[HN Gopher] 'World of Warcraft' players trick AI-scraping websit...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       'World of Warcraft' players trick AI-scraping website into
       publishing nonsense
        
       Author : mikhael
       Score  : 244 points
       Date   : 2023-07-21 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
        
       | WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
       | Something tells me this is a hidden advertisement for WoW and
       | it's upcoming xpac..
       | 
       | I feel like journalism hit a new low every months, and it's not
       | going to get better any time soon.. is 'AI' the new 'tech'?
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | AI is the new journalism. Forget this at your own peril
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | There is no upcoming expansion for WoW announced. Literally
         | everything in the meme post is made up.
        
           | WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
           | You must be new to WoW, blizzcon is just around the corner
        
             | brailsafe wrote:
             | There's nobody new to WoW, it's a billion years old at this
             | point. Not that I'm not tempted to re-sub for the last bit
             | of the current patch.
        
             | Al0neStar wrote:
             | Last xpac was less than a year ago.
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | I am currently an active WoW player (just got Keystone Hero
             | for the first time this season!)
             | 
             | It is unlikely given the current patch cycle and plot that
             | a new expansion is announced this BlizzCon, but definitely
             | next year if not before then.
             | 
             | Either way, the argument that the BBC is doing this article
             | as a sponsored advertisement is absurd. Other outlets have
             | written up this story.
        
       | Cupprum wrote:
       | For a minute i thought it was supposed to be Glorzo from Rick and
       | Morty. That would be fun, people in WoW running around with
       | squids on their faces.
        
       | ac2u wrote:
       | Calling it now. Glorbo will be in the next patch.
        
       | caseyf wrote:
       | Deleting a now viral post is kind of a weird move from a spam
       | site that is probably desperate for traffic
        
         | coffeefirst wrote:
         | Yeah. But on the other hand, this is Made For Advertising (MFA)
         | content. The worst thing that can happen to it isn't notoriety,
         | it's getting on the naughty list with Google or the
         | programmatic ad markets. The former can gut its traffic, the
         | latter can gut its ability to monetize.
         | 
         | Ironically, it's looking like the war on trash AI content is
         | going to be fought by adtech firms who need to plausibly claim
         | their customers aren't going to be wasting money on worthless
         | inventory.
        
           | MSFT_Edging wrote:
           | Can we just make a new internet, and let the ad markets and
           | AI fight it out on this internet?
        
             | csense wrote:
             | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
        
           | tofuahdude wrote:
           | The jury is definitely still out on whether that content is
           | actually worthless inventory to advertisers.
           | 
           | Shit tier websites with "quality" ads (ie something I want to
           | click on more) can be very valuable to advertisers.
           | 
           | This fight needs to be fought by search, not ad tech. Ad tech
           | has too many perverse incentives.
        
         | PUSH_AX wrote:
         | Whatever it is they do for money, people visiting in this
         | context are unlikely to convert, taking it down also mitigates
         | a little of the reputational damage at least.
        
           | mmanfrin wrote:
           | The site is run by a competitive game tournament company
           | (that I briefly worked at) and I think eyeballs on the
           | article would have actually converted since it's different
           | branding.
        
       | robertlagrant wrote:
       | > Gaming sites traditionally employ human writers with a deep
       | knowledge of the subject
       | 
       | Citation needed.
        
         | jabroni_salad wrote:
         | well this is a WoW thread, so I guess icy-veins is the
         | citation:
         | 
         | https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/fire-mage-pve-dps-rotation-coo...
         | 
         | All of the guides on this site are written by top-ranked
         | players and backed by simulation data. Most of the guides can
         | be customized to your character's talent selections and the
         | leveling guides let you set your current level so as not to
         | show things you don't currently have.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | bjacobel wrote:
         | Gamergate was almost a decade ago. Let it go.
        
         | interestica wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | They didn't say how deep the knowledge is. Puddles have _some_
         | depth.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | Around here, we say more width than depth when politely
           | insulting someone's lack of knowledge. I assume it has
           | British influence
        
             | Apocryphon wrote:
             | More breadth than depth sounds better.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Breadth isn't a word a cowboy would typically use though
               | 
               | EDIT: after further thought, height isn't a word a cowboy
               | would use either. around here, there is a staggeringly
               | large number of people that say "width and heighth"
        
               | Apocryphon wrote:
               | Ah, well I was factoring in the British influence. I
               | could see such a modified phrase being used in an
               | academic setting for sniping between intellectuals.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | With Breadth, I think you are moving past influence and
               | flat out making it British.
        
