5 ms·

It's a policy problem, there's no easy fix. Design a system of rules to rank content. Watch as highly incentivized participants work harder than everyone else

It's a policy problem, there's no easy fix. Design a system of rules to rank content. Watch as highly incentivized participants work harder than everyone else to game the system to their advantage. "But I can see these results are obviously bad, surely something can be done?". Leads to System-Amendment#5796 = Gather user feedback to alter results. Leads to highly incentivized users gaming the feedback system.

littlecranky67 5y ago
I wonder if we just would disallow affiliate links in general. I.e. you can still create your own webshop, take orders and forward to someone else (similar to dropshipping) but basically outlaw the process of collecting money/commission just for a single placement of links. Or at least, force those sites to correctly mark themselves as "Advertising".
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  The people doing actual, good reviews/guides also use affiliate links. Getting rid of affiliate links to get rid of the bad actors gets rid of people trying to do it right. The bad actors will have another path in within a month while the person who was run out of their honest business is left hanging.
  - creato 5y ago
    I think affiliate links are positive for Amazon, because they crowdsource aggressive sales and marketing, but are negative for Google (and everyone else). I think if Google could somehow ban affiliate links, they would.
  - seventytwo 5y ago
    Right. A hypothetical honest reviewer would genuinely be recommending products to buy, and if affiliate links pay, then why not? Just like any other tool, it’s not the affiliate links, it’s the user.
- riazrizvi 5y ago
  A second order policy problem is to design good policy to make good policy makers. Meaning that it's hard for a public company entity to codify company policy so that their people in charge of search results are not at all susceptible themselves to sliding in an advantage here or there to assist some group that they become financially enmeshed with.
Nextgrid 5y ago
This assumes the rules are black and white and there's no concept of bad faith. A system could very well have rules/guidelines and then have humans review & monitor the system and user-submitted complaints for any abuse, and harshly penalize such abuse with a temporary or permanent ban. It could end up in a situation where it's technically possible to gain a slight advantage by gaming the system but no participant will risk a complete ban and the system ends up working well for everyone.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  I would want that, but that puts Google (and other companies) in the legal position of a publisher, which means that they're liable for "a bad thing".
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Most websites and platforms moderate for abuse and aren't classified as publishers, I don't see why this would be any different here.
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      I can't remember the precise reason, but if I remember correctly the reason is that because the poster is the originator in most sites including YouTube, while in Google's case it curates links instead without input from the general public. This is also the reason why Wikipedia still only officially operates in the US: the relatively freer publication rules as opposed to UK or Brazil for example shields them from a lot of lawsuits.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    There exists no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as far as Section 230 protections from online liability goes. It's entirely decided by who produced the content: users are responsible for content that they upload, the sites hosting user-generated content are not. It doesn't matter if the site selectively promotes, or otherwise acts as a "publisher", so long as it's the user's content. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230
stefan_ 5y ago
This sounds more like a Google curse - the inability to do something extraordinarily simple because it can't be sufficiently automated. Like there is no reason to have a site like "https://gitmemory.cn/ https://gitmemory.cn/" in the index, ever. It is pure and utter spam. Ban the domain.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  In the meantime, check out the uBlackList extension to block individual sites from Google's (and a few other sites') results
- antupis 5y ago
  Would here possible go PG route and do those thing that do not scale. Meaning building very curated list and doing intedexing and searching against that eg searches for programmers(stackoverflow, github and official documentation).
- nmfisher 5y ago
  You need to attach a trigger warning to that URL. I swear there's an opportunity for an enterprising startup to create a search engine that leverages a friends/family/contacts network for consensus domain credibility, and scrubs "non-credible" domains from all results.
jsemrau 5y ago
I ran into the same problem when building finclout's feedback loop. In my opinion, there is no way around keyword matching for search. As a result SEO is unlikely to be preventable. However, if the feedback can be collected at scale and is actually incentivised (i.e., did this link solve your problem ? ) this might actually work.

littlecranky67 5y ago

I wonder if we just would disallow affiliate links in general. I.e. you can still create your own webshop, take orders and forward to someone else (similar to dropshipping) but basically outlaw the process of collecting money/commission just for a single placement of links. Or at least, force those sites to correctly mark themselves as "Advertising".

mkr-hn 5y ago
The people doing actual, good reviews/guides also use affiliate links. Getting rid of affiliate links to get rid of the bad actors gets rid of people trying to do it right. The bad actors will have another path in within a month while the person who was run out of their honest business is left hanging.
- creato 5y ago
  I think affiliate links are positive for Amazon, because they crowdsource aggressive sales and marketing, but are negative for Google (and everyone else). I think if Google could somehow ban affiliate links, they would.
- seventytwo 5y ago
  Right. A hypothetical honest reviewer would genuinely be recommending products to buy, and if affiliate links pay, then why not? Just like any other tool, it’s not the affiliate links, it’s the user.
riazrizvi 5y ago
A second order policy problem is to design good policy to make good policy makers. Meaning that it's hard for a public company entity to codify company policy so that their people in charge of search results are not at all susceptible themselves to sliding in an advantage here or there to assist some group that they become financially enmeshed with.

Nextgrid 5y ago

This assumes the rules are black and white and there's no concept of bad faith. A system could very well have rules/guidelines and then have humans review & monitor the system and user-submitted complaints for any abuse, and harshly penalize such abuse with a temporary or permanent ban. It could end up in a situation where it's technically possible to gain a slight advantage by gaming the system but no participant will risk a complete ban and the system ends up working well for everyone.

zinekeller 5y ago
I would want that, but that puts Google (and other companies) in the legal position of a publisher, which means that they're liable for "a bad thing".
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Most websites and platforms moderate for abuse and aren't classified as publishers, I don't see why this would be any different here.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    I can't remember the precise reason, but if I remember correctly the reason is that because the poster is the originator in most sites including YouTube, while in Google's case it curates links instead without input from the general public. This is also the reason why Wikipedia still only officially operates in the US: the relatively freer publication rules as opposed to UK or Brazil for example shields them from a lot of lawsuits.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  There exists no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as far as Section 230 protections from online liability goes. It's entirely decided by who produced the content: users are responsible for content that they upload, the sites hosting user-generated content are not. It doesn't matter if the site selectively promotes, or otherwise acts as a "publisher", so long as it's the user's content. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230

stefan_ 5y ago

This sounds more like a Google curse - the inability to do something extraordinarily simple because it can't be sufficiently automated. Like there is no reason to have a site like "https://gitmemory.cn/ https://gitmemory.cn/" in the index, ever. It is pure and utter spam. Ban the domain.

MiddleEndian 5y ago
In the meantime, check out the uBlackList extension to block individual sites from Google's (and a few other sites') results
antupis 5y ago
Would here possible go PG route and do those thing that do not scale. Meaning building very curated list and doing intedexing and searching against that eg searches for programmers(stackoverflow, github and official documentation).
nmfisher 5y ago
You need to attach a trigger warning to that URL. I swear there's an opportunity for an enterprising startup to create a search engine that leverages a friends/family/contacts network for consensus domain credibility, and scrubs "non-credible" domains from all results.

jsemrau 5y ago

I ran into the same problem when building finclout's feedback loop. In my opinion, there is no way around keyword matching for search. As a result SEO is unlikely to be preventable. However, if the feedback can be collected at scale and is actually incentivised (i.e., did this link solve your problem ? ) this might actually work.