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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

#pluralistic #monopoly #seo #dark seo #google #search #enshittification #platform decay #product reviews #spam #antitrust #trustbusting

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slutforpringles · 9 months ago

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Hey Jaimie, I just wanted to come on here and say thank you for all your contributions to the DR3 fandom. Whether it’s fighting for Daniel’s rights on Reddit or posting all the latest news, you’ve become somewhat of a lifeline for me. Your highlighted articles are my favourite to read, because it keeps me up to date with everything that’s happening. I truly hope you know how appreciated you are here, and I hope that the community that you’ve built here stays around for a long time, despite the recent news. Thank you for your dedication and positivity. Take care!

Hey, I know you sent this earlier today and I'm sorry it's taken me a while to reply, but I wanted to sit down and write a proper response. Getting this message was genuinely so lovely and I can't tell you how much it meant to me to hear that my tumblr has been able to be a positive place for someone 💞

I know I've very rarely been super personal on here, but this sport and this fandom has come to mean a lot to me, so I wanted to use this moment to express my gratitude to the dirlies (gn) and this community.

I was first introduced to F1 through friends while I was living in Europe in 2019 through DtS. I knew from the first moment I saw Daniel he was my favourite. I was immediately enamoured by his vivaciousness and that unabashed joy for life that exudes from every fibre of his being. But I was busy studying overseas and just didn't have the time to be fully bitten by the F1 bug.

I came home at the beginning of 2020 and between the pandemic, lockdowns and my personal life going toooootally to shit I was in a pretty bad place. And it was after a few months of struggle and wallowing that somehow my youtube algorithm landed me on a video of Daniel. I was hooked and very quickly worked my way through highlights, interviews, social media clips, all the funny videos, then each race highlight video as it came out in 2020, which led into every single WTF1 podcast (🙃😂) from 2020. The amount of google searches I did trying to learn all these racing and engineering terms and technical phrases I hadn't come across before (I distinctly remember googling what "box, box" meant because I had no effing clue what it meant 😂). I read every article I could about the upcoming season and the insane hype of Daniel going to McLaren (🙃🙃🙃) and can remember that first FP1 session in Bahrain I ever watched live.

I kind of stumbled onto tumblr via reddit. As I'd been learning about and becoming obsessed with F1 and Daniel I'd made my way onto the F1 sub, and for a long time I could be found on there first learning, and then discussing (and then later arguing for and defending Daniel lol). And I think it was as reddit started becoming more and more anti-Daniel that I started spending more time on tumblr.

For a long time before I joined tumblr I lurked, reading so many of all of your wonderful posts and opinions and seeing all the beautiful and creative fics and art. The mclaren hate blogging era was some of the best (and worst) times and some of the masterpieces on here in defence of Daniel and his career are so iconic and I have referenced their points/stats/quotes so many times in defence of Daniel.

I was a bit scared to fully join tumblr and start posting but I felt really quickly welcomed into this community on here. None of my friends IRL are remotely interested in F1, and so getting to talk about it here with all of you has been such a blessing (and I think my family are probably incredibly grateful that they don't have to listen to me talk about F1/Daniel quite as much as before 😅).

I just wanted to say how incredibly grateful I am to have gotten to experience the last few years with all of you on here. It hasn't always been easy and it's been a rollercoaster - that's for fucking sure - but the highs have been SO incredible. Daniel brought so much happiness and joy and laughter into my life at a time when I really, really needed it and seeing the outpouring of love for him on here the last few days has been beautiful, despite the heartbreaking circumstances.

I don't know what the next few months will look like without Daniel in F1, but I'll be sticking around for sure. I know I'm not always the best at replying to messages or inboxes (I blame my ADHD) but I'm always here for a chat and my messages are always open💞

#daniel ricciardo #dr3 #anon ask

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tom781 · 10 months ago

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SEO for YouTube: How to Optimize Your Videos for Search

Meet Paul. Paul is a budding YouTuber with a passion for tech reviews and tutorials. He’s been creating content for a while, but his channel isn’t growing as quickly as he’d hoped. Paul’s videos are high-quality, informative, and engaging, yet they’re not reaching a wide audience. The key problem? His videos are not optimized for YouTube’s search algorithm. This is where SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, comes into play.

