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i am sure that hacker-news users are savvy enough to check each site one-by-one, but blacklist-sharing in general can be detrimental if they get distributed to
by elsewhen 16y ago
i am sure that hacker-news users are savvy enough to check each site one-by-one, but blacklist-sharing in general can be detrimental if they get distributed to mainstream users.
imagine if these lists get to be 100-domains long... some users are simply going to take the shortcut and apply-all. the due-diligence required to cull a good list takes time. the very fact that this post is getting upvoted is because even hacker-news users are looking for shortcuts.
blacklists introduce a new problem: SEOs distributing such lists that include lots of weak sites (to make the list look credible) along with their competitor's domain snuck in.
- chc 16y agoSo, again, it's a matter of trusting your source. Just like with word of mouth.
- elsewhen 16y agoword of mouth is typically a one-by-one recommendation, where doing your own research is straightforward and quick. ie, if a friend recommends a movie for you to watch, you might check it out, read the reviews, and then add it to your netflix queue. with a long list, doing the due diligence becomes orders-of-magnitude more labor intensive, so users are more incented to just copy/paste an entire list. in the case of netflix queues, perhaps there isn't too much at stake... but with a domain blacklist, SEOs and spammers have their entire livelihoods at stake... if this extension takes off, and if google starts using this data, i would expect well-funded SEOs to start heavily promoting their lists (with their sites omitted, and their competitor's sites included). of course hacker-news users may be immune from such tricks, but we represent just a minority of the data that google will get from this tool... if it goes mainstream, i am sad to admit that my parents are likely fall for "follow these simple steps to dramatically improve your google results"