Hey everyone, I'm building https://sflow.io and part of that includes generating SEO articles to automate the current slow processes of creating (quite) repetitive media (think: "Best Phone to Buy in March of 2020" type of articles).
> I'm building https://sflow.io and part of that includes generating SEO articles
Honest question, not trying to be rude, but how do you sleep at night knowing that you're actively making the web^H^H^Hworld worse? I assume you must, because you have a super handwavy "ethics" section on your site that says ~"we'll look into it". Do you have a vision of the world where your SEO articles provide net positive value to the public? Or is this just for shits and giggles, consequences be damned?
[edited: you're right. this doesn't just harm the web]
In places like India I know that bribery and misinformation is more widespread than anyone could ever imagine.
Instead of a writer writing a clickbait article / low quality SEO (written by someone off-shore) article in 5 minutes, they could generate an article with our AI (provided they give us quotes, context, etc.) within that same 5 minutes. The difference is that we can iterate on our models and integrate our cross referencing fact-checking algorithms to ensure we generate meaningful articles.
> In places like India I know that bribery and misinformation is more widespread than anyone could ever imagine.
> Instead of a writer writing a clickbait article / low quality SEO (written by someone off-shore) article in 5 minutes, they could generate an article with our AI
So you acknowledge that there is something harming the world, and you want to make that harm even easier to do. And if you can profit from it, so much the better. Did I get that right?
Bribery and misinformation is harming the world. We allow you to have that same pace of writing, but we generate meaningful articles via our cross-referencing models.
Otherwise people would write whatever comes to their mind: clickbait/misinformation without proper cross referencing/fact checking.
I am very disappointed that another human being would pitch SEO spam, and automated SEO spam to boot, as something positive when we've seen for years how it rapidly and unequivocally destroys everything it touches. It is spam. It is pollution.
> Bribery and misinformation is harming the world.
Spam is harming the world, factful or otherwise.
> but we generate meaningful articles
It sure sounds like you generate SEO spam. You even advertise that you generate SEO spam. Your Show HN title is even "AI Generated SEO Spam".
> Otherwise people would write whatever comes to their mind: clickbait
SEO articles are literally scammy clickbait. Therefore, you generate scammy clickbait. "Fact checking" is orthogonal when your product is SEO spam.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don’t care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(x) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don’t want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don’t think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you’re a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I’m going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Wow quite amazing. I am thoroughly impressed with the quality. It seems real. I wonder, how do you think you are benefiting society with this technology?
The existence of this technology is bad for the world; the content that's created is a form of pollution. On the other hand, it's a pretty impressive demonstration of technical ability. I hope this project fails quickly, so that you can move onto a different, more prosocial one.
Counter-take. Since the SEO content garbage is currently spewed by hordes of content writers making little money, a successful AI can help them find a higher calling.
I hope projects like http://gltr.io/ can eliminate this type of content from search results, or at least give me a browser-based alert when I encounter it.
maybe this is actually a good thing if it makes junky SEO articles even more ubiquitous than they already are. it will force search engines to adapt and filter out this kind of noise, increasing quality in the long term.
Search engine algorithms may rank this kind of content highly. If someone disagrees, then their disagreement is with the search engine, not the content creator.
One important job of a search engine is to automatically cut through the "pollution." If it doesn't do that well, then ... it's not such a good search engine.
26 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 73.3 ms ] threadHonest question, not trying to be rude, but how do you sleep at night knowing that you're actively making the web^H^H^Hworld worse? I assume you must, because you have a super handwavy "ethics" section on your site that says ~"we'll look into it". Do you have a vision of the world where your SEO articles provide net positive value to the public? Or is this just for shits and giggles, consequences be damned?
[edited: you're right. this doesn't just harm the web]
Don't stop there. This is making the world worse.
Instead of a writer writing a clickbait article / low quality SEO (written by someone off-shore) article in 5 minutes, they could generate an article with our AI (provided they give us quotes, context, etc.) within that same 5 minutes. The difference is that we can iterate on our models and integrate our cross referencing fact-checking algorithms to ensure we generate meaningful articles.
> Instead of a writer writing a clickbait article / low quality SEO (written by someone off-shore) article in 5 minutes, they could generate an article with our AI
So you acknowledge that there is something harming the world, and you want to make that harm even easier to do. And if you can profit from it, so much the better. Did I get that right?
Otherwise people would write whatever comes to their mind: clickbait/misinformation without proper cross referencing/fact checking.
> Bribery and misinformation is harming the world.
Spam is harming the world, factful or otherwise.
> but we generate meaningful articles
It sure sounds like you generate SEO spam. You even advertise that you generate SEO spam. Your Show HN title is even "AI Generated SEO Spam".
> Otherwise people would write whatever comes to their mind: clickbait
SEO articles are literally scammy clickbait. Therefore, you generate scammy clickbait. "Fact checking" is orthogonal when your product is SEO spam.
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks (x) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it (x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don’t care about invalid addresses in their lists (x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (x) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (x) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft (x) Technically illiterate politicians (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (x) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud (x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free (x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? (x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don’t want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don’t think it would work. (x) This is a stupid idea, and you’re a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I’m going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
https://automatedinsights.com/
My second thought: let the new SEO war begin! I hope this time the SEO scum gets annihilated.
One important job of a search engine is to automatically cut through the "pollution." If it doesn't do that well, then ... it's not such a good search engine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html