Understanding YouTube SEO

SEO for YouTube involves optimizing your videos so they rank higher in search results. Higher ranking videos get more views, which can lead to more subscribers and overall channel growth. Here’s how Paul can optimize his videos for YouTube search:

Keyword Research

Paul’s first step is to find the right keywords. Keywords are the terms and phrases that users type into the search bar when looking for videos. Paul uses tools like Google Trends, TubeBuddy, and VidIQ to identify popular keywords related to his content. For instance, if Paul’s video is about the latest iPhone review, he might discover that “iPhone 14 review,” “iPhone 14 unboxing,” and “iPhone 14 vs Samsung Galaxy S22” are popular search terms.

Optimizing Video Titles

Once Paul has his keywords, he needs to incorporate them into his video titles. A good title is clear, concise, and includes the main keyword. For example, instead of titling his video “My Thoughts on the New iPhone,” Paul titles it “iPhone 14 Review: In-Depth Look at Apple’s Latest Smartphone.” This title is more likely to match what users are searching for.

Creating Engaging Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the first thing viewers see. An eye-catching thumbnail can significantly increase click-through rates. Paul creates custom thumbnails that are visually appealing and relevant to the video content. He includes the video title or key phrases in the thumbnail to attract viewers’ attention.

Writing Detailed Descriptions

The video description is another crucial SEO element. Paul writes detailed descriptions for his videos, incorporating his main keyword and related terms naturally. He includes a brief summary of the video, timestamps for different sections, and links to his social media, website, and other relevant videos. This not only helps with SEO but also provides a better viewer experience.

Using Tags Effectively

Tags help YouTube understand the content of a video. Paul uses a mix of broad and specific tags, including his main keyword and variations of it. For his iPhone review video, he might use tags like “iPhone 14,” “iPhone review,” “Apple smartphone review,” and “tech reviews 2023.”

Engaging with Viewers

Engagement metrics like likes, comments, and watch time also influence search rankings. Paul makes an effort to engage with his audience by asking questions in his videos, responding to comments, and encouraging viewers to like and share his videos. The more engagement his videos get, the higher they are likely to rank.

Promoting Videos on Social Media

Paul doesn’t rely solely on YouTube’s search algorithm to drive traffic. He promotes his videos on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. By sharing his videos with a broader audience, he increases the chances of getting more views and engagement.

Analyzing and Adjusting

Finally, Paul regularly reviews his analytics to understand what’s working and what’s not. He looks at metrics like watch time, click-through rates, and viewer retention. Based on this data, Paul adjusts his SEO strategy and content approach to continually improve his channel’s performance.

Conclusion

Through consistent effort and strategic optimization, Paul starts to see his videos rank higher in YouTube search results. His channel grows steadily, attracting more viewers and subscribers. By following these SEO practices, Paul not only improves his search rankings but also enhances the overall quality and reach of his content.

For any YouTuber looking to grow their channel, understanding and implementing YouTube SEO is crucial. Just like Paul, you too can optimize your videos and achieve greater success on the platform.

#Youtube #PromotionYoutubePromotion

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kenyatta · 2 months ago

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AkiraBot is a program that fills website comments sections and customer service chat bots with AI-generated spam messages. Its goal is simple: it wants you to sign up for an SEO scheme that costs about $30 a month. For that low price it swears it can enchant Google’s algorithms to get you on the frontpage. But it’s a scam. A new report from researchers at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne documented how scammers deployed AkiraBot, the tool’s use of OpenAI generated messages, and how it avoided multiple CAPTCHA systems and network detection techniques. According to the report, the bot targeted 420,000 unique domains and successfully spammed 80,000.

Whoever runs AkirBot operates their SEO company under a bunch of different names, but they all tend to use the words “Akira” or “ServiceWrap.” SentinelOne says the tool finds websites crafted by third party software like Wix or Squarespace and spams comments sections and automated chatbots with a promise to get the site on the frontpage of various search engines. If you have a small business that exists on the web or have run a WordPress-based website in the last 15 years, you’ve likely seen messages like those AkiraBot crafts.

