Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by sgc on Sunday October 15, 2023 @10:41AM (#37890171)

How can you know the link won't correspond to the title and snippet? Should we just avoid all interesting-looking content because we might have been duped? The only way to avoid clickbait working is if those who have actually seen the entire page can indicate it is not worth viewing - which brings us right back to search engine placement algorithms and curation.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by nsagent on Sunday October 15, 2023 @11:11AM (#37890394)

Yes, but the algorithm is optimizing for clicks, not curation. Curation is a much more costly process requiring humans in the loop, which often leads to cries of censorship (e.g. my otherwise popular article is being unfairly down-weighted). Clicks are much easier to track and provide a lot of signal.

I'm not saying that Google can't do better. Clearly they have mismatched incentives with their users due to advertising. Moving organic search placements below the fold to increase ad revenue is a major issue, but isn't akin to prioritizing clickbait.

Instead what I'm saying is that due to Google's dominant market position they are under higher scrutiny if they start labeling certain media outlets as frequently generating clickbait and down-weighting them, where smaller search engines like Kagi can get away with that without being labeled a manipulator.

That said, if Google did allow block lists like Kagi, that could go a long way, but likely would still lead to complaints about bias.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by paradox460 on Sunday October 15, 2023 @02:15PM (#37892002)

Google had blocklists a decade ago. They got rid of them.

You can use the uBlocklist browser extension to add em back, but its not as seamless

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