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0 pointsmtlynch2y ago0 comments

Oh, I just mean like filling the web with so much garbage that nobody can find your website.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

DaiPlusPlus2y ago· 2 in thread

It’s gotten really bad over the past few months, but even before GPT was a thing scummy operators just used Mechanical Turk or Fiverr.

I don’t understand why Google is doing so poorly at filtering it out: for a concrete example, searching for terms relating to common semi-trivial problems when programming mainstream platforms like the web, Java, or C# will now result in low-quality, non-authoritative sites like GeeksForGeeks - or even W3Schools always coming up first, with authoritative sources like MDN, the W3/WHATWG, even StackOverflow sometimes being below-the-fold.

patmorgan232y ago

The site: filter is your friend! Google should be smart enough that you don't need to use it but it is what it is.

You can even create your own custom Google search that only returns results for domains that you list. So you could put stack overflow, reddit, and a bunch of reference sites (like mdn) and have super high quality search results.

DaiPlusPlus2y ago

I already do that when I can - but I'm more concerned about the legions of beginner-to-intermediate-level "coders" out there who will be learning outdated (if not woefully insecure) programming habits from those low-quality sources, which comes back to bite us all because, like it or not, companies hire people on the basis of how cheap they are, not about how competent and socially-responsible they are.

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