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Why would Google need to direct traffic to the website when they've already scraped and trained their models on the data? Content creators and legitimate websit
by phyzix5761 5mo ago
Why would Google need to direct traffic to the website when they've already scraped and trained their models on the data? Content creators and legitimate websites were wham-bammed and thank-you-ma’amed.
- WarmWash 5mo ago[flagged]
- bryanrasmussen 5mo agowell I didn't downvote but there is an obvious difference in thousands of uncoordinated people doing something whenever it benefits vs. a large organization with automated resources doing things at the kinds of speeds and volumes that automation allows.
- anigbrowl 5mo agoThe difference is that I am not preventing anyone else from finding their content. I whitelist ads on sites that have good ad policies, like limiting ad size, labeling ads, and not allowing animated ads. Advertisers only care about attention, if you don't impose editorial standards they'll contaminate your entire site.
- WarmWash 5mo agoIn the tech space, using youtube as an example, tech youtubers, who are widely lauded, still have about 40-50% of users ad-blocking and <1% donating. So thank you, but you are one of about 14 people on the internet who actually use a whitelist.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoOn air reads. Lift a finger for your ads. When I spent more time producing podcasts I categorically rejected (and discouraged my clients from doing) injected ads by 3rd parties. They scream “idgaf” and actual on air reads convert better anyway by huge margins in comparison. Ublock origin et al can’t block those so there’s your solution. Don’t lazily monetize your content.
- WarmWash 5mo agoThe actual answer is to move everything to an app and kill your API, so you control everything in a locked down environment. This is a much bigger issue than just podcasts. It's every form of binary encoded data.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoWhat? We are so far off base I don’t even know how to respond here.
- anigbrowl 5mo agoUsers block ads because most ads are trash. It's not because they're advertisements as such, it's because they're annoying and obnoxious. I sometimes use youtube on a game console and the experience is worse than television. That takes dedication.
- interloxia 5mo agoUsers, ad-block users, and scrapers all consume the publicly-available content whether you like it or not. I expect the difference is that the scrapers are the most likely to regurgitate the content one way or the other.
- themafia 5mo agoYou can run unblockable ads on your site. You just have to not use third party integrations that run untrusted code on your visitors computers.
- pbhjpbhj 5mo agoUsers take part and improve wikis, it's the whole model. If they don't take the adverts, they still can contribute. Googlebot isn't making edits, not even giving signal to the site about what is useful allowing the owners to hone the site. Two ways in which issues who have adblock are better than bots. Users will promote organically, which can win more credence than even a higher listing in SERPs. Depends if your wiki is part of building a community.
- WarmWash 5mo agoDoes "users" refer to 100% of users or 0.05%? Because while your argument sounds nice, if you break out the numbers, it becomes largely meaningless. In fact you find that the average internet user, especially in the tech/gaming space, usually contributes nothing, while watching/loading no ads and self congratulates themselves for doing so while encouraging others to do the same.
- nehal3m 5mo agoIf there is any model on the internet that has proven you don't need to monetize through ads for a working business model, it's Wikipedia.
- hirako2000 5mo agoExcept that it isn't a business.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoThe edits are likely why you’re getting downvoted so much tbh.
- WarmWash 5mo agoTrust me, the downvotes were instant. People really hate it when you hold up a mirror to illustrate a problem. They tend to reflexively punch the mirror
- kylemaxwell 5mo agoThe downvotes are for the unnecessarily aggressive approach, even from people without a major dog in the fight.
- akersten 5mo agoMan, I wish folks calibrated their E(I am actually wrong|downvotes). Have you considered what that value could be in this case?
- WarmWash 5mo agoCreators don't get compensation when people ad-block. Creators don't get compensation when LLMs scrape. It's totally, and completely, unambiguous. The internet just has collective brain damage from the grassroots morals of it being formed 30 years ago by teenagers. How surprising that a bunch of kids decided that the way to save the internet was to make it better for themselves, and worse for the people who make the internet the thing they love. Some of us have grown up now, and realize the correct answer to save the internet was to not engage with ad supported content period.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoThere are ways to get paid without ads and you can do on-air reads like I said. adblockers don’t impact them. You also don’t have to play Google and YouTube’s games. I’m sorry folks are caught in that arm’s race between users and Google but Google has made browsing so miserable it’s just reality. Adblocking is basic security now. I am not compromising on it. I say this as a “content creator”
- pessimizer 5mo ago> So same thing ad-block users have been doing for 20 years now? Ad-block users didn't mine Pokémon Central for content, then remove them from search listings. Changing the specific criticism made to the generic "denying creators revenue" is a distortion, because they screwed over all people who wanted visitors, not just the people who wanted visitors to milk them for cash. If I made a forum about trains because I wanted people to come to the forum to talk about trains, Google milked the forum for all of the accumulated information about trains, then made it impossible to attract new users to talk about trains.
