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I listened to the playlist and it's definitely the same song over and over again with slight tweaks. Imagine finding dozens of blogs where posts are all the sam

I listened to the playlist and it's definitely the same song over and over again with slight tweaks. Imagine finding dozens of blogs where posts are all the same, but with very slight changes to vocabulary used in each blog.

macNchz 4y ago
There has actually been a lot of that showing up in my google search results for the past few years… there are thousands of sites out there that were created by scraping news articles and blog posts and replacing random words with thesaurus alternatives. The results vary from incomprehensible to some kind of uncanny valley “is this just…really terrible writing or am I having a brain problem?” territory. I’ve actually encountered lively discussions of these sorts of cloned articles with nary a mention of the weird writing. With what we’ve seen from AI text and image generators recently, it’s only going to get weirder soon.
- thewebcount 4y ago
  > The results vary from incomprehensible to some kind of uncanny valley “is this just…really terrible writing or am I having a brain problem?” territory. I’m glad it’s not just me! But for me, it’s not just random searches. It also happens with news articles from major outlets. Can they really not afford to pay a single person to just proof read the story and make sure whatever’s auto-generated is at least coherent?
- netsharc 4y ago
  YouTube is also full of this, with bots narrating the story using text-to-speech, some of them sound passable as humans...
- LelouBil 4y ago
  Websites that scrape StackOverflow are the WORST! It's always giving me false hopes that my problem got resolved until I notice that I've alrezdy read the question before.
  - bpye 4y ago
    There's one site that scrapes GitHub as well - it does at least have a link to the original page, but I've only ever opened it by mistake...
    - xvello 4y ago
      There is a community-maintained list of these stackoverflow / github / npm / wikipedia clones, and adblocking rules to hide them from search results: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter These lists are supported as presets in https://letsblock.it/filters/search-results https://letsblock.it/filters/search-results
cardamomo 4y ago
I recall reading an article on HN a while ago about how recipe/cooking blogs are basically becoming just that—centrally run networks of independently branded sites that just serve to drive clicks on affiliate links. But then again, I can't find that link, so it's probably a conspiracy theory I just made up
- gammarator 4y ago
  Or the original whistleblower was offed by Big Recipe.
w_for_wumbo 4y ago
I listened to the playlist too and it's definitely the same song with small variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where comments are all the same, but with very slight changes of words used in each comment.
- quercusa 4y ago
  I'm sure that would never happen.
- dashwehacct 4y ago
  I listened to that playlist as well and it is nearly the same song with slight variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where comments are all the same, but with very small changes of phrasing used in each comment.
  - 20after4 4y ago
    I listened to that comment thread as well and it is very similar to the playlist, only with slight variations. Imagine finding hundreds of threads where the colors are all the same, but with very small changes in the pattern as they are all woven into a blanket.
    - mgdlbp 4y ago
      I listened to the users also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where the jokes are all the same, but with very unsubstantive changes in phrasing as the site is turning into Reddit.
      - someweirdperson 4y ago
        > I listened to the users ... No way! No one ever listens to the users. There's some obvious random word shuffling happening and that gave it away.
        4y ago
yawnxyz 4y ago
The "horn instrument" being reused in every song is a giveaway that they're using the same generator, without even changing the parameters of the instruments. It's like they're basically using a fancy "arpeggiator" to generate these songs.
ehnto 4y ago
That was the web circa 2010, when people were still using spinbots and link wheels as an SEO technique. They were the same articles, but with occasional words swapped out so it wasn't duplicate content in the eyes of Google. The Panda update for Google was largely responsible for cutting down on that behavior. What's fascinating about natural language models for me, is that I assume it is already being applied to "spin" articles, and I imagine that is part of why Google kinda sucks to use right now.

macNchz 4y ago

There has actually been a lot of that showing up in my google search results for the past few years… there are thousands of sites out there that were created by scraping news articles and blog posts and replacing random words with thesaurus alternatives. The results vary from incomprehensible to some kind of uncanny valley “is this just…really terrible writing or am I having a brain problem?” territory. I’ve actually encountered lively discussions of these sorts of cloned articles with nary a mention of the weird writing. With what we’ve seen from AI text and image generators recently, it’s only going to get weirder soon.

thewebcount 4y ago
> The results vary from incomprehensible to some kind of uncanny valley “is this just…really terrible writing or am I having a brain problem?” territory. I’m glad it’s not just me! But for me, it’s not just random searches. It also happens with news articles from major outlets. Can they really not afford to pay a single person to just proof read the story and make sure whatever’s auto-generated is at least coherent?
netsharc 4y ago
YouTube is also full of this, with bots narrating the story using text-to-speech, some of them sound passable as humans...
LelouBil 4y ago
Websites that scrape StackOverflow are the WORST! It's always giving me false hopes that my problem got resolved until I notice that I've alrezdy read the question before.
- bpye 4y ago
  There's one site that scrapes GitHub as well - it does at least have a link to the original page, but I've only ever opened it by mistake...
  - xvello 4y ago
    There is a community-maintained list of these stackoverflow / github / npm / wikipedia clones, and adblocking rules to hide them from search results: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter These lists are supported as presets in https://letsblock.it/filters/search-results https://letsblock.it/filters/search-results

cardamomo 4y ago

I recall reading an article on HN a while ago about how recipe/cooking blogs are basically becoming just that—centrally run networks of independently branded sites that just serve to drive clicks on affiliate links. But then again, I can't find that link, so it's probably a conspiracy theory I just made up

gammarator 4y ago
Or the original whistleblower was offed by Big Recipe.

w_for_wumbo 4y ago

I listened to the playlist too and it's definitely the same song with small variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where comments are all the same, but with very slight changes of words used in each comment.

quercusa 4y ago
I'm sure that would never happen.
dashwehacct 4y ago
I listened to that playlist as well and it is nearly the same song with slight variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where comments are all the same, but with very small changes of phrasing used in each comment.
- 20after4 4y ago
  I listened to that comment thread as well and it is very similar to the playlist, only with slight variations. Imagine finding hundreds of threads where the colors are all the same, but with very small changes in the pattern as they are all woven into a blanket.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    I listened to the users also and it's nearly the same comment with minor variations. Imagine finding dozens of threads where the jokes are all the same, but with very unsubstantive changes in phrasing as the site is turning into Reddit.
    - someweirdperson 4y ago
      > I listened to the users ... No way! No one ever listens to the users. There's some obvious random word shuffling happening and that gave it away.
      - 4y ago

yawnxyz 4y ago

The "horn instrument" being reused in every song is a giveaway that they're using the same generator, without even changing the parameters of the instruments. It's like they're basically using a fancy "arpeggiator" to generate these songs.

ehnto 4y ago

That was the web circa 2010, when people were still using spinbots and link wheels as an SEO technique. They were the same articles, but with occasional words swapped out so it wasn't duplicate content in the eyes of Google. The Panda update for Google was largely responsible for cutting down on that behavior. What's fascinating about natural language models for me, is that I assume it is already being applied to "spin" articles, and I imagine that is part of why Google kinda sucks to use right now.