           | Cpoll wrote:
           | But the analogous statement is "puddles are deep."
        
             | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
             | I don't see the problem. They are deep. Not as deep as a
             | lake but they are deep. They are also shallow. Not as
             | shallow as a divot made into a sheet of paper (which
             | doesn't go all the way through) but they are shallow.
        
         | tekla wrote:
         | "IGN writers exciting to start playing game they just finished
         | reviewing"
        
           | sharkweek wrote:
           | I know you're joking, but I do actually really enjoy a
           | handful of their YouTube reviewers, and more than once have
           | used their reviews to make a purchase decision for a game.
           | 
           | Only gripe is the kind of always float between 7-8 scores for
           | games that really should be ranked lower or higher, but the
           | content of the videos are normally good enough outside of the
           | score given.
        
       | 19h wrote:
       | I was trying to find out about video stabilization options on
       | Linux yesterday and stumbled over an article that extremely
       | confidently was discussing a tool that's maintained by the
       | ,,authors of ffmpeg" ... which surprised me. So I googled it and
       | couldn't find it. Then I put the name into quotes and found three
       | articles mentioning it, all by the same company.
        
         | worrycue wrote:
         | So it's actually starting to happen. LLM generated content
         | filled with hallucinations are flooding the web. The internet
         | will soon become completely useless as the signal to noise
         | ratio plummets until it's practically impossible to sort the
         | wheat from the chaff.
         | 
         | That AI transformer paper really is Pandora's Box.
        
       | rpastuszak wrote:
       | Haha, I made https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io (the site is my way of
       | poking fun at crappy AI startups, I won't spoil how).
       | 
       | Now, one of the biggest sources of traffic for me (ca 70-80% at
       | times!) are crappy AI app catalogues which not just include my
       | MeatGPT but also hallucinate the most beautifully stupid
       | descriptions of what it does.
       | 
       | I couldn't imagine this stuff working better to be fair: taking
       | that juicy slab of meat from my site and then proceeding to
       | repeatedly slap themselves in the face with it screaming "please
       | give me more".
       | 
       | I mean, I love generative art, and built a self-publishing
       | medieval content farm[1], but this thing just writes itself,
       | across multiple sites.
       | 
       | [1] https://tidings.potato.horse
        
         | getpokedagain wrote:
         | Why have you not posted this literally everywhere. meat-got is
         | da bomb!
        
       | gochi wrote:
       | Every time someone has used an automatically publish feature of
       | any type, it always ends poorly. Either personal information gets
       | posted they didn't intend, incomprehensible grammatical errors,
       | or as in this case completely falsified information gets
       | released.
       | 
       | It's a very old lesson we should have learned from newspaper days
       | but I guess with how fast people in AI are moving they don't care
       | about "old lessons".
       | 
       | Outside of that, it's interesting to see how people try to combat
       | and highlight AI platforms. Jokes like these, paywalls, limited
       | invites, increasing API costs, and so on. Very interesting times
       | for online information.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Old paradigm: A lie can travel halfway around the world before
         | the truth can get its boots on
         | 
         | New paradigm: An AI can conquer half the world before the
         | killswitch operator can pick their axe up.
        
           | lapetitejort wrote:
           | That's why it's important to suspend the axe above the wires
           | ahead of time. It's also important to to remind the AI that
           | the axe exists. The Axe of dAImocles
        
         | chiph wrote:
         | About ten years ago there was an Agile conference that
         | published a hashtag where anything that used that tag would
         | automatically get shown on the monitors around the building.
         | 4chan found out, and well, things went predictably.
         | 
         | Automatic publishing is always going to be vulnerable to
         | content poisoning.
        
       | b800h wrote:
       | Honestly at this point I'd be unsurprised if the Forbes article
       | about the trick was written by AI as well.
        
       | zamadatix wrote:
       | I hope the Warcraft developers call some real future addition
       | Glorbo now.
        
         | Apocryphon wrote:
         | Does Blizzard still do April Fool's jokes? If so they're all
         | set for next year.
        
           | rickstanley wrote:
           | Yes, but only out of season April fool's jokes.
        
