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With search engines polluted with SEO spam and AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on, I lost the motivation to write publicly. I no longer feel I'm d

With search engines polluted with SEO spam and AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on, I lost the motivation to write publicly. I no longer feel I'm directly in touch with and helping the average Joe. Does anyone else feel like this? I can't I'm comfortable with my decision but nothing in the last year has made me reassess it.

changreaction 2y ago
If anything, all the spam and lack of real discussion that shows up on my daily feeds has encouraged me to search for smaller authors and bloggers, who I find are more insightful anyways. Not all hope is lost!
- tarkin2 2y ago
  I have found no good way to smaller authors. I've seen a few web rings that give me cool but completely random websites. HN is the best I've got so far. A curated and subscribable list of smaller authors categorised by area, where the sites aren't wall-gardened and laiden with trackers, would seem to fit the bill.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    I’ve found a lot of new authors via Substack, which is interesting in the context of blogs, as newsletters largely predate blogs, but never caught on for most people in the way that blogs did, but now with apps, push notifications, and social networking components and recommendation algorithms, newsletters are making a big comeback. Also, newsletters and blogs are not so different in the end, as prior newsletter editions are easily available on modern platforms like Substack and others, while also allowing for easy monetization of any or all posts, a feature popularized by Patreon that has percolated through the industry. You might also look into so-called starter packs, a new-ish feature of Bluesky, which, along with Mastodon, has been another new source of authors for me lately.
mooreds 2y ago
I mostly blog for myself. It helps me clarify my thoughts and really understand what I'm writing about. It also helps me remember myself as I was 5 or 10 years ago. If it weren't public, I don't think I'd do it. I've rarely kept a journal or diary. I hear you about AI, though. Aren't there headers you can add to dissuade those crawlers?
navigate8310 2y ago
You don't have to absolutely write for the public. Maybe some articles here and there but consider blogging as a documentation of some sort or "dear diary" but digital, running on the greatest and best tech stack.
palata 2y ago
> AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on To me that's this. I never cared for analytics and knowing how many people read what I write. But it appears I care about AI benefiting from it. There is no way to prevent them from stealing my content, so I may as well not publish it at all.
rchaud 2y ago
I'm with you there. Before Stack Overflow, I credit most of my learning to what I picked up from blogs. Even after SO, blogs remained valuable because there were tutorials and code examples for things that would have been rejected as duplicates or whatever at SO. YouTube is similar, although I prefer written articles. Now? Forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, my notes and learning experiments are private. I didn't create that world, valley techbros did. I'm not big enough for OAI to sign a licensing deal with me, but apparently I'm powerless enough that they can scrape my blog posts and Github packages and credit my work as their own. If I share my learnings in the future, it will be for a free class or webinar, for an audience of real people. Y'know, the way the internet used to be.

changreaction 2y ago

If anything, all the spam and lack of real discussion that shows up on my daily feeds has encouraged me to search for smaller authors and bloggers, who I find are more insightful anyways. Not all hope is lost!

tarkin2 2y ago
I have found no good way to smaller authors. I've seen a few web rings that give me cool but completely random websites. HN is the best I've got so far. A curated and subscribable list of smaller authors categorised by area, where the sites aren't wall-gardened and laiden with trackers, would seem to fit the bill.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  I’ve found a lot of new authors via Substack, which is interesting in the context of blogs, as newsletters largely predate blogs, but never caught on for most people in the way that blogs did, but now with apps, push notifications, and social networking components and recommendation algorithms, newsletters are making a big comeback. Also, newsletters and blogs are not so different in the end, as prior newsletter editions are easily available on modern platforms like Substack and others, while also allowing for easy monetization of any or all posts, a feature popularized by Patreon that has percolated through the industry. You might also look into so-called starter packs, a new-ish feature of Bluesky, which, along with Mastodon, has been another new source of authors for me lately.

mooreds 2y ago

I mostly blog for myself. It helps me clarify my thoughts and really understand what I'm writing about. It also helps me remember myself as I was 5 or 10 years ago. If it weren't public, I don't think I'd do it. I've rarely kept a journal or diary. I hear you about AI, though. Aren't there headers you can add to dissuade those crawlers?

navigate8310 2y ago

You don't have to absolutely write for the public. Maybe some articles here and there but consider blogging as a documentation of some sort or "dear diary" but digital, running on the greatest and best tech stack.

palata 2y ago

> AI vacuuming up content to ultimately sell it on To me that's this. I never cared for analytics and knowing how many people read what I write. But it appears I care about AI benefiting from it. There is no way to prevent them from stealing my content, so I may as well not publish it at all.

rchaud 2y ago

I'm with you there. Before Stack Overflow, I credit most of my learning to what I picked up from blogs. Even after SO, blogs remained valuable because there were tutorials and code examples for things that would have been rejected as duplicates or whatever at SO. YouTube is similar, although I prefer written articles. Now? Forget about it. As far as I'm concerned, my notes and learning experiments are private. I didn't create that world, valley techbros did. I'm not big enough for OAI to sign a licensing deal with me, but apparently I'm powerless enough that they can scrape my blog posts and Github packages and credit my work as their own. If I share my learnings in the future, it will be for a free class or webinar, for an audience of real people. Y'know, the way the internet used to be.