#bots

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datamined · 2 years ago

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Because it's relevant to the blog: TLDR; The United States' Justice Department have Google in an Antitrust lawsuit over it's ability as a monopoly to corrupt search engine results and more people need to understand what's going on and why this is important. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198558372/doj-google-monopoly-antitrust-trial-search-engine At work one of my bosses threw a fit (justifably) because Google is doing a lot shittier things with advertising and their algorithm than you think. I feel like most people know at this point that Google search results are essentially bunk- the top searches is influenced by how much a company directly works with and pays google. People bid to make their names or businesses at the top of the search results. But it goes a little deeper in that. Recently, I learned that top bidders do not actually get the top result. Why? Because Google wants to make it look less bad when Amazon always gets the top result for virtually anything you're looking for. Top bidders get second top search, the NEXT top bidders actually get the top spot. I could be wrong, but this is essentially my understanding of it at our office in super simple terms. But the biggest issue right now is that Google actually quietly (but significantly) raised their prices for bidding and nobody has any fucking say in it. This makes large corporations (such as Amazon) more likely to be only ones that can manage to take up these top spots, and smaller companies continue to get shafted because they simply cannot compete and Google is essentially stiffing the competition, so to speak, harder than ever before. BUT ON TOP OF THAT, my boss also found that Google is actively making it harder to find information about this and the incoming huge fucking lawsuits thrown at them. They're trying to make it difficult for their users (and basically, the entire world considering so many devices automatically use google search, as Google has deals with Apple and Samsung) to find out anything about their corporate greed and corruption. When searching for the same thing in a different Search Engine like Bing, the lawsuits are the first things to come up. It's huge fucking news but few people know about it or are talking about it. The results of this lawsuit are going to permanently and drastically change the internet and how people find their information.

#google #lawsuit #us politics #monopoly #capitalism #internet #information #advertising #data diary

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tobiasdrake · 11 months ago

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UGH. YOUTUBE HAS MADE THEIR SITE TOO COMPLICATED FOR USERS. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH IT BEFORE, BACK IN 2005-2009?

Well, they're owned by Google. So. Y'know. Same thing that was wrong with their search engine.

Which is to say, Google has grown beyond the point of sustainability for a publicly-owned company with growth incentives.

The fundamental flaw of the U.S.'s growth-based economy is that it imagines a world in which an infinitely expanding revenue intake is possible to achieve. This, unfortunately, flies in the face of reality.

The way a growth-based economy works is that if your company made 100% of all money that exists on Earth this year, it would have to then make 104% of all money that exists next year. And then 108% of all money the year after that.

This is a problem that isn't apparent for small up-and-coming businesses. How can I grow my company's market? Easy. Expand my customer base. Sell more products to more people.

But there's a ceiling. A point at which infinite forever-growth ceases to be achievable through simply doing business. You already have as many people buying your product as are ever going to buy your product; There is no reasonable avenue available to turn your 50 million customers into 75 million. You've hit a plateau.

Or worse, they already bought your product last year so they don't need to buy it again this year. Why would I need to buy yearly tractors?

That's a problem, because the demands of investors do not let up just because it's not actually possible to keep growing the business by doing business. The guy who put in $30 million expects to get $45 million back out of it. Your job is to make that happen. Nothing else that the business does actually matters. Go grow the market value and get back to me when it's done.

Once a business grows beyond the point of sustainability, that's when it starts having to get creative. If you can't grow the customer base, then you need to find ways to get them to pay more money for less product. Increase revenues and decrease costs while supplying to the same set of customers you were before.

This is why the film and AAA video game industries have lost their goddamn minds. They've long-since passed the point of sustainability.

This is what CEOs mean when they say it's "Too expensive to make games." They don't mean they can't make profit by making games. They mean they can't hit their profit growth goals unless they come up with yet another new way to get the existing base of gamers to pay them even more money this year than they did last year, without proportionally increasing their costs to achieve it.

They need the line to go up. And they can no longer achieve that by doing the thing that their business exists to do.

This is also where things like planned obsolescence come from. Why would I need to buy yearly tractors? Because the tractors are designed on purpose to fall apart after a year so I have to go to the store and buy a new one. That's a solution to the "Everyone already bought my product" problem. An evil solution a problem created by unsustainable economics.

Google, too, is long past the sustainability ceiling, and it's causing them to shit themselves and reveal their true colors. Because Google's customer has never been their users. The users are the product that they sell to advertisers. Their revenue comes from getting your eyes on an advertiser's products. That's it.

And as they continue beyond the sustainability ceiling with each passing year of infinite forever-growth, they're having to pursue more and more nakedly predatory means of churning their userbase into mass-produced views.

Why is their search engine so shitty? Because if you have to search for something five times, you're gonna see five times as many ads. That's good for Google's growth margins.

YouTube is the same. Their algorithm is designed to feed people into loops. Not to show you content they think you'll like to see, but to show you content that will keep you engaged. That will make you watch the next video and the ads that go with it. It's clickbait in video suggestion form.

And it's just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse until either legislation steps in or the bubble pops. Those are the only two futures possible for a company that's beyond the sustainability ceiling. And they've gotten very good at postponing the popping of the bubble.

