Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ads::More than 140 brands are advertising on low-quality content farm sites —and the problem is growing fast.

  • Sheik@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Programmatic ads placed on programmatic content boosted by programmatic view bots.

    More seriously, this is ridiculous. Websites are junk because they are filled with programmatic ads in the first place.

    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It affects me, the user, because I have to sift through garbage sites, because advertisers pay to keep those garbage sites online. So I think it’s a problem worth discussing and addressing.

  • XPost3000@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Bots making websites and filling it with bots so advertising bots will buy ads that will only be seen by bots

  • Jakdracula@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’d like to help. What’s the best way to create a garbage site to make money off these advertising scums? I’ll give the money to planned parenthood.

    • sixty@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s just gonna land on the consumer in the end. More expensive to advertise? Better raise the prices so our bottom line is still nice and fat

  • Amphobet@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    The internet as we know it is going to change dramatically very soon. Probably for the worse in the short term, but I do hope something better emerges from the ashes.

    • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      If Lemmy is an early indication, I suspect the proletariat will make our own internet. With blackjack and hookers.

    • CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The internet has been dying and changing for the worst for a long time.

      Websites trying to be a one stop all on one site that keeps you there are 90% of web traffic these days.

      Having multiple bookmarks for multiple sites for individual reasons are the small user basis.

      Sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, tik tok and YouTube etc are the majority of web useage. Gone are the days of forums for bespoke interests.

      Discord as a closed ecosystem with none threaded or web searchable topics.

      Ad ladden shit hole news sites. Click bait shite etc are the norm.

      Gone are the days of enjoyabls fun to explore web surfing.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    This just increases the importance of human-driven filters like Lemmy (and Reddit while it’s still relevant), as well as StackExchange for the subset of topics it encompasses.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The more direct problem for people in general is that finding what you’re looking for has become even more of a “needle in a haystack” problem than it already was.

    The indirect problem is that if genuine content creators can’t get much out making content (not necessarilly money: for many simply the satisfaction of seeing how many people liked their content is incentive enough) because viewers are much more dispersed due to the AI-rewritten info cloning sites, then there won’t be much new info for the cloners to copy in rewritten form, which is maybe fine for “questions already answered 1000 times” but won’t be for questions or tutorials about new stuff.

  • o_oli@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Cue the world’s smallest violin. Not sure how this is any consumer’s problem lol.

    Maybe, just maybe, advertising needs to become more carefully selected and regulated rather than the clown fiesta it has been since the dawn of the internet where Google and friends want to ‘set and forget’ and milk money for eternity.

    But you know the reaction won’t be sensible lol, instead we will get an AI arms race of AI adverts vs AI advert reviewers.

  • wosat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I feel like this is the ad-equivalent of the sub-prime mortgage situation, pre-crisis. With mortgages, you had loans that no individual bank or bank manager would want, and then you had an automated process that obfuscated the individual loan details and produced financial products that could be sold as high quality. In the ad world, it’s the same thing. You have these websites that nobody would buy ads from, individually, but somehow, through an automatic process offered by Google and friends, the worthless product becomes valuable.

    • PutangInaMo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Reminds me of the Bing search rewards points a while back. A bunch of people I know were scripting searches and cashing in points until they got caught lmao

  • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Junk websites filled with AI-generated text”

    And here I thought this was going to be a headline about Reddit.