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Recently on HN there was "Someone is proxy-mirroring my website, can I do anything?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952114 https://news.ycombinator.com

by gary_0 4y ago

Recently on HN there was "Someone is proxy-mirroring my website, can I do anything?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33952114 It feels like the Internet is a more hostile place than ever for small-time websites. You get squeezed from below by wily criminals, and crushed from above by careless megacorps who want to filter out anything that doesn't make them money.

kshacker 4y ago
No more hostile than real world, we are just finding out it is a reflection of our world, of course the difference being the global interconnectedness which magnifies the celebrities but also the crooks.
- psychoslave 4y ago
  Well, it seems to me that none electronic outcomes tends to be slower and harder to copy at scale like digital material, doesn't it?
irrational 4y ago
Nowadays, when I search for things, the results are often clearly pages that have come from a program scrapping sites and then merging them into one page. You can tell because the pages are not really coherent and quickly start to repeat themselves. I assume they are getting money through ads on the pages, though I never actually see the ads because of my blockers. I wish there was a button in the browser that I could click to report the page as spam to all search engines.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  > I wish there was a button in the browser that I could click to report the page as spam to all search engines. The spammers would use that offensively to destroy the original content creators with that system
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    The way it should work is that the spam reports are used only to filter the results you see.
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
      Seems reasonable. If enough human-like users (with gmail accounts, yt activity, and other indicators) ban a particular site enough times that should offer some evidence that it's low quality too.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      That's precisely why I started to use and pay for Kagi - it fetches search results from Google and Bing, but allows to prioritize, deprioritize, pin or block specific domains in your search results. I'm still surprised no one else seems to be offering this feature.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  uBlacklist is really good for that. Just click "block this site" in the search results. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
- MandieD 4y ago
  I don't think it reports to any other search engines, and am not sure it affects any but your own subsequent results, but Kagi has a feedback scale on each result: "block", "lower", "normal", "raise", and "pin".
m-i-l 4y ago
> It feels like the Internet is a more hostile place than ever for small-time websites. You get squeezed from below by wily criminals, and crushed from above by careless megacorps who want to filter out anything that doesn't make them money. The problem is that the two work hand-in-hand, thanks to the advertising driven search model, and the search engines owning the main advertising platforms. It should be easy for search engines to identify an original site from the SEO spammer rip-offs - the original site is going to have no adverts (or certainly fewer) while the SEO spammer copies are going to be covered in adverts. The problem is that the search engines have no incentive to do so, in fact if anything they have the incentive to send people to the sites with more adverts. And of course the whole problem has been created by the search engines in the first place - there would be no point in SEO spammers making advert-laden ripoff sites if it wasn't to rake in advertising revenue.

by gary_0 4y ago

kshacker 4y ago

No more hostile than real world, we are just finding out it is a reflection of our world, of course the difference being the global interconnectedness which magnifies the celebrities but also the crooks.

psychoslave 4y ago
Well, it seems to me that none electronic outcomes tends to be slower and harder to copy at scale like digital material, doesn't it?

irrational 4y ago

Nowadays, when I search for things, the results are often clearly pages that have come from a program scrapping sites and then merging them into one page. You can tell because the pages are not really coherent and quickly start to repeat themselves. I assume they are getting money through ads on the pages, though I never actually see the ads because of my blockers. I wish there was a button in the browser that I could click to report the page as spam to all search engines.

411111111111111 4y ago
> I wish there was a button in the browser that I could click to report the page as spam to all search engines. The spammers would use that offensively to destroy the original content creators with that system
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  The way it should work is that the spam reports are used only to filter the results you see.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    Seems reasonable. If enough human-like users (with gmail accounts, yt activity, and other indicators) ban a particular site enough times that should offer some evidence that it's low quality too.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    That's precisely why I started to use and pay for Kagi - it fetches search results from Google and Bing, but allows to prioritize, deprioritize, pin or block specific domains in your search results. I'm still surprised no one else seems to be offering this feature.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
uBlacklist is really good for that. Just click "block this site" in the search results. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
MandieD 4y ago
I don't think it reports to any other search engines, and am not sure it affects any but your own subsequent results, but Kagi has a feedback scale on each result: "block", "lower", "normal", "raise", and "pin".

m-i-l 4y ago

> It feels like the Internet is a more hostile place than ever for small-time websites. You get squeezed from below by wily criminals, and crushed from above by careless megacorps who want to filter out anything that doesn't make them money. The problem is that the two work hand-in-hand, thanks to the advertising driven search model, and the search engines owning the main advertising platforms. It should be easy for search engines to identify an original site from the SEO spammer rip-offs - the original site is going to have no adverts (or certainly fewer) while the SEO spammer copies are going to be covered in adverts. The problem is that the search engines have no incentive to do so, in fact if anything they have the incentive to send people to the sites with more adverts. And of course the whole problem has been created by the search engines in the first place - there would be no point in SEO spammers making advert-laden ripoff sites if it wasn't to rake in advertising revenue.