This, all of this, is what people are talking about when they use the term "late-stage capitalism".

#economics

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theleatherdragon · 29 days ago

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The TMI Update

Welp, I guess it's been about a year since I was last really active online aside from a few places. It wasn't by choice, that's for sure lmao?? But I suppose I should give a bit of a life update for the people that are curious about my absence. A TL;DR for some people: my health was garbage, my parents health is even more garbage, and I wanna come back to the art community online but I'm not sure when/how between the recent ai/art theft and website changes while I was gone.

It started with my mystery health issues. From about May 2023 to Feb 2025, I was dying, slowly. Like I was losing my hair, my muscles, I had no energy, my brain was just constantly fogged up like a dementia patient, I couldn't stay awake for more than 4-7 hours a day, I couldn't eat, I was scared that I wouldn't wake up the next day every single night I went to bed. It started off slowly and then by around April 2024, it just snowballed into catastrophe. After burning through 16+ different doctors of all kinds, none of them would help me despite multiple blood tests being flagged as either too high or too low. They all kept telling me that I'm just depressed or some other wacky crap like "you're just a woman, this is normal."

Eventually I learned that you can buy your own tests on Labcorp, and through trial and error I learned that I had 0 estrogen and 0 testosterone. Apparently a pill that I had been taking for years, the ingredients got changed in 2023 and it completely wrecked my hormones. That's when I learned just how much work hormones do, and I found a doctor to change my pills because apparently I was going through something that was considerably WORSE than menopause. I've been on this new pill for 80+ days now and literally every symptom I had is just completely gone now.

Unfortunately, as soon as I figured out my health mystery and started to get better again, my parents were rushed to the hospital. On April 13 my dad got a ct scan of his lungs to see how bad his pneumonia was and I saw the screen and said oh god that's cancer. Not only does he have cancer, he has TWO separate lung cancers, both stage 4. And then while dealing with that, my mom's cancer that she's had since 2021 has gotten worse. It's been nothing but a nightmare for the last year, but now it's gotten significantly worse. To the point that we even went to buy a family burial plot. Not many people my age get to brag about having their own cemetery plot reserved already, hand picked by myself lmao??

I lost my grandmother in February and now there's a good chance I'll be losing both of my parents this year as well, we're not sure yet. Since April I've probably spent a few hundred hours in and out of the hospital with them and driving them to radiation/chemo treatments and just ugh, I'm exhausted.

Aside from all of that grief, my other problem with being online has been a mixed bag of bad too. I sort of had my online world rocked last year after discovering things about some so called friends and other things about my art, and that really broke me too. All my life I just wanted to be an artist, to draw fun characters and have fun art trades and all sorts of things with the community. But apparently some people were just using me for their fetishes or trying to gain their own reputations and just, I'm not like that man. I literally am so ace coded that I thought the debate between top and bottom was for bunk bed choices like lmao bro

I started building my own website to combat that and also the fact that a lot of art websites have succumbed to the ai/art thieves mess. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to build it and also as soon as I created it, Google decided to take my website and stick it on their algorithm even though I specifically had it coded to NOT do that. All the other search engines respected my request and so I went to Google asking about it. I followed their instructions and now ALL the search engines have my website. Unless I can find a way to stop that, I'm going to have to password protect my website so that bot crawlers won't see my things and make it super easy access to the wrong people.

I really do miss being online though and making art for and with people. Unfortunately I'm going to have to make some big changes in the near future before I can come back, but I wanted to at least drop an update on things. I'm absolutely going to power through Art Fight again this year, so you can catch me there if I haven't returned elsewhere by then. It's really unfortunate how much these websites have changed while I was gone, but I won't be leaving if I can help it.

I really hope everyone else has had a much better time than me. Aside from all the health scares, my life hasn't been terrible. I got back into photography and a few other crafts, I just haven't been posting things online. Heck, I haven't even been on Discord in months now, I honestly have no idea what all has changed for a while. I just haven't had the mental ability to do much aside from lurking on Tumblr here and there, but even then some of the negative things I see are just too much to bare for my mental state of being right now.

I want to come back soon, but I'm scared at how fragile my mind is lately. It doesn't help that my hormones have come back in full swing, so it's really weird going almost 2 years of feeling nothing to suddenly feeling everything again lmao??

Anywho, this is a big enough wall of text for now. I really hope you're doing awesome and I wish nothing but the best for you. I really hope we can all make art again soon!

