Technology

With what passes for news these days at most outlets I can't say I feel too bad for them that someone else beat them at their own game of feeding the masses surface level doom scrolling slop for engagement and ad impressions.

Hell, a large chunk of the junk being put out by these same outlets is trash written by the AI solutions they are paying for. Probably solutions from the likes of Google that is giving it to them at both ends.

Once the snake finishes eating its own tail maybe the good reporters will still have somewhere that pays them for the good work they do.

Glad this is happening. These are the same news outlets that provide Google with your information and pay Google for ads.

They can all bust for all I care.

One of the problems that the major news outlets have is that they repeat each other. It's not merely an issue of AI compiling news stories, but that on top of the fact that all of these newspapers are doing hardly any research. For example, if you live in a town that's not too large, there might only be one local paper, and they might send out reporters to local events. Obviously you would then go to that newspaper if you wanted to learn about local events, because they are adding explicit value.

But if you're trying to read about national politics, a lot of the information is going to be the same in a lot of the newspapers. Which means nobody cares about the newspaper itself. And this is a creation of the newspaper's own decision making over the past few decades.

Watch his recent interview with Nilay Patel from The Verge. Watching him dance around questions about this was painful.

This man only cares about increasing Alphabet stock prices to ensure as large a golden parachute as possible on the way out.

Wouldn't this kill their ad revenue? Which is like...most of their revenue?

People really trust it? Like it’s been so wrong on things for me, I automatically skip to search results past it. Why bother anymore

Which is such a shortsighted move because as soon as all the news portals close shop Google's scraper will have nothing relevant to summarize and is gonna be shit.

No! Pushing AI generated garbage is our job!

Lol maybe they shouldn't have covered up the genocide in Gaza

“Every day, we send billions of clicks to websites, and connecting people to the web continues to be a priority,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “New experiences like AI Overviews and AI Mode enhance Search and expand the types of questions people can ask, which creates new opportunities for content to be discovered.”

They followed up with: “You can totally trust me, and everything I just said. I am absolutely definitely not lying.”