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Comment by throwaway290 | Hacker News Reader

> Like google has strip mined the internet and left a toxic pit behind

Sorry, what?

For a certain use-case, I'd say I agree. I would argue that the basic web browsing experience for the less technically minded is worse than it was in the past.

For example, I am still working with my partner to get her to recognize and ignore the top level garbage: sponsored links and obvious SEO bait* when she blasts off a "Best <kitchen widget> 2023" search.

*You know, those listicles offered up from a handful of different sites that tend to be a 'top ten' list of a selection of 15 or so different products that are mostly just 7 actual different products white labeled by some brand and sold on amazon through a referral link in the listicle.

Web is not limited like physical real estate and SEO spam does not take away some virtual land from useful content. If you think Google is useless and full of spam the best way to deal with it is to simply not use Google

SEO existed before Google.

Yeah, but back then we were all just cramming "Britney Spears" into our Meta Keywords tags; we weren't actually eroding the quality of our entire web properties to court a live-or-die relationship with a single traffic vendor.

The toxic pit in this case is the transformation that occurred "ecologically" to the way contributors and agents on the web interact with eachother. This was strongly affected by the major centers of gravity in the 2010s like google and facebook. Unfortunately, their stewardship was focused around leveraging centralization towards profit rather than towards making the web a better place for users. And so here we are today.

FTR, I think youtube is one (among a few) exceptions to this overall trend from google.

A bold claim considering the shitshow that is ContentID ? (To be fair to Google, they were stuck between a rock an a hard place...)

The way ContentID is put to use may be the best interpretation of copyright. You get to reuse someone's work and the original author gets paid. There are some false flags reported with it but it's hard to say how many are due to actual violations (when you legally license a song from me but you didn't know I illegally sampled Taylor Swift and so you go complain about YouTube when your video is demonitized). I heard the bigger issue is false DMCA takedowns by shady companies who don't participate in Content ID...

I though that false DMCA takedowns were punished quite heavily ??

Well if the victim is in another country or an average person without money for a lawyer what can be done?

Then it's that country that starts legal pursuits against them ? The average person only has to complain to the authorities, they don't need to sue the company, don't they ?

- YouTube is in US

- US company false DMCA's your video

- you are in Nigeria for example, whom do you complain?

- YouTube subject to US laws and must comply, while you can't do much

- YouTube probs doesn't have much incentive to investigate or sue false DMCA

If that becomes an issue, you can just stop using platforms like YouTube.

Seriously, if there any organization that has done more to advance the web, IDK who it is.

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