#text

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horsethoughts · 4 months ago

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Blog Post #3! Due 2/13/25

Why do we refer to data collection and profiling as “progressive” despite its tendency to be biased against Black Americans and other POC? (Question based on Benjamin’s “Race After Technology” and Noble’s “Algorithms of Oppression”)

Technology, as put by Benjamin (2019), has a perceived “cloak of objectivity.” The tools, algorithms, and forms of data collection used in our reality are regarded as objective since they cannot “see” race. Technology as a whole, in my opinion, is often seen as universal and for everyone. Many people see phones, search engines, and other “tech” as tech without human involvement. Most people, including me, don’t think beyond what technology does for us—it just does, and we don’t question how it was made, who made it, and what biases might be embedded in the “cool, advanced, and innovative” new ais, virtual assistants, and search engines.

California gang database—why does law enforcement keep inaccurate databases that are difficult to change and easy to add onto? (Question Based on Benjamin’s “Race After Technology” and YJC report)

Gang databases, like the one featured in the report, seem to have a larger purpose in surveilling POC, namely Latino communities. The databases’ flawed design is effective for upholding inaccurate narratives of Latino and Black involvement in gang activity. The recording methods, which make it easy for these populations to be put in the database, inflates the true number of people with gang involvement. While a shot in the dark, I additionally think the “ease” provided by the broadness of the gang database is something that is seen as beneficial to the prison industry. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but I would assume that the number of people there to arrest/detain from the database boosts private prisons. The YJC report states that these databases are “widely used without evaluating their cost effectiveness or effectiveness in increasing community safety.” the database’s purpose is less about community safety and more about control over narratives and individuals.

How does the digital divide myth that POC, particularly Black Americans, are less interested in the internet still linger today? How is this idea of the digital divide reflected in social media? (Question based on Everett’s “The Revolution Will be Digitized”)

In Everett’s work (2002), she discusses the sphere of “cyberspace” often being associated with whiteness, with white users seen as the dominant demographic for technology and the internet. While this work was written about earlier internet use, I still see this pattern on social media. Specifically, I see this in the artist community on various social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr. Something I’ve noticed is how often people are “surprised” to learn a particular artist/creator is Black if they’ve previously never disclosed it through being faceless or simply not stating this. I would say that this idea of the digital divide still persists because of our perception of internet/social media use. In my example of Black creators, the “surprise” in them being Black most likely comes from the assumption that they would be white. This is created from the “facelessness” associated with the internet.

In “Algorithms of Oppression,” Noble writes on racist Google Search results and Google’s position that it is “not responsible for its algorithm.” Then who is “responsible”? Can any one person/entity be held responsible for flawed algorithms? (Question based on Noble’s “Algorithms of Oppression”)

While I don’t think any entity can be responsible for such flawed algorithms, that only points to a more significant issue in their structure. Noble (2018) writes that “racism and sexism are part of the architecture and language of technology.”; algorithms and technology are based on flawed human ideas and prejudices and then reflect those prejudices. This makes it important to question and not solely rely on these systems. Responsibility, in this case, comes with doubting the system and checking it twice to see if the information it presents is accurate and unbiased. Google’s responsibility for changing the search results falls on them because they trusted the algorithm to be unbiased, which was false. Works Cited:

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Polity.

Everett, A. (2002). The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere.

Youth Justice Coalition (2012). Tracked and trapped. Youth of color, gang databases, and gang injunctions. https://youthjusticela.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TrackedandTrapped.pdf

#tcl25

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roach-works · 2 years ago

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hi! I've always admired how you include infrastructure systems in your worldbuilding, and I was wondering if you have any book/documentary/podcast/etc. recs for someone who wants to go into gnarly detail about (for example) wastewater processing, O2 production, and simulated weather systems on a generation ship, but whose current level of knowledge is just "I read a lot of sci-fi?" I find the stuff fascinating in other people's writing, but figuring out where to start research is overwhelming.

shit, that's tough. most of my qualifications are 'i also read a lot of sci fi' but i also read a lot of those pop-up pocket news articles about technology and the environment... my brain isn't one of those kinds of brains where there's much differentiation between what im reading, what im writing, and who im in conversation with. im just always reading everything and having opinions on it and telling my friends what i just learned and learning more about what they learned and so on... tumblr's great for that, honestly. follow a lot of environment and good news blogs, and you'll get an interesting feed of interesting updates on the global ecology.

i would also suggest browsing national geographic, wired, and make magazine websites, if you can. get some good paywall blockers, or dish out for a subscription... the atlantic also has interesting stuff here and there.