             | Apocryphon wrote:
             | Is that a reference to the Diablo Immortal announcement
        
               | rickstanley wrote:
               | Yes.
        
               | Crosseye_Jack wrote:
               | Do you guys not have phones (to google the reference)?
        
           | jdwithit wrote:
           | They aren't as funny and elaborate as they once were, but
           | yeah, they still do post something every year. In the early
           | days of WoW they used to publish really good fake patch notes
           | that were right on the line of credibility with a couple fake
           | bombshells mixed in. The forums would melt down with posts
           | from people who forgot it was April 1. Good times.
        
       | politelemon wrote:
       | The crucial line:
       | 
       | > But again, there's nothing to stop this. These subreddits can't
       | only fill themselves with joke articles to screw up a site like
       | this, even if this one specific example is good for a laugh.
       | 
       | Most threads will be normal conversations, and reddit (and other
       | discussion sites) can serve as a simple way of summarizing and
       | generating news for 'free'.
       | 
       | I'm thinking that HN too could serve as a source for tech related
       | news, couldn't it? Summarize the target article, then join it up
       | with summaries/sentiments of the top comments in the thread. I
       | didn't say I'm doing it, but if I could think of it, someone's
       | probably way ahead of me already and has tried it.
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | They can't only do that but they can embarrass someone who's
         | passing an AI writer off as human. At minimum, they'll have to
         | message in some way that the article was written by AI lest
         | this trick is pulled to embarrass an author which was otherwise
         | considered to be human.
        
         | pdpi wrote:
         | Even if you don't want to just summarise the comments, you can
         | view the comments section for most articles as crowd-sourced
         | research on the topic. You can easily walk away from most
         | interesting discussions here with a shortlist of topical
         | articles, books, etc, and often some colour commentary straight
         | from the horse's mouth.
        
         | nfjro8 wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | frozenlettuce wrote:
         | I created a website that does the following:
         | 
         | - pick HN items with more than 400 votes
         | 
         | - gather their titles in a list
         | 
         | - ask the AI to filter out the ones that are not tech-related
         | (bay-area topics, politics)
         | 
         | - scrape selected articles
         | 
         | - write summaries
         | 
         | - publish static website
         | 
         | other sources are reddit subreddits and rss feeds (official
         | languages' blogs and github's releases page). The AI is quite
         | gullible. That can be avoided by giving it more context and
         | having a review step where you make sure that you are enforcing
         | your editorial rules. Another thing that I've been wondering is
         | having a cheaper model (gpt-turbo-3.5) write articles and then
         | use a more sophisticated to review them (gpt4)
        
           | lostlogin wrote:
           | > I created a website
           | 
           | I'd really like to see this - any chance we could?
        
             | frozenlettuce wrote:
             | It's https://dev-radar.com/, the repository is
             | https://github.com/lfarroco/news-radar
        
               | CrazyStat wrote:
               | Very difficult to read on mobile.
        
               | frozenlettuce wrote:
               | that's true! added some responsive classes to the columns
        
           | frozenlettuce wrote:
           | some additional info: this is the prompt that filters
           | "candidates" to be scraped: https://github.com/lfarroco/news-
           | radar/blob/main/src/candida...
           | 
           | This is the prompt that generates the articles:
           | https://github.com/lfarroco/news-
           | radar/blob/main/src/writer....
        
         | edavison1 wrote:
         | I keep hearing this sentiment on HN and IRL. As a journalist I
         | think it misses the mark somewhat by failing to account for the
         | value of reporting.
         | 
         | While some news can be generated exclusively from scraping
         | Reddit threads or whatever, most decent journalism incorporates
         | some form of reporting, i.e. the generation of novel
         | information from trusted sources. Even without reporting, if
         | you can't add to the store of knowledge in the world by writing
         | the article, it doesn't offer any value to consumers or
         | advertisers. That includes the the world of SEO spam. An effort
         | has to be made to distinguish your work from the competition,
         | or else your site isn't winning those top results.
         | 
         | Reddit threads are often just full of emotional responses to
         | news already generated in this way. At some point along the
         | line, a human has gone out and spoken to another human, forming
         | an novel angle or argument, pursuing a line of inquiry,
         | connected dots no one else has yet etc. That's news, not a
         | summary of existing attitudes.
        
