this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Humanities & Cultures

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AI stealing our work. The collapse of social networks. The need to pay journalists to produce impactful journalism. Here is why we are asking for your email address to read 404 Media (www.404media.co)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/humanities@beehaw.org
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this is an interesting article on the difficulties of running anything as SEO makes everything worse, AI proliferates, and things generally get worse for journalism. probably best summarized by this paragraph:

The long answer is that, through our own reporting, we are realizing that in order to combat the fracturing of social media platforms, a Google discoverability crisis fueled by AI generated spam and AI-fueled SEO, and a media business environment that is in utter freefall, we need to be able to reach our readers directly using a platform that we own and control. To do that, we need your email address.

but it's a very good read in general, and i'd encourage you to read the whole thing.

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[–] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Good article, big problem, but I doubt email lists are a solution. I have over years subscribed to many email lists, they get filtered to mailboxes by topic, which I'm afraid to open because overwhelmed by messages. I prefer to find specific news items recommended by communities as here on Lemmy. As for AI dominating SEO for google, it seems there could be an opening for a new search engine that guarantees only content from original-sources, neither AI nor content-farms.

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As for AI dominating SEO for google, it seems there could be an opening for a new search engine that guarantees only content from original-sources, neither AI nor content-farms.

unfortunately it's really hard to make a search engine that people want, and most of the ones i'm aware of have gone bust because you have to commit to running it at a loss for years (or forever)

[–] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago

Hmmm, so maybe such a search engine could began with a whitelist of 'real' journalistic sites from around the word, inviting suggestions for more, keeping a reputation score for each, evidence of plagiarism / AI risks to be dropped. If the list is smaller, the searching task is easier. It shouldn't be funded by advertising, as that provides bad incentives. Maybe small subscriptions both for searchers and sites on list, to balance incentives.
Fediverse likes / votes / boosts could also help provide rankings for such an engine (evaluating external links, not message content), as real people here are checking stuff, and it’s less distorted by commercial clickbait motives.