How one journalist found himself targeted by generative AI over a keyfob photo.
  • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I stand by my opinion that SEO basically ruined the internet. First keyword optimization made me scroll through seventeen paragraphs of someone’s life story before getting to a recipe for boiled eggs, and now this.

    Why would someone go to the trouble of making a law firm out of NameCheap, stock art, and AI images (and seemingly copy) to send quasi-legal demands to site owners? Backlinks, that’s why.

    Oof, back in the day all we had to do was write a nice email to get someone to put a backlink to our page into the sidebar of their Geocities page.

    • lurch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      i remember back in the day they had white on white tiny keywords on the bottom of pages. it was ridiculous. then google started to check if the text was visible 🤣

      the shenanigans will never end unless you have actual faithful people curating it and google absolutely won’t have it.

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I remember being like 14yo and learning that “SEO specialist” is a fucking job title. Even then I was like, that sounds like a fake job, what’s the fucking value of that?