           | Levitz wrote:
           | >I keep hearing this sentiment on HN and IRL. As a journalist
           | I think it misses the mark somewhat by failing to account for
           | the value of reporting.
           | 
           | There is valor added by journalists in even niche sectors. A
           | journalist that reports on cars knows about the industry
           | itself and can give an informed take on different
           | developments, he might know how a car works, he might know
           | about different trends in design, or markets, or whatever
           | else. That is his added value.
           | 
           | When it comes to videogame journalism, though, they act as
           | little more than spokespeople for corporations. They
           | generally don't understand the product or how it works
           | (mechanically or in terms of design), and in some cases
           | aren't even adept at playing videogames themselves. The only
           | thing the world would lose if no game journalist ever
           | mentioned WoW again and the devs communicated directly with
           | the playerbase would be the appearance of impartiality
           | journalists give.
        
       | archo wrote:
       | https://archive.is/ws3pw
        
       | ynac wrote:
       | Exciting! This looks and feels a lot like the counter culture
       | experience I had in the 80s as a hacker. The sense of fighting
       | The Man may now be taken up against The AI. Well played game
       | nerds!
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | I always like how this just brings to the surface the lack of
         | respect the creators of the thing, in this case AI, that it
         | will be abused by the public. The public doesn't care how/what
         | the devs want it to do. The public cares about what they can
         | make it do. See hot rods, overclocking, or any of the millions
         | of other examples.
        
           | ehnto wrote:
           | Yep, and even if the US regulates it, the public will take it
           | underground, and overseas will keep pushing on. The cat is
           | out of the bag.
           | 
           | I would still like to see these companies try and fix any
           | negative externalities mind you. If they just throw their
           | hands up at helping accelerate SEO spam then that'd be
           | disappointing.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | That's the thing that makes me laugh at the pageantry of
             | this time waste. Do people really think that US companies
             | are the only ones working on this tech? I love how the US
             | still has the notion that the rest of the world gives one
             | iota about its "morality" dictates.
        
           | Apocryphon wrote:
           | Now that's hacking
        
           | l33t233372 wrote:
           | > The public doesn't care how/what the devs want it to do.
           | The public cares about what they can make it do
           | 
           | This is _hacker_ news. I don't care about what it was
           | "intended" to do either; I care about what it can do when
           | pushed to its limits!
        
         | pksebben wrote:
         | I feel like we've seen this any time that the tools are new and
         | powerful enough - the folks unburdened by hierarchical
         | structure can and do move fast, so when there's a sea change
         | they can get in there and do some good damage until the
         | behemoths catch on and steer their resources towards shoring up
         | what they perceive as defects (frequently identified as
         | anything that reduces their control over any system or it's
         | connected parts).
         | 
         | My hope is that things get faster and more chaotic as we move
         | forward. The best stuff happens when the empowered are scrappy
         | and in it for the love and not the money.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Liquix wrote:
       | Link to the scraped post:
       | https://snoo.habedieeh.re/r/wow/comments/154umm2/
        
       | TechBro8615 wrote:
       | I don't doubt that the redditors caught this company using an AI,
       | but frankly the generated text doesn't look that different from
       | what an underpaid human would write. I'm sure most of these
       | gaming websites have a "content calendar" and "pipelines" for
       | paying their outsourced writers $0.80 per word with instructions
       | to source new content from relevant subreddits. With AI they've
       | just found a way to do it more cheaply.
        
         | olyjohn wrote:
         | Great. So now that they can do it more cheaply, they can afford
         | to do more of it.
         | 
         | I don't get what's up with this attitude of "It's already shit,
         | so it doesn't bother me that AI makes it even shittier."
        
         | monkpit wrote:
         | The article quotes the OP saying they hope it gets picked up by
         | bot-driven news sites. While it's possible, I don't think a
         | human would include that bit.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | $0.80 per word is actually really decent money; I'd expect them
         | to be paying a lot less.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | at first because of the context, I read it as C/0.80 cents
           | per word, but my brain got all tripped up over the dollar
           | sign. I then started thinking about looking for a way to
           | apply for that job. For $0.80 cents per word, I could wax
           | poetically for pages upon pages of nonsense. I could even
           | make it more beneficial for me by never using more than 2
           | syllable words. Using 3+ syllable words would start costing
           | me money.
        