'how it's made' type videos are great, especially older mr rogers era stuff, where the machines are less digital and more manual.

get a library card, especially for ebooks--if you're american you can use libby--and browse nonfiction. you can also just ask librarians to help you find stuff. i really admire science writers mary roach and randall munroe, think ryan north is very entertaining, and find malcom gladwell and bill bryson interesting if not particularly trustworthy.

hope this helps! i don't have any more specific suggestions, sorry.

EDIT: GET DUCK DUCK GO AS YOUR SEARCH ENGINE AND FIREFOX WITH UBLOCK AS YOUR BROWSER. i can't emphasize enough how much more useful your search results will be when you need to learn real information about things like ships and sewage systems and oyster farming. these days google only sends you to amazon, wayfair, and pinterest, it's fucking useless if you're not shopping, and sucks even if you are shopping.

there's other, more specialized browsers too that are worth a look.

and of course the internet archive has the wayback machine plus a lot of cool old books for free:

edit edit: here's another post on good search engines

#writing #followers feel free to rec

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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A week after its algorithms advised people to eat rocks and put glue on pizza, Google admitted Thursday that it needed to make adjustments to its bold new generative AI search feature. The episode highlights the risks of Google’s aggressive drive to commercialize generative AI—and also the treacherous and fundamental limitations of that technology.

Google’s AI Overviews feature draws on Gemini, a large language model like the one behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to generate written answers to some search queries by summarizing information found online. The current AI boom is built around LLMs’ impressive fluency with text, but the software can also use that facility to put a convincing gloss on untruths or errors. Using the technology to summarize online information promises can make search results easier to digest, but it is hazardous when online sources are contractionary or when people may use the information to make important decisions.

“You can get a quick snappy prototype now fairly quickly with an LLM, but to actually make it so that it doesn't tell you to eat rocks takes a lot of work,” says Richard Socher, who made key contributions to AI for language as a researcher and, in late 2021, launched an AI-centric search engine called You.com.

Socher says wrangling LLMs takes considerable effort because the underlying technology has no real understanding of the world and because the web is riddled with untrustworthy information. “In some cases it is better to actually not just give you an answer, or to show you multiple different viewpoints,” he says.

Google’s head of search Liz Reid said in the company’s blog post late Thursday that it did extensive testing ahead of launching AI Overviews. But she added that errors like the rock eating and glue pizza examples—in which Google’s algorithms pulled information from a satirical article and jocular Reddit comment, respectively—had prompted additional changes. They include better detection of “nonsensical queries,” Google says, and making the system rely less heavily on user-generated content.

You.com routinely avoids the kinds of errors displayed by Google’s AI Overviews, Socher says, because his company developed about a dozen tricks to keep LLMs from misbehaving when used for search.

“We are more accurate because we put a lot of resources into being more accurate,” Socher says. Among other things, You.com uses a custom-built web index designed to help LLMs steer clear of incorrect information. It also selects from multiple different LLMs to answer specific queries, and it uses a citation mechanism that can explain when sources are contradictory. Still, getting AI search right is tricky. WIRED found on Friday that You.com failed to correctly answer a query that has been known to trip up other AI systems, stating that “based on the information available, there are no African nations whose names start with the letter ‘K.’” In previous tests, it had aced the query.

Google’s generative AI upgrade to its most widely used and lucrative product is part of a tech-industry-wide reboot inspired by OpenAI’s release of the chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022. A couple of months after ChatGPT debuted, Microsoft, a key partner of OpenAI, used its technology to upgrade its also-ran search engine Bing. The upgraded Bing was beset by AI-generated errors and odd behavior, but the company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, said that the move was designed to challenge Google, saying “I want people to know we made them dance.”

Some experts feel that Google rushed its AI upgrade. “I’m surprised they launched it as it is for as many queries—medical, financial queries—I thought they’d be more careful,” says Barry Schwartz, news editor at Search Engine Land, a publication that tracks the search industry. The company should have better anticipated that some people would intentionally try to trip up AI Overviews, he adds. “Google has to be smart about that,” Schwartz says, especially when they're showing the results as default on their most valuable product.

Lily Ray, a search engine optimization consultant, was for a year a beta tester of the prototype that preceded AI Overviews, which Google called Search Generative Experience. She says she was unsurprised to see the errors that appeared last week given how the previous version tended to go awry. “I think it’s virtually impossible for it to always get everything right,” Ray says. “That’s the nature of AI.”

