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- Google (and other search engines) trying to fight and downrank or de-list, rather than giving up and embracing, webspam sites. That's what's made what remain

- Google (and other search engines) trying to fight and downrank or de-list, rather than giving up and embracing, webspam sites. That's what's made what remains of, and the continuations of, the old Web, practically invisible. It's all top sites and blogspam or domain-name-spam sites on the first couple pages, now. Even those "skip the first hundred" or whatever sites don't really fix it.

api 5y ago
I think spam just won the war of attrition. The search engines finally gave up. Any open system that becomes sufficiently large to be worth attacking will be destroyed by spam, malware, scams, and other types of exploitation. The Internet is a dark forest. When GPT type systems really get figured out by the spammers it will be game over. No open forums will remain. I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots. The future is closed enclaves and walled gardens that cost something or require that you know someone to enter.
- echelon 5y ago
  > I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots. Beautiful. I want to go back to 1995-2005s Internet. Small communities like HN, not Reddit monoliths. Did you pick your Snoovatar and switch to the mobile app? No? Well, have eight thousand reminders of it.
  - api 5y ago
    I think it’s a mixed bag too. The enclave style network could be more interesting and less toxic and full of stupid crap, but it will be much less discoverable. The golden age was after search but before spammers got really smart, and also before algorithmic timelines turned social media to shit. I’d say 1998 to 2012 roughly. Things went to total shit after that, largely due to algorithmic timelines prioritizing engagement (which means triggering crap and trolls) and the emergence of industrial scale web spam. Cryptocurrency didn’t help either as a lot of today’s spam is linked to crypto scams.

api 5y ago

I think spam just won the war of attrition. The search engines finally gave up. Any open system that becomes sufficiently large to be worth attacking will be destroyed by spam, malware, scams, and other types of exploitation. The Internet is a dark forest. When GPT type systems really get figured out by the spammers it will be game over. No open forums will remain. I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots. The future is closed enclaves and walled gardens that cost something or require that you know someone to enter.

echelon 5y ago
> I don’t even think open but regulated social networks like Twitter or Facebook will survive. They won’t be able to distinguish spam at all anymore so the whole platform will become bots trying to sell or propagandize bots. Beautiful. I want to go back to 1995-2005s Internet. Small communities like HN, not Reddit monoliths. Did you pick your Snoovatar and switch to the mobile app? No? Well, have eight thousand reminders of it.
- api 5y ago
  I think it’s a mixed bag too. The enclave style network could be more interesting and less toxic and full of stupid crap, but it will be much less discoverable. The golden age was after search but before spammers got really smart, and also before algorithmic timelines turned social media to shit. I’d say 1998 to 2012 roughly. Things went to total shit after that, largely due to algorithmic timelines prioritizing engagement (which means triggering crap and trolls) and the emergence of industrial scale web spam. Cryptocurrency didn’t help either as a lot of today’s spam is linked to crypto scams.