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Never link outside your domain has been rule #1 of the ad-driven business for years now. Once users leave your page, they become exponentially less likely to l
by Workaccount2 1y ago
Never link outside your domain has been rule #1 of the ad-driven business for years now.
Once users leave your page, they become exponentially less likely to load more ad-ridden pages from your website.
Ironically this is also why there is so much existential fear about AI in the media. LLMs will do to them what they do to primary sources (and more likely just cut them out of the loop). This Google story will get a lot of clicks. But it is easy to see a near future where an AI agent just retrieves and summarizes the case for you. And does a much better job too.
- supernova87a 1y agoI guess they are unable to value the function that I am more likely to read and trust stories from their website if they give me the honest info about where their stories come from that I can further read (and rely on them to always point me to as a guide).
- permo-w 1y agothey likely, and probably correctly, do not want you as a customer. people who are discerning and conscious like this generally use an adblocker, and even if you don't, are generally less easily influenced by adverts in the first place. most people like this tend towards wealthy, so it's a valuable demographic if they can get past those two issues, but they're not easy to get past
- supernova87a 1y agoYou made me snort with laughter with how right you were. I in fact have 2 adblockers on, and I actively ignore and sanitize some of my history (like Youtube) to not get directed towards advertising or other rabbit holes I don't want to see, even though I never click a single ad. But I do pay for quality journalism / news websites!
- idle_zealot 1y agoPeople like you are factored in. There just aren't enough of you for your preferences to impact editorial policy.
- madaxe_again 1y agoMost consumers cannot identify which website they are currently looking at. Google, Facebook, giveuscardinfozzzz.com, all the same. No distinguishing or discernible features or difference.
- bc569a80a344f9c 1y ago> But it is easy to see a near future where an AI agent just retrieves and summarizes the case for you. And does a much better job too. I am significantly less confident that an LLM is going to be any good at putting a raw source like a court ruling PDF into context and adequately explain to readers why - and what details - of the decision matter, and what impact they will have. They can probably do an OK job summarizing the document, but not much more. I do agree that given current trends there is going to be significant impact to journalism, and I don’t like that future at all. Particularly because we won’t just have less good reporting, but we won’t have any investigative journalism, which is funded by the ads from relatively cheap “reporting only” stories. There’s a reason we call the press the fourth estate, and we will be much poorer without them. There’s an argument to be made that the press has recently put themselves into this position and hasn’t done a great job, but I still think it’s going to be a rather great loss.
- upcoming-sesame 1y agoThis is one of the practices I hate the most on the internet. Sometimes it's so ridiculous that a news site will report about some company and will not have a single link to the company page or will have a link that just points to another previous article about that company. How fuxking insecure are you ??
- ehsankia 1y agoIt has gotten absolutely out of control. I will be reading an article about a new game, and the article won't even have a link to the store page to buy the game...
- iamacyborg 1y agoWhich store page should they be linking to? Inevitably what you’re asking for is how we’ve ended up with sites spinning off thousands of articles stuffed full of affiliate links.
- ehsankia 1y agoJust link to a few? There's a finite set of stores a game is usually on On PC, it'll be Steam, GOG, maybe Humble. Then on consoles you have Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo. If you wanna put affiliate link, go for it. It's better than no link at all. These articles already bait my click for ads by never putting the name of the game in the title anyways. At least let me get to the game and buy it.
- madaxe_again 1y agoIt’s not about insecurity - it’s more like a user will accidentally click on the link, end up on the company’s site, not realise they’ve left the news site, be confused as to why the news site is trying so hard to sell them a dishwasher, not remember they were just reading an article about them, and will be scared and alienated.
- 63stack 1y ago
- vkou 1y ago> And does a much better job too. A much better job for who? For you, or the firm running it? A future where humans turn over all their thinking to machines, and, by proxy, to the people who own those machines is not one to celebrate.
- nradov 1y agoMost of that stuff like court decisions and patents isn't copyrighted anyway. They can host a copy on their own site and display ads around it if they want to.
- justinclift 1y agoSure, but if they're hosting it on their own site then who's to know it hasn't been modified by them for some reason? ie it's no longer a "source of truth"
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y agoPost the checksum J/K. Court should maybe GPG sign it though.. something like that. So we can verify the creator of any particular document.
- madaxe_again 1y agoWho is this for though? Your average user would not be able to use it or understand the purpose of it. A big image of a padlock with a tick saying “SECURE AND VERIFIED” would be just as effective.
- justinrubek 1y agoThe average user doesn't understand TLS but they use it. The average user doesn't understand TCP but they still use it. That doesn't sound like a problem to me. Having signed documents isn't a bad thing.
- hdjrudni 1y agoHave to start somewhere. Especially in this age of AI where everything can be faked. Put a "learn more" link that says how they can verify the authenticity. If people aren't interested in learning, that's on them. A padlock doesn't tell you anything. The padlock next the URL just says the connection is encrypted. You used to be able to pay $200 and the cert authority would make you send documents proving you are who you say you are, and it'd show your company name next to the address bar. I went through the process once. It was a good idea IMO, not sure why we got rid of it. Maybe shiesty authorities that weren't doing their due diligence.
- coro_1 1y ago> Ironically this is also why there is so much existential fear about AI in the media. LLMs will do to them what they do to primary sources (and more likely just cut them out of the loop). Maybe.. not. LLMs may just flow where the money goes. Open AI has a deal with the FT, etc. The AI platforms haven't touched any UI devolution at all because they're a hot commodity.
- camillomiller 1y agoAnd you think that’s better? The Llm will be unbiased how, exactly?
- szszrk 1y agoThat is my primitive way of distinguishing actual journalism and honest blogging from ad-crap and paywall traps. If they actually link to other websites and their sources - it's worth my time. If they don't - it's a honeypot.