
ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
Exactly! It seems to me Google could easily provide a proof-of-authorship API, especially for text. (You could publish a hash in some feed in case you don't fully trust Google in turn.) I'm not a big fan of conspiracies and such, but by now I'm pretty sure Google has some conflict of interest given that it hasn't offered such a service already.
- tripzilch 11y ago
  Problem as others pointed out is that no matter how you design the system, even with Google a completely as trusted party in this, proof-of-authorship, timestamping-service, it can only work if every original content creator (or platform, like SO) gets on this train. Say you're a content creator that maybe doesn't want to use this service, simply hasn't heard about it yet, or accidentally publishes a whole archive of original articles they forgot to sign with the proof-of-authorship/timestamping API just before they get scraped by an ill-intentioned content farmer, that quickly uses the API to sign/stamp the articles to themselves before the content creator can. They don't even need to publish them right away, they can drip them out over years and have the proof-of-authorship signature to "prove" their authorship. If we would actually trust this system, it means that the real original content creator is shit out of luck. There's no way they can prove their authorship in a way that distinguishes them from a scraper, that part remains the same with or without this system--but what would be new is that the scraping non-author now has some sort of extra claim of authenticity over the actual original content creator. I see no way around this. Unless you devise a way so that all content written (anywhere, any time, on any medium) is immediately signed with a proof-of-authorship, such a system will be giving power to bad actors to claim authorship of any content that happens to slip through without being signed.
nostrademons 11y ago
Google offers this service already: http://www.labnol.org/internet/fat-pings-for-content-scrapers/20400/ http://www.labnol.org/internet/fat-pings-for-content-scraper... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSubHubbub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSubHubbub https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ Most of the big hosted publishing platforms like WordPress and Blogger already use it, but it's pretty common for sites that built their own codebase not to. (This was one of my interests at Google, and I had both a 20% project [unreleased] and a real project [Google Authorship] that were devoted to algorithmically detecting copied content and providing reliable attributions. Ultimate though, FatPing/PubSubHubbub [done by another team] was a much more robust way of doing this, with the downside that it's on the webmaster to implement it.)
- ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I stand corrected (by a Googler, no less!). I wish Google pushed for greater adoption, then, as it does with Page Speed, SEO advice, etc.
- sltkr 11y ago
  That's not a timestamping service; that's just a way to quickly notify Google when you add a page to your blog. What if your blog doesn't use Pubsubhubbub, but mine does, and I copy your blog post? Google will see my post first, but that doesn't prove I wrote it, so Google cannot use that to make ranking decisions.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    I don't see how pubsubhubbub differs from the originally proposed timestamping service. For any timestamping service, it will still be the case that if you don't use it, and somebody else scrapes you and does use it, their timestamp will be better than yours.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      There can be more than one timestamping service.
joe_the_user 11y ago
The problem is how one prevents the bad-actors from taking advantage of such a service.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Define "bad actor". That's not a "they aren't", but a request for "what do you consider to be acting badly?" Conversely, is content scraping-and-publication possible by good actors? How?

Since establishing provenance is such a big problem for Google, perhaps it might be a good idea for Google to offer a time-stamping service itself?

by Osmium 11y ago

Since establishing provenance is such a big problem for Google, perhaps it might be a good idea for Google to offer a time-stamping service itself?

dsjoerg 11y ago

It's not directly a problem for Google — it's primarily a problem for sites that create original content.

ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
Not quite. The quality as a search engine could improve dramatically by letting true authors let Google know the content is coming before it's been available anywhere on the web.
what_ever 11y ago
Well, I think Google would prefer to send the traffic to StackOverflow instead of it's clone as it's better source?
dredmorbius 11y ago
It's a problem that would disappear if content creators were compensated regardless of serving point. We don't have that. We could. Universal content syndication + broadband tax. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...

ezequiel-garzon 11y ago

Exactly! It seems to me Google could easily provide a proof-of-authorship API, especially for text. (You could publish a hash in some feed in case you don't fully trust Google in turn.) I'm not a big fan of conspiracies and such, but by now I'm pretty sure Google has some conflict of interest given that it hasn't offered such a service already.

tripzilch 11y ago
Problem as others pointed out is that no matter how you design the system, even with Google a completely as trusted party in this, proof-of-authorship, timestamping-service, it can only work if every original content creator (or platform, like SO) gets on this train. Say you're a content creator that maybe doesn't want to use this service, simply hasn't heard about it yet, or accidentally publishes a whole archive of original articles they forgot to sign with the proof-of-authorship/timestamping API just before they get scraped by an ill-intentioned content farmer, that quickly uses the API to sign/stamp the articles to themselves before the content creator can. They don't even need to publish them right away, they can drip them out over years and have the proof-of-authorship signature to "prove" their authorship. If we would actually trust this system, it means that the real original content creator is shit out of luck. There's no way they can prove their authorship in a way that distinguishes them from a scraper, that part remains the same with or without this system--but what would be new is that the scraping non-author now has some sort of extra claim of authenticity over the actual original content creator. I see no way around this. Unless you devise a way so that all content written (anywhere, any time, on any medium) is immediately signed with a proof-of-authorship, such a system will be giving power to bad actors to claim authorship of any content that happens to slip through without being signed.

nostrademons 11y ago

Google offers this service already: http://www.labnol.org/internet/fat-pings-for-content-scrapers/20400/ http://www.labnol.org/internet/fat-pings-for-content-scraper... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSubHubbub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSubHubbub https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ Most of the big hosted publishing platforms like WordPress and Blogger already use it, but it's pretty common for sites that built their own codebase not to. (This was one of my interests at Google, and I had both a 20% project [unreleased] and a real project [Google Authorship] that were devoted to algorithmically detecting copied content and providing reliable attributions. Ultimate though, FatPing/PubSubHubbub [done by another team] was a much more robust way of doing this, with the downside that it's on the webmaster to implement it.)

ezequiel-garzon 11y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I stand corrected (by a Googler, no less!). I wish Google pushed for greater adoption, then, as it does with Page Speed, SEO advice, etc.
sltkr 11y ago
That's not a timestamping service; that's just a way to quickly notify Google when you add a page to your blog. What if your blog doesn't use Pubsubhubbub, but mine does, and I copy your blog post? Google will see my post first, but that doesn't prove I wrote it, so Google cannot use that to make ranking decisions.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  I don't see how pubsubhubbub differs from the originally proposed timestamping service. For any timestamping service, it will still be the case that if you don't use it, and somebody else scrapes you and does use it, their timestamp will be better than yours.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    There can be more than one timestamping service.

joe_the_user 11y ago

The problem is how one prevents the bad-actors from taking advantage of such a service.

dredmorbius 11y ago
Define "bad actor". That's not a "they aren't", but a request for "what do you consider to be acting badly?" Conversely, is content scraping-and-publication possible by good actors? How?