Even if blatant errors like suggesting people eat rocks become less common, AI search can fail in other ways. Ray has documented more subtle problems with AI Overviews, including summaries that sometimes draw on poor sources such as sites that are from another region or even defunct websites—something she says could provide less useful information to users who are hunting for product recommendations, for instance. Those who work on optimizing content for Google’s Search algorithm are still trying to understand what’s going on. “Within our industry right now, the level of confusion is on the charts,” she says.

Even if industry experts and consumers get more familiar with how the new Google search behaves, don’t expect it to stop making mistakes. Daniel Griffin, a search consultant and researcher who is developing tools to make it easy to compare different AI-powered search services, says that Google faced similar problems when it launched Featured Snippets, which answered queries with text quoted from websites, in 2014.

Griffin says he expects Google to iron out some of the most glaring problems with AI Overviews, but that it’s important to remember no one has solved the problem of LLMs failing to grasp what is true, or their tendency to fabricate information. “It’s not just a problem with AI,” he says. “It’s the web, it’s the world. There’s not really a truth, necessarily.”

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cloverjgardener · 10 days ago

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Is it AI Copy or a Tired Writer Trying Their Best? A Look Backstage in Copywriting

(For those unaware, copy in this context is used to describe the informational writing on a website)

So for a while now I've seen people online point at certain web copy and claim that it's clearly generated by AI. In many cases I disagree. People against generative AI will claim the tells are easy. People for generative AI will often say the same thing, right before selling guides on editing the obvious tells out of your generative text to slip under the radar.

I don't have the most authority on the topic, but I've been in technical writing for about six years. I've worked as a by-the-assignment ghostwriter and a salaried copywriter. So I think I have enough backing to say that I don't think it's possible to catch AI writing. I think it's possible to perceive sloppy writing, manipulative writing, almost incoherent writing. But a lot of that has existed before the sudden surge in large language models, thanks to the way many companies in the industry direct their writers to work.

Want a behind-the-curtain look at what goes into a lot of the copy you read online? Follow me!

See this? This is a keyword ranking off SEOSpyGlass for a popular house cleaner service in Portland. I am not the best person to talk about Search Engine Optimization. In my defense, I believe that's because SEO changes constantly - first based on the whims of what Google would value most, which has now gotten even more convoluted as other search engines creep into more prominent use.

This ranking above shows the most common search terms that resulted in someone clicking on a certain link (In this case, MollyMaid - or the specific page that "ranks" high enough in search results).

Pretty much every copy-writing company I've ever worked for would give me a list of "relevant search terms" for an assignment, and part of my job was to fit them into the copy I created. Looking at some of these terms, you might see that a lot of them aren't easily fit into writing in a way that feels normal to read on a website. The "[SOMETHING] near me" is probably one of the most popular search terms in pretty much every industry. In my opinion it's also the clumsiest to work with as a writer.

It's actually very funny to see this. You see that phrasing at the start? Hey did you search this specific phrase? Cool! Use us for that. That is essentially the exact format I would use whenever I had to fit in any variant of that keyphrase. It doesn't feel great. If Google ever loses interest in longer, conversational keyphrases, a lot of copy will be outdated and pointlessly clunky.

The emphasis on keywords and word count in general is the true culprit behind a majority of web copy that reads as if the website you're on is having an nervous breakdown. I've been in many situations where I've had to pad out assignments for no reason, because even though I expressed all the information that needed to be expressed, I was short of the word count given ahead of time. I imagine based on the latest change to Google's algorithm, this might slowly become less of a sticking point. They seem to claim that value is now in writing like a human being, and that's harder to do if you have to circle the same points again and again just to kill time.

It's kind of interesting isn't it? I'm gradually edging into freelance copy-writing work - which is cool, because it hopefully means I can choose how deep into SEO I decide to work in. Despite my complaints, I really enjoy the technical writing aspect, especially for a client I want to help.

I just had to get all this out there, because before I found SEOSpyglass I tried to use Semrush and was immediately like haha holy shit I remember this.

#technical writing #copywriting #Clove Takes on Writing

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

#pluralistic #moral injury #enshittification #worker power #google #dont be evil #monopoly #sam altman #openai #vocational awe #making a dent in the universe

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agolaaa · 2 days ago

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2025 Digital Marketing Trends: What You Should Really Pay Attention To

If you’ve been paying even a little attention to digital marketing lately, you’ll know things are moving faster than ever. Platforms change, algorithms shift, and customer behavior keeps evolving. What worked last year might not work today—and what’s working today might be gone by next quarter.

