Re:A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes...
by TeMPOraL on Saturday September 18, 2021 @07:30AM
(#28575338)
> The hard part is keeping the system fair and balanced.
It is, which is why I think the author should stay away from anything requiring users to vote on things.
The problem with deriving reputability from votes over time is in distinguishing legitimate votes from malicious votes. Voting is something that doesn't just get gamed, it gets gamed as a service. You'll have companies selling votes, and handling all the busywork necessary to game the bad vote detector.
Search engines and social media companies don't ignore this topic - on the contrary, they live by it. The problem of reputation vote quality is isomorphic to the problem of ad click quality. The "vote" is a click event on an ad, and the profitability for both the advertiser and the ad network depend on being able to tell legitimate clicks and fake clicks apart. Ludicrous amounts of money went into solving this problem, and the end result is... surveillance state. All this deep tracking on the web, it doesn't exist just - or even primarily - to target ads. It exists to determine whether a real would-be customer is looking at an ad, or if it's a bot farm (including protein bot farm, aka. people employed to click on ads en masse).
We need something better. Something that isn't as easy to game, and where mitigations don't come with such a high price for the society.
It is, which is why I think the author should stay away from anything requiring users to vote on things.
The problem with deriving reputability from votes over time is in distinguishing legitimate votes from malicious votes. Voting is something that doesn't just get gamed, it gets gamed as a service. You'll have companies selling votes, and handling all the busywork necessary to game the bad vote detector.
Search engines and social media companies don't ignore this topic - on the contrary, they live by it. The problem of reputation vote quality is isomorphic to the problem of ad click quality. The "vote" is a click event on an ad, and the profitability for both the advertiser and the ad network depend on being able to tell legitimate clicks and fake clicks apart. Ludicrous amounts of money went into solving this problem, and the end result is... surveillance state. All this deep tracking on the web, it doesn't exist just - or even primarily - to target ads. It exists to determine whether a real would-be customer is looking at an ad, or if it's a bot farm (including protein bot farm, aka. people employed to click on ads en masse).
We need something better. Something that isn't as easy to game, and where mitigations don't come with such a high price for the society.