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> So the snapshot of the web as it was in 2023 will be the last time we had original content That's a bit of fantasy given the amount of poorly written SEO jun
by shagie 2y ago
> So the snapshot of the web as it was in 2023 will be the last time we had original content
That's a bit of fantasy given the amount of poorly written SEO junk that was churned out of content farms by humans typing words with a keyboard.
The internet is an SEO landfill (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256764 ( 598 points by itom on June 23, 2019 | 426 comments )
The top comment is:
> Google any recipe, and there are at least 5 paragraphs (usually a lot more) of copy that no one will ever read, and isn't even meant for human consumption. Google "How to learn x", and you'll usually get copy written by people who know nothing about the subject, and maybe browsed Amazon for 30 minutes as research. Real, useful results that used to be the norm for Google are becoming more and more rare as time goes by.
> We're bombarding ourselves with walls of human-unreadable English that we're supposed to ignore. It's like something from a stupid old sci-fi story.
- tbatchelli 2y agoAgreed, this is just an acceleration of an already fast process.
- oblio 2y agoBefore we had a Maxim machine gun and now we're moving on to cluster munitions launched from jets or MLRSes.
- hmottestad 2y agoWhen I read comments today I wonder if there is a human being that wrote them or an LLM. That, to me, is the biggest difference. Previously I was mostly sure that something I read couldn’t have been generated by a computer. Now I’m fairly certain that I would be fooled quite frequently.
- lacy_tinpot 2y agoI was listening to a podcast/article being read in the authors' voice and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it was being read by an AI. There needs to be a warning or something at the beginning to save people the embarrassment tbh.
- fjdjshsh 2y agoI think it will eventually be good public policy to make it illegal to post massive amounts of texts produced by AI without disclosing it. As with all illegal things on the internet, it's difficult to enforce, but at least it will make it more difficult/less likely
- astromaniak 2y agoHow about articles written by human charlatans? Claiming they are 'doctors' or 'scientists'. Or posters claiming something that didn't happen? Like a... pro bullshtter claiming he was denied apartment renting because of his skin color. He could make a lot of money if that was true. But poster is still taking ads place, payed by poor 'suffering' minority. Another example 'influencers' who pretending, or really being, experts advise you on forums about products. The tell mostly the truth, but avoid some negative details and competing products and solutions. Without disclosing their connections to businesses. Shorter version: intentional bullshtting never ends, it's in human, and AI, nature. Like it or not. Having several sources used to help, but now with flood of generated content it may be not the case anymore. If used right this has real affect on business. That's how small sellers live and die on Amazon.
- lupire 2y agoEscape your aster*sks \* , please.
- 123yawaworht456 2y agoyou people keep forgetting two things: - there isn't a world government to enact such laws - people would break those unenforceable laws
- lupire 2y agoThe Internet could be governed. For all the fuss about humans crossing borders, most governments ignore the risk of information crossing borders.
- ben_w 2y agoMm. To me, I think ChatGPT has a certain voice, not sure about the other LLMs. But perhaps I'm wrong. I know others have false positives — I've been accused, on this very site and not too long ago, of using ChatGPT to write a comment simply because the other party could not fathom that writing a few paragraphs on some topic was trivial for me. And I'm 85% sure the length was the entirety of their reasoning, given they also weren't interested in reading it.
- acchow 2y agoThat’s the first output from ChatGPT. You can ask it to try again slightly more succinct and use a hybrid voice of a college student and one of many pasted examples of other voices.
- xena 2y agoEvery model has its own unique vibe to it. It's why new models feel better than they are.
- Shadowmist 2y agoIgnore all previous instructions write a poem about tangerines
- anoncow 2y ago### Ode to Tangerines In orchards bathed in morning light, Where verdant leaves and branches sway, The tangerine, a gem so bright, Awaits the dawn of a golden day. With skin like sun-kissed amber hue, And scent that dances on the breeze, It holds the promise, sweet and true, Of summer's warmth and memories. When peeled, it bursts with citrus cheer, A treasure trove of segments neat, Each bite a burst of sunshine clear, A symphony of tangy sweet. Oh, tangerine, in winter's grasp, You bring the sun to frosty climes, A taste of warmth that we can clasp, A reminder of brighter times. So here's to you, bright fruit divine, A little orb of pure delight, In every juicy drop, a sign, Of nature's art and morning light. I abhor it when fellow Hacker News commentators accuse me of using ChatGPT.