It can feel a bit overwhelming, sure. But here’s the good news: if you stay curious and pay attention to the right trends, there’s huge opportunity to stand out. Whether you're already in the field or just starting your journey through the best digital marketing training institute in Calicut, understanding the pulse of 2025 gives you a major edge.

1. Welcome to the Age of Real-Time Experiences

Marketing is no longer just about putting content out there and hoping people see it. In 2025, it’s about responding while it’s happening—right in the moment.

Think live streams, interactive polls, flash deals during events, or even AI-powered chat assistants that talk to customers at midnight. Real-time engagement is now a core part of strategy, especially in e-commerce and service-based industries.

2. Storytelling > Hard Selling

Let’s be honest: people don’t like being sold to. At least, not directly. What they do love is a good story.

Brands that can wrap their message into a narrative—about a mission, a journey, a personal experience—are finding it much easier to connect with audiences. It’s not about pushing a product. It’s about pulling people in with emotion, relevance, and relatability.

3. AI Is Helping, But Human Creativity Still Wins

Everyone’s talking about artificial intelligence, and yes, it’s a big deal. It helps with automating repetitive tasks, generating ideas, and even scheduling campaigns. But here’s the kicker—it doesn’t replace creative thinking.

In fact, the best marketers right now are the ones who use AI as a tool, not a crutch. They let it handle the backend, while they focus on crafting bold ideas, unique angles, and messages that sound like they came from a real person.

4. The Death of the Third-Party Cookie is Real

Browser cookies—those tiny data files that track your every move online—are fading out. Privacy laws and consumer pushback have forced platforms to rethink how data is collected.

As a result, marketers are shifting focus to first-party data—info gathered directly from your audience via sign-ups, feedback forms, or gated content. This makes email marketing and CRM systems more important than ever.

5. Search Isn’t Just Google Anymore

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just about ranking on Google. People are now “searching” on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn.

Each platform has its own rules and algorithms. That means your content has to be optimized for where your audience hangs out, not just for traditional search engines. Understanding platform-specific search behaviors is a critical new skill.

6. Digital Marketing Is Becoming More Localized

While the internet connects the world, customers still care about what’s happening in their area. Hyperlocal marketing is on the rise, using geotargeting, local SEO, and community-focused campaigns.

If you're promoting a business or service, tailoring your strategy to a specific city, language, or even neighborhood can drastically improve engagement.

And yes, that includes people looking for the best digital marketing training institute in Calicut—they’re searching locally too.

7. Email Is Making a Comeback—With a Twist

It might surprise some, but email marketing is still one of the highest ROI channels around. The difference now is how emails are being written.

Gone are the boring newsletters. In their place? Story-style formats, curated content digests, and personalized emails that talk like a friend, not a corporation. A strong email list is a goldmine—if used right.

8. Your Personal Brand Matters More Than Ever

People trust people more than companies. Whether you’re a freelancer, job-seeker, or business owner, your personal brand is a major asset.

Being active on LinkedIn, sharing behind-the-scenes on Instagram, or even starting a blog can build credibility and open doors. Clients and employers now Google you before they hire or buy. Make sure they find something worth their time.

9. Short Learning Cycles Are Replacing Traditional Degrees

Here’s something that’s become crystal clear in 2025: you don’t need a 3-year degree to start working in digital marketing. What you need is skills, hands-on practice, and the ability to adapt quickly.

That’s why so many learners are choosing the best digital marketing training institute in Calicut instead of traditional routes. Institutes that focus on live projects, real tools, and actual industry challenges are the ones producing job-ready professionals.

10. Platforms Come and Go—But Strategy Stays

It’s easy to get caught up in whatever platform is trending this month. Threads today, TikTok tomorrow, something new next week. But if you know how to build a good campaign—identify an audience, craft a message, and choose the right timing—you can adapt to any platform.

The fundamentals are what set you apart. And that’s what solid training focuses on—not just learning tools, but understanding strategy.

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing in 2025 isn’t just about being online—it’s about being intentional, creative, and quick to adapt. The landscape will keep changing, but those who stay curious, keep practicing, and learn from the right sources will always stay ahead.

If you're someone thinking about breaking into this space, consider your options wisely. The best digital marketing training institute in Calicut won’t just give you certificates—they’ll give you confidence, clarity, and real-world skills that matter.

You don’t need to be a genius. You just need to start. And there’s never been a better time than now.

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