- aleqs 5mo agoWhat bizarre and absurd line of reasoning. Users who care about their privacy and opt out of downloading ads and malware are 'denying creators revenue'? Are you denying creators revenue by not reading reading/observing every ad that comes your way and making purchases based on them? Maybe you should read/comment on HN less and focus on consuming more ads instead? What at an incredibly stupid thing to say.
- WarmWash 5mo agoWhen you don't want the ads and privacy invasion, you don't visit the website. There are still honestly free things on the internet one can enjoy. Like if a video game is too expensive for your liking, you simply don't buy it. Going and pirating it is not a valid response. You get the game and creator gets nothing. You can just stick to playing honestly free games, there are plenty out there. This idea that digital data is worthless is stupid child logic born from when kids ruled the internet. Obviously it has value, as evidence by the very top level post I responded to. (Also, as an aside, it's only heavy ad-block/privacy tool users who get malware and scam ads, because they have no profile and only bottom feeders bid on their views. Regular users get Tide and Chevy ads.)
- aleqs 5mo ago> When you don't want the ads and privacy invasion, you don't visit the website. First of all, I can and will visit any website I want, and I will use an ad blocker while doing so. Second - how do you know what ads and privacy invasion a website might have before you visit it? Makes no sense. > Like if a video game is too expensive for your liking, you simply don't buy it. Going and pirating it is not a valid response In either case the creator gets zero $. It could be argued that pirating might actually benefit the creator more - since it would increase overall usage/adoption/prevalence of the product/game. So your argument is kinda backwards. > This idea that digital data is worthless is stupid child logic born from when kids ruled the internet. You keep mentioning 'kids' and 'teenagers' across your comments seemingly as a way to imply that you have some kind of greybeard wisdom and special knowledge. You don't and your arguments don't make sense - your own realization of that is probably what triggers you to call everyone who disagrees with your kids and teenagers LMAO. And for the record - intellectual property is a made up scam, the only purpose of which is to stifle competition.
- caminanteblanco 5mo agoI was listening to David Bowie's Suffragette City as I read your comment (Apparently Bowie was a popularizer of 'wham bam, tym' usage)
- twodave 5mo agoPersonifying Google in this way is not realistic. The search team alone at Google is made of thousands of people who are all working on different things with an over-arching mission of making the web MORE accessible, not less. Any release from any of those people could have created a side effect of this kind. Is there a chance it was an intentional policy implementation? Sure. But the odds are heavily against it.
- mlinhares 5mo agolol.
- ravenstine 5mo agoThis seems akin to saying that humans shouldn't be personified because their brains are made of millions of neurons that are all doing different things. But the actions or motives of individual processing units are hardly relevant, especially at the scale of The Google. We don't need to speculate how non-malevolent individuals cause harmful side effects. It doesn't even matter what The Google "thinks". The system is what it does, and what it does is consistently operate in ways that are not for the mere benefit of users of the Web. The conceptual model that The Google hates (or is callously indifferent to) us makes far better predictions than a model presuming thousands of people make mistakes while trying to make the Web more accessible. It doesn't matter if the former model isn't a technically perfect reflection of reality. We are less likely to be victim to The Google when we act as if it is a hostile force. Diffusing the results of its actions across thousands of nameless humans increases the risk that one finds themself posting on HN or X about how The Google spontaneously locked them out of their entire life.
- elphinstone 5mo agoIt's laughable to assume good intentions at this point, this predatory monopolist makes every decision against a free and open internet and in favor of monetization, authoritarianism, and enshittification.
- bartekpacia 5mo agoIs this irony? Cause there’s no way anyone believes these “we want to make the world a better place” cliches anymore lol
- hmokiguess 5mo agoI thought the same, isn’t a lot of this data stable and static. Why recrawl and continually index stuff that has low value if the corpus is already feature complete.