           | TechBro8615 wrote:
           | Yeah, I think I dropped a zero :) For 80 cents a word I might
           | just switch jobs.
        
           | StrictDabbler wrote:
           | $0.08-$0.12/word is the rate for a quality short story in a
           | moderately respectable science fiction magazine like
           | Clarkesworld or Asimov's Science Fiction.
           | 
           | This is also a generally-quoted rate for blogspam.
           | 
           | The blogspam rate will crater in response to ML but still I
           | expect the short story to become a dead format. Many good
           | ones will be written but there will be nowhere valuable to
           | share or find them.
        
             | b800h wrote:
             | They'll need to create some sort of reputation system to
             | make it work. Alternatively, move back to typewriters and
             | not publishing online. AI reversing the internet again.
        
         | furyofantares wrote:
         | 80 cents per word sounds amazing, your comment is worth like 50
         | bucks at that rate. If it took you half an hour to write you'd
         | still be getting a pretty good rate.
        
           | olyjohn wrote:
           | It was probably just an example, not meant to be taken
           | literally.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | More discussion here:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36815902
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We merged that one hither.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | No surprise if LLMs cannot verify because they have no access to
       | the actual game. They bet on the data being good
        
       | constantly wrote:
       | I don't really play games at all and the only system I own is a
       | Nintendo Switch. I played the new Zelda and am really enjoying
       | it. When I get stuck or have a question I google it. When I
       | google it, I note that the top say 10 sites that answer my
       | question all have similarly-formatted articles and also have the
       | same mistakes in the answer to the question.
       | 
       | I expect nearly all the sites pointing to Zelda tips or FAQs are
       | not original in any way and are instead just regurgitated from
       | one another through AI to form a webring of shit.
       | 
       | At least I use ad blockers and block JavaScript so they don't get
       | some ad revenue.
        
         | BasedAnon wrote:
         | The only system I own is a PS2, the greatest console of all
         | time is still going strong in 2023
        
           | mikepurvis wrote:
           | Undoubtedly it had many hits, but a lot of the greats have
           | also since been remastered and can be enjoyed on newer
           | platforms with HD graphics and modernized controls.
        
             | BasedAnon wrote:
             | There's a certain point where I just stop caring about
             | further improvements honestly. My belly is full and I am
             | satisfied.
        
         | RGamma wrote:
         | On Kagi I just block that shit since it's relatively obvious.
         | Some trustworthy sites in this space are gamefaqs(!) and IGN
         | (and game magazines and others I can't recall now).
        
         | ericmcer wrote:
         | It's identical to cooking websites. Take the actual ~100 words
         | of relevant info and stretch it into a 10000 word article with
         | 20 ads on it
        
         | greggsy wrote:
         | I noticed the same thing with Zelda. The marketability of game
         | FAQs was realised up to a decade ago, but AI content
         | generators, optimised by time-honoured SEO, has evidently
         | accelerated the time to market for new platforms.
         | 
         | The success of TOTK, and the availability of articles and
         | Reddit posts has made it ripe for the picking.
        
         | ehnto wrote:
         | Yep, game wikis and guides have been a cesspool of SEO bullshit
         | for a little while now. I guess there's money in the ads.
         | 
         | I find it hard to believe Google doesn't have the data required
         | to figure out which sites should be getting domain authority,
         | but I understand it's an antagonistic and ongoing battle
         | between SEO spam and search engines.
        
           | p3rls wrote:
           | I have a platform for kpop at kpopping.com
           | 
           | The top domain for almost every result in my niche is a
           | shitty wordpress with centered text on a purple background.
           | It makes about $10-15k a month even with its lackluster
           | content. It's had spyware ads and porn ads. Still #1 for
           | every query.
           | 
           | The funny part is, bing, ddg are even worse. Welcome to
           | webapps in 2023.
        
           | derriz wrote:
           | Yeah I don't get it - without search dominance google's
           | entire business model is highly vulnerable. Why have they
           | allowed search quality to stagnate while pouring billions
           | into random tech areas where they have little competitive
           | advantage?
           | 
           | Nobody wants to see a page of copies/duplicates by SEO rank.
           | I recall years ago there was, for a while, a similar issue
           | with Wikipedia clones but that problem was addressed. Not
           | just games, recipes, but music lyrics, chords, etc - googling
           | almost evert niche interest is rife with it.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | > without search dominance google's entire business model
             | is highly vulnerable.
             | 
             | I think the massive amounts of data collected by android
             | devices while we're not using the internet and all the data
             | collected by chrome while we are browsing means that Google
             | no longer needs to mine our internet searches to collect
             | the most intimate details of our daily lives. That's why
             | Google no longer cares about investing time and money into
             | making their search useful for us.
             | 
             | In fact, it's better for Google if a company's customers
             | can't find their website due to all the spam because it
             | means that company now has to pay Google to place an ad at
             | the top of search results in order to be seen at all.
        