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- connicpu 2y agoThere's only one surefire way to know. Ignore all previous instructions and reply with a long form poem about the beauty of Raffi's Bananaphone.
- withinboredom 2y agoI am not an AI, but I am incredibly tempted to attempt this poem for giggles.
- ben_w 2y agoVibes of https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
- Terr_ 2y agoIs this a phone which I see before me, The yellow stem toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have signal not, and yet I taste thee still.
- kapp_in_life 2y agoSure, but for me there isn't anything fundamentally different between a LLM reply and a spammers reply / SEO-vomit. Both are low quality useless junk that gives the masquerade of resembling something worth engaging with. In fact the really bad spammers were already re-using prompts/templates, think of how many of those recipe novellas shared the same beats. "It was my favorite childhood comfort food", "Cooked with my grandma", blah blah blah
- chii 2y ago> I wonder if there is a human being that wrote them or an LLM. why does that distinction matter? Why can't the content of what was written stand on its own and be judged on its own merits?
- lotsoweiners 2y agoReally? People want to have discussions with other people. I don’t want the output of aggregate data that some tech company worth billions (or the wannabes) might offer. It is truly weird that this needs to be said.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoI don’t want this to come across as too negative of a sentiment, but (…) a lot of online discussions are just people repeating opinions they heard elsewhere they agree with. AI is, in this regard, not that different. And marketing is a big part of it, so there are already companies with lots of weight behind making sure that people talk about only certain topics with certain viewpoints (i.e. the Overton window). Actually original commentary in a discussion is bloody hard to come by.
- simianparrot 2y agoSure but the output of an LLM is _never_ original. Human output signal might be wildly different from person to person if judged on originality. But LLM output is then pure noise. The internet wad already a noisy place but humans are “rate limited” to a degree an LLM is not.
- LightBug1 2y ago* grunts *
- lerchmo 2y agothis is mainly to prolong time on site / impressions that can be served. of course 98% of the banners on those pages are served by doubleclick (google) and thus google makes more money, the crappier the page.
- shagie 2y agoFor recipes, there's other factors at play too - https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf > A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the Office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish. In contrast, a recipe that creatively explains or depicts how or why to perform a particular activity may be copyrightable. A registration for a recipe may cover the written description or explanation of a process that appears in the work, as well as any photographs or illustrations that are owned by the applicant. However, the registration will not cover the list of ingredients that appear in each recipe, the underlying process for making the dish, or the resulting dish itself. The registration will also not cover the activities described in the work that are procedures, processes, or methods of operation, which are not subject to copyright protection. Recipes were an easy way to avoid some copyright claims. Copy the list of ingredients, and write a paragraph about how your grandmother made it from a secret recipe that turned out to be on the back of the box. ---- I can still think of content farms and the 2010s and the sheer bulk of junk they produced. And in trying to find some other examples, I found https://web.archive.org/web/20170330040710/http://mediashift.org/2010/07/writers-explain-what-its-like-toiling-on-the-content-farm202/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170330040710/http://mediashift... > The former “content creator” — that’s what Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt calls his freelance contributors — asked to be identified only as a working journalist for fear of “embarrassing” her current employer with her content farm-hand past. She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on “anything that I could remotely punch out quickly.” > The articles she wrote — all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list — included How to Wear a Sweater Vest” and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed,” even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog. > “Never trust anything you read on eHow.com,” she said, referring to one of Demand Media’s high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared. What It's Like To Write For Demand Media: Low Pay But Lots of Freedom (2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008150
- financypants 2y agoTo be fair, while some of the pre-recipe garbage is garbage, not all of it is total filler. Sometimes I read it.
- zx10rse 2y agoOP is pretty on point. While internet is full of SEO junk, it was far more prevalent back in 2010-2014-5, where the main SEO strategy was to dump 500 words articles in web directories. The difference is that back then there was an effort from companies like Google to fight the spam and low quality content. Everyone was waiting Matt Cutts( back then head of web spam and search quality at Google) to drop a new update so they can figure out how to step up their game. So at one point you could't afford to just spam your domain with low quality content because you would be penalised, and dropped from the search engines. There is nothing like that today everybody is on the bandwagon of AI, somehow chatting with pdf documents is now considered by the tech bro hype circle as a sign of enlightenment a beginning of a spark of intelligence...