[HN Gopher] Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how t...
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       Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
        
       Author : crescit_eundo
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2024-04-16 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
        
       | csours wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
       | 
       | Linked doco by Dan Olson. Strong recommend.
        
         | blackhaj7 wrote:
         | Damn this is so good
        
       | melondonkey wrote:
       | Usually pretty scam savvy but dropped my guard and bought an
       | absolute garbage AI translation of The Little Prince on Amazon.
       | Now I research anything before buying
        
       | swatcoder wrote:
       | Example #732453111 of how the 2000's-era dreams of technology-
       | enabled infinite scaling were misguided and potentially damning
       | for the Internet.
       | 
       | Turns out scammers and spammers can technologically scale their
       | side too, and can even do so in a way that the host profits from
       | so that the host is disincentivized from doing anything about it
       | until it's already gone too far.
       | 
       | Now everything is flooded with noise and supported by ads and
       | meaningful human participation in content approval or customer
       | service is infeasible because we're already on the far side of
       | the transition and they can't match the established scale.
       | 
       | Whoops!
        
         | MR4D wrote:
         | Clearly we didn't think this through back then.
         | 
         | It should have been obvious to us that it is easier to create
         | noise than it is to create signal.
         | 
         | The idyllic dream of a free internet with long tails would be
         | replaced with a steadily worsening signal to noise ratio.
         | 
         | We cheered on when Google supplanted Yahoo! because the
         | computers were better at curating than humans.
         | 
         | Man, we clearly sucked at choosing the right path. Dreams of
         | utopia always hit hard when they fall.
        
           | ori_b wrote:
           | *looks nervously at the AI revolution*
        
         | isx726552 wrote:
         | This is why gatekeepers are still a good thing, and now the
         | gatekeepers are themselves somewhat democratized. Lots of
         | people now have their favorite YouTuber / Podcaster / etc. and
         | get book recommendations from them. And there is now a much
         | bigger selection of gatekeepers to choose from given the
         | variety of content on those platforms. It's not perfect, but
         | overall it is an improvement in many ways.
         | 
         | Now yes I would agree that a fully flat, bottom up, "everyone
         | is a publisher" world where everyone is on equal footing
         | (including the spammers) is impractical, but then again who
         | ever said that would happen or work if it did?
         | 
         | It remains to be seen what effect genAI has on all this,
         | though. Long term, it seems likely that the need for
         | gatekeeping will only increase due to the inevitable flood of
         | more and more generated junk.
        
           | pavel_lishin wrote:
           | I don't think that "gatekeeper" is the correct term for what
           | you're describing. Isn't it closer to "influencer", or
           | "taste-maker"?
        
             | swatcoder wrote:
             | Curator. But otherwise, they're right. Curation and
             | informal trust networks are the only way out.
        
       | ungreased0675 wrote:
       | The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses, but I
       | think Amazon deserves more scrutiny. They enable this entire
       | ecosystem of fake books and fake products.
       | 
       | I have to imagine that with the amount of data Amazon collects,
       | they could do a lot more to counter the epidemic of fakes.
        
         | morkalork wrote:
         | How about this account for a "polymath" who manages to churn
         | out a "book" almost every week on topics from AI to installing
         | cabinets and a whole bunch of pseudo science woo woo:
         | https://www.amazon.ca/stores/D.R.-T-Stephens/author/B0CC62LX...
         | 
         | They buy a lot of ads so I guess Amazon likes them.
        
       | webwielder2 wrote:
       | Stick to checking out books from your library / Libby. You'll
       | save money and might end up making discoveries you otherwise
       | wouldn't.
        
         | whartung wrote:
         | At my library you can check out sewing machines and power tools
         | as well.
         | 
         | And CA libraries have access to courses on Coursera.
        
           | jtotheh wrote:
           | My local library gives access to O'Reilly Safari. You have to
           | click around a bit more than if you had a full price account
           | but I think it's a great resource.
        
       | cush wrote:
       | If there any kind of liability for Amazon, they'd be able to stop
       | this practice in a heartbeat
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-16 23:00 UTC)