???Algorithms and global ubiquity
Issue #289
A website with secrets to sow,
Optimised, ready to grow.
In the search engine dance,
It leads with a chance,
Top-ranked, where the keywords flow!
That’s a first, opening this newsletter with a limerick, albeit an extraordinarily clean one. Which makes me think, if, as we find out this week, that the Internet is a creative graveyard, where all the good content is? Clearly in newsletters. Happy Thursday, Simon.?
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Why do all websites look the same?
When it comes to search and SEO, Google has been the only game in town for the last 25 years. While it’s convenient for users, for websites and content creators it often feels like creativity has to fit into the algorithm. The result is an Internet experience where all websites pretty much look and read the same. Web-page design, article structure, SEO, trust and mobile-first requirements must all adhere to Google’s strict rules to appear in results. Makes you wonder what we’re missing?
Why are coffee shops the same too?
The rush to feed the algorithm has extended beyond the Internet to the real world. It’s not just Google in this case, social platforms are pushing global ubiquity as all businesses, including the humble coffee shop, attempt to get noticed on the digital world. The Instagram wall is forcing many cafes to create a space that customers want to photograph. And guess what? The recommendation algorithm is pushing the same kind of images.
领英推荐
A victim of their own success
While Google and the big social platforms have been successful in forcing content marketers to follow their lead, the results for customers aren’t great. A recent study has found that Google results are indeed getting worse. Why? The highest ranking sites are “more optimised, more monetised with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality”. They’re feeding the machine, rather than helping the customer.?
Cool tools
In the era of generative AI, the practice of training massive datasets has become the norm. However, artists often find themselves uncompensated when their creations are used for such training. NightShade allows you to take back control. By subtly introducing "poisonous" adjustments to your images — changes imperceptible to the human eye — you can disrupt models relying on specific training data, making it harder for them to exploit your work without fair compensation.?
What we're looking at
Happy Thursday
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This week’s newsletter was written by Tim Colman & Simon Kearney and edited by David Austin . Gifs produced by Bayu Wisena .
Pro-human speaker, writer and communications trainer.
1 年I was feeling some...malaise recently, whilst browsing the Internet and I think you've captured the issue in this newsletter. Everything looks and sounds the same, every male podcaster sitting in front of his great big (and completely unnecessary) pod mic telling me how "studies prove" that everything I am doing is wrong. Or every TikToker that is "trying this trend" cuz the algo likes it. Every YouTuber taking 20 minutes to tell me something that really only needs 30 seconds because longer videos make more money. Every guitarist posting headless videos playing some impossibly fast but completely tuneless riff. The Internet was supposed to give rise to a flourishing creativity but it's just a giant trend engine rewarding people for packaging themselves into algorithmically friendly boxes. We're all told to create with the audience in mind but the audience IS the algo now. And AI is going to make it almost unimaginably worse.