Old_Gold comments on Upcoming LW Changes - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Vaniver 03 February 2016 05:34AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 05 February 2016 03:39:03PM *  2 points [-]

Actually, that could be huge. Rationality blogs generated by bots! Self-improvement blogs generated by bots! Gosh-wow science writing generated by bots!

LOL. Wake up and smell the tea :-) People who want to push advertising into your eyeballs now routinely construct on-demand (as in, in response to a Google query) websites/blogs/etc. just so that you'd look at them and they get paid for ad impressions.

See e.g. recent Yvain:

EHealthMe’s business model is to make an automated program that runs through every single drug and every possible side effect, scrapes the FDA database for examples, then autopublishes an ad-filled web page titled “COULD $DRUG CAUSE $SIDEEFFECT?”. It populates the page by spewing random FDA data all over it, concludes “$SIDEEFFECT is found among people who take $DRUG”, and offers a link to a support group for $DRUG patients suffering from $SIDE_EFFECT. Needless to say, the support group is an automatically-generated forum with no posts in it.

Now, you say you want to turn this to the light side..?

Comment author: Old_Gold 07 February 2016 08:31:13PM 4 points [-]

LOL. Wake up and smell the tea :-) People who want to push advertising into your eyeballs now routinely construct on-demand (as in, in response to a Google query) websites/blogs/etc. just so that you'd look at them and they get paid for ad impressions.

Are these things going to fool any actual human, or just Google's algorithms, i.e., that people see it in Google's searches, possibly click, but don't look at it any closer.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 February 2016 01:30:18AM 2 points [-]

Are these things going to fool any actual human

Yes, I think so, at least for a while. These actual humans will probably be old, not terribly smart, uncomfortable with that weird world of internet, somewhat gullible or at least prone to putting a bit too much trust into printed word...

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