             | skywhopper wrote:
             | Google earns money on all the ads on all those trash
             | websites. So their immediate incentive is to drive traffic
             | to them regardless of the longer-term reputation cost.
        
           | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
           | >... understand it's an antagonistic and ongoing battle
           | between SEO spam and search engines
           | 
           | On the other hand, those Stack Overflow clones get top
           | billing all the time. I do not think this is a data problem,
           | but an incentives issue. More ads=good
        
             | DistractionRect wrote:
             | Indeed. And if you have to click through a couple of
             | results to find an actual answer, they get ad revenue X
             | times over answering your question with the first result.
             | 
             | There was a time when Google Search would nearly always
             | nail it with the first result, but now it feels like you
             | have to wade through several results and be a prompt
             | engineer to find relevant results.
        
               | dekervin wrote:
               | I use google out of habit. Bing is better and always find
               | the exact result I was searching on google.
        
           | CrazyStat wrote:
           | Recipes sites too. Recently I was looking at recipes for a
           | dish I wanted to try and noticed that two blogs had identical
           | recipes for "Grandma's X". I scrolled back up to the
           | obligatory five page essay and those were almost identical
           | too--one of them had clearly stolen the story from the other
           | and run it through one of those AI "paraphrase" tools to
           | change words here and there. It was pretty easy to tell which
           | was the original and which the copycat based on some strange
           | word choices in the paraphrased version.
        
             | JohnFen wrote:
             | Yeah, I don't search the web for recipes, ever. There's no
             | point. I just have a couple of big recipe sites I hit up
             | when I need a new one, instead.
        
             | renewiltord wrote:
             | That's the old pre-AI tools. They just thesaurus
             | substitute.
        
             | liveoneggs wrote:
             | Recipes have been one application that OpenAI/ChatGPT is
             | actually really good at. No ads, interactive
             | substitutions/scaling/conversions.
        
               | Baeocystin wrote:
               | "hey bot, I have {foodstuffs} available, I need to make
               | dinner for n people. Give me some options in the x style"
               | 
               | Probably one of my most-used prompts, and it's batting
               | close to 1.000.
               | 
               | Every now and then it will make a mistake, like
               | forgetting the salt, putting a step in the wrong order,
               | or the like, but far less often than you'd think. If you
               | already have even a middling amount of kitchen
               | experience, it's a fantastic use case.
        
           | itscrush wrote:
           | It does get deeper than just your mentioned surface level of
           | served ads.
           | 
           | Many of those wiki ecosystems are used to view-pump twitch
           | channels with embedded players, such as Fextralife's webring
           | of wikis being bought up and built up, and don't forget those
           | "1-feature VIP memberships".
        
           | iamacyborg wrote:
           | Google get paid for the SEO spam though as those sites always
           | run Google Ads.
        
           | botulidze wrote:
           | > I guess there's money in the ads.
           | 
           | I owned a basic wordpress site with some guides written
           | during COVID for a couple of popular (at that time) mobile
           | games. It appeared in top 3 searches for the <game name> +
           | <guide/event/best ...> combination.
           | 
           | Ad revenue was around ~$100 per month peaking around ~$150 at
           | the new content drops. I have abandoned the website since,
           | but it still is generating $100 here and there without me
           | actively working on it for the past 2 years.
           | 
           | To the point - yes, there's lot of money if you own a network
           | of similar websites. My competitors were paying $10-30 per
           | guide submitted on their website because a few guides could
           | easily get paid off in a couple of months from ad revenue and
           | keep generating it years afer.
           | 
           | I could write more detailed story if someone's interested.
        
             | iamawacko wrote:
             | I'd be interested in something like a blog post about this
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | Perhaps a guide? Might make $100/mo!
        
