50% of new NPM packages are spam

Re:50% of new NPM packages are spam by onion2k on Thursday March 30, 2023 @09:23AM (#35372297)

I'm suggesting that it wouldn't be a problem if NPM switched off indexing, and if the article is correct that half of packages are spam then it'd actually be significantly beneficial.

The broader point is that by expecting Google to be a single interface to the entire internet, and refusing to accept that there might be some places you need to go to directly, we make the problem of spam worse. Using Google for navigation when you know what site you want rather than using that site's search feature incentivizes spammers to abuse things they would otherwise ignore.

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Re:50% of new NPM packages are spam by readertime on Thursday March 30, 2023 @10:11AM (#35372974)

But I want a single search bar that just magically gives me the right results. Given the enthusiasm for GPTn I think a lot of people do too.

Whether that incentivized spammers to spam, or Google et al to improve their software (or risk being outcompeted), doesn’t really seem like a “me” problem. I can’t change these things.

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