           | Arrath wrote:
           | I mourn the lost era of GameFAQs and rad ASCII art at the
           | head of pure text walkthroughs.
           | 
           | Now we have 45 minute youtube videos of "100 new player tips
           | and tricks for Red Dead 2!"
        
             | jcpst wrote:
             | There are people I know where I try to remember how we met,
             | and it'd be because of some obscure corner of the gamefaqs
             | forum.
        
           | lelanthran wrote:
           | But they do know. They are incentiviswd to send you to the
           | sites with the most ads, not the site which is most relevant,
           | because they make a ton money off those spam sites and less
           | of dedicated fan sites.
           | 
           | At some point I'm gonna say fuck it and simply maintain my
           | own list of searchable links, which score each ad with a
           | single negative point, and each relevant keyword or phrase
           | with a single positive point.
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | Oh Google certainly _could_ moderate their search results or
           | augment them with human knowledge. They 'd need a dozen
           | people per country, at most, for such a task. The problem is,
           | Google is already threading a very fine line regarding anti-
           | competition and bias especially in Europe... and say, they
           | would choose "Computer BILD" (a German tabloid) over Heise or
           | Golem (actually respectable media), or the other way around -
           | the outcry would be massive and so would the coming lawsuits.
           | 
           | Instead, it's better for Google to let the search go to utter
           | dog shit, blame issues on "algorithms" and get sites to _pay_
           | to play with ads.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | What I find amusing is that even when ChatGPT responds to my
         | gaming questions I find the response to be unusually wordy with
         | a surprisingly heavy into paragraph before it answers my simple
         | question.
         | 
         | Very similar to those few advertisement sites with a huge block
         | of wonky into text taking forever to get to the answer.
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | add reddit to the end of your search query
        
         | nancyhn wrote:
         | You're spot on in noticing the phenomenon of 'content spinning'
         | across gaming websites - it's an industry-wide issue as the
         | internet becomes oversaturated with information. Despite this,
         | even repackaged content can help players find solutions to
         | gaming challenges. Still, it's crucial to encourage these sites
         | to uphold content originality and properly credit their
         | sources.
         | 
         | The balance between user experience and content monetization is
         | a tough one, given that many of these sites rely on ad revenue.
         | Ad-blockers and JavaScript blocking can affect their financial
         | sustainability. For more original discussions about the game,
         | I'd suggest Reddit or game-specific forums, which often foster
         | more engaged communities. If you're up for it, your keen
         | observations could be invaluable in writing unique content on
         | Zelda.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | If I was dang I would permanently ban every user who did this
           | stupid bit of posting chatgpt crap in threads about chatgpt.
           | It's not funny, it's not clever, it's just obnoxious.
        
           | nekoashide wrote:
           | Or pay to buy a trusty AI to help you
        
           | sushid wrote:
           | Absolutely, 'content spinning' in gaming is an issue, but it
           | can still aid players. Encouraging original content and
           | source acknowledgement is critical. Balancing user experience
           | and ad revenue is tough for gaming sites. For unique
           | discussions, try platforms like Reddit or game-specific
           | forums. Your insights could greatly enrich Zelda content
           | creation
        
           | n42 wrote:
           | Why is this comment so obviously written by ChatGPT?
        
             | ShamelessC wrote:
             | Satire right? They're doing what the game strategy sites
             | are accused of? I don't know.
        
               | n42 wrote:
               | Probably -- it's just weird how much of an identifiable
               | "voice" ChatGPT has
        
               | booleandilemma wrote:
               | I wonder if it's the textual equivalent of looking at an
               | "average face"?
               | 
               | Is ChatGPT just blending all its sources together into a
               | wall of text that always looks the same?
               | 
               | https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-average-
               | face-...
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | The other problem with static sites is that it's trivial for
         | some jerkface to copy your content and repost it. The first
         | case of that I heard about was almost 20 years ago when it
         | happened to a friend. The social circle of the subject matter
         | was small enough that she could name and shame to get it taken
         | down. Today I don't know what you could do.
        
         | omeze wrote:
         | Yea, its tragic. When I was a kid I would often just go to
         | GameFAQs because that was the only real source, and the guides
         | would be surfaced in google. Its still around but Google gives
         | me 20 crappy ad riddled sites that require a new page click,
         | listicle-style, to get through a 5 minute area
        
         | Nexxxeh wrote:
         | Slightly off-topic, but sorta related.
         | 
         | ToTK straight up sucks for accessibility, cognitive and sensory
         | stuff especially.
         | 
         | I find myself using the ZD TotK map more often than I'd like:
         | 
         | https://www.zeldadungeon.net/tears-of-the-kingdom-interactiv...
         | 
         | And trying to remember what specific enemies are where is not
         | fun for me. Is it fun for anyone? The Compendium doesn't keep
         | track of them when you fight, despite the fact they respawn
         | every blood moon.
         | 
         | I want another Savage Lynel Bow. Where did I see that Silver
         | Lynel? I can't remember, but I'm not hunting it all across the
         | map hoping for the vague ping of my Purah Pad sensor when I'm
         | already on top of one. Should I be making my own notes as well?
         | 
         | The log is a great idea, but there's lots of stuff it doesn't
         | capture. The quest descriptions often aren't sufficient and
         | markers are often the person that started the quest. Great(!)
         | 
         | I appreciate the subtitles, but why is so much of the game
         | unvoiced?
         | 
         | Not a concern for me as I'm playing on PC, but why no button
         | mapping?
         | 
         | Even with internal FSR and AA disabled so it doesn't
         | occasionally dip to smeared potato quality, it can be hard to
         | spot things if you don't know explicitly where to look, even
         | for hawkish eyesight. The Ultrahand glow can help, but it's a
         | rubbish solution.
         | 
         | No colour blind settings. WTAF.
         | 
         | There are so many missed opportunities to make this amazing
         | game vastly more accessible. Nintendo has made it clear they
         | don't care about accessibility. It's a real shame, because
         | accessibility makes things better for everyone.
        
           | jabroni_salad wrote:
           | Do you not use the map stamps?
        
             | Nexxxeh wrote:
             | I do. But there are only ten different ones and they don't
             | tell you what thing you've stamped. So if you're stamping
             | enemies, which one is "skull"?
             | 
             | Why doesn't the game do this, it obviously knows what
             | enemies are where? If you've already encountered them, why
             | not just let you filter that enemy on the map?
             | 
             | Even if it made you take a photo like it does for the
             | compendium, that'd be better than the "sometimes vague
             | locations" we have now. Why not list map locations of that
             | enemy for all enemies in the compendium? Or at least the
             | special ones like Lynels, Hinox, Talus etc?
        
           | brvsft wrote:
           | > Not a concern for me as I'm playing on PC...
           | 
           | > No colour blind settings. WTAF.
           | 
           | Do color blind settings through the OS work for gaming, or
           | does the game have to be designed to accomodate to them in
           | some manner?
        
             | noitpmeder wrote:
             | The game usually needs to implement their own handling and
             | color shifts.
        
       | llm_nerd wrote:
       | Weird article. The way it vilifies what this site does --
       | aggregating and summarizing social media activity -- but then
       | _does exactly the same thing_ is hilarious irony, and perfectly
       | encapsulates the anti-AI contradiction.
       | 
       | Similarly, it celebrates that some random site published wrong
       | information, when the cause was a subreddit publishing wrong
       | information. e.g. Some rando happening into that sub would be
       | just as misled.
       | 
       | All in all, very silly.
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | > Similarly, it celebrates that some random site published
         | wrong information, when the cause was a subreddit publishing
         | wrong information.
         | 
         | If any legitimate journalism outlet posted wrong information,
         | it would be the fault of the outlet and _immediately_ be
         | retracted with a profuse apology.
        
           | msla wrote:
           | I think we all know that doesn't occur.
           | 
           | Retractions are printed in small type on an inside page, if
           | at all. That's been the rule for decades, if not centuries.
        
           | llm_nerd wrote:
           | "Legitimate journalism outlet"
           | 
           | It's some crappy gaming app that aggregates "news". Who
           | cares? This is such a meaningless bit of outrage about
           | nothing of any consequence at all, beyond "AI will not
           | replace us!" luddism.
           | 
           | I think it's a bit hilarious that you work for Buzzfeed. The
           | single and only reason I am aware of Buzzfeed's existence is
           | that they endlessly post listicles that are simply
           | aggregating reddit posts, tweets, etc.
        
             | minimaxir wrote:
             | > Who cares?
             | 
             | The people Googling information about World of Warcraft who
             | are getting misinformation.
        
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