ublock ai slop list?

a year ago by potentiallynotfelix to c/firefox

has anyone noticed pages that are just ai slop popping up recently? they have low quality information and serve no purpose but to waste time.

if you haven't experienced these, just search up a common tech problem and click on a generically named site. chances are, it will have a table of context and generally low quality writing. if you get lucky, there might also be some blatant lies in there(for example: this site claims garmin instinct watches have an sd card).

is there a ublock origin blocklist for these? thank you for suggestions.

brucethemoose 52 points a year ago

The problem predates the AI craze. SEO slop started snowballing before.

Highly recommend reading this: https://www.wheresyoured.at/...

Non-Google search engines are kinda the in-progress solutions, as the sheer volume of stuff to block is likely intractable. Google has the power to fight it themselves, but, well, see the writeup...

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blargle 8 points a year ago

Reject hypertext, return to gophe

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LWD 1 point a year ago

deleted by creator

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skrlet13 1 point a year ago

LWD is taking about the protocol btw, if someone is confused (Google Gemini genAI also exists)

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besselj 42 points a year ago

With how much SEO spam/slop that comes up in search engines, it would probably just be easier to whitelist trusted websites

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SendMePhotos 13 points a year ago

Hi, what is SEO

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goldteeth 32 points a year ago

Search Engine Optimization. Basically gaming search engine indexing algorithms so that your content appears more "relevant" (read: crammed full of as many keywords as possible) and thus higher up on search results, usually at the expense of having, you know, actual content worth reading.

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SendMePhotos 6 points a year ago

I noticed a while ago that the search results were different. Then I noticed that I don't seem to be able to find what I need anymore

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syklemil 6 points a year ago

Yeah, it's the kind of thing that in utopia would actually help search engines and users find relevant pages, but under capitalism becomes "hey, listen! look at me my ads!"

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Hasherm0n 9 points a year ago

Search engine optimization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...

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Scrollone 7 points a year ago

Yeah we need to go back to a curated list of content like back in the days of directories.

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MoonMelon 30 points a year ago

It's not just tech. Gardening, DIY, cooking, and similar popular subjects have been completely destroyed by this crap. If I see an AI generated header image or thumbnail I immediately backpedal now because I assume that means the text is bullshit too.

The example stuck in my memory now is when I was trying to read about watermelon growing times and the article said they flower a week after germination.There's now frequently this, "oh GOD DAMN IT *close tab*" moment when you realize it's actually total slop. Like, "oh so this article is BULLSHIT bullshit."

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Chip_Rat 13 points a year ago

I have been worried about this for months. The moment of clarity for me came when I was looking up how to tan a hide fur off. I have done fur on and seen a dozen videos on it so I knew what I was looking at. Found this great looking site. Step by step. As I'm reading, something seems off. Maybe translation issues? The order here seems... Repeatative?

Then I look at the pictures.

First picture showed a hide being made into a drum. Ok, not exactly what I'm doing but yeah maybe similar process.... Next picture is of a dudes abs, with a tan line.... (Tanning the hide)

Next picture is a head table for a wedding... (Decorating)

It was surreal. And it is surreal. We are now returning to a time when we can't access information easily. Not because it isn't there, but because it's crowded by misinformation and half information.

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HouseWolf 8 points a year ago

If I'm looking for information that doesn't need to be super recent/up to date, I just limit my search results to before November 2022 at least.

It's the "nuclear option" but it's worked for me a handful of times.

Now just wish DDG let me have that filter for the images tab to make finding new wallpapers easier for me...

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goldteeth 25 points a year ago

I use uBlacklist with this filter and that generally keeps the repeat offenders at least out of image search, but clearing out every SEO-spam print-on-demand mimc-site was already a game of whack-a-mole before consumer LLMs became a thing; I imagine now it'd be like playing whack-a-mole with a hydra. Still, it does at least help.

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cmnybo 2 points a year ago

Search engines need to start using AI detectors and drop the ranking way down when any significant portion of the page is AI generated.

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usernamesAreTricky 19 points a year ago

AI detectors are massively flawed. They have terrible accuracy and have high numbers of false positives. Especially over short bodies of text like parts of one page

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Psythik 23 points a year ago

Recently? It's been happening for years.

Every one of these websites looks the same too. Like a mix between a blog and a wiki, and always in FAQ form. You can tell that they're AI-generated because the questions will seem related to each other but the answers often aren't.

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zurohki 21 points a year ago

chances are, it will have a table of context and generally low quality writing

Don't forget repeating the question over and over again. If my question gets rephrased four times in the first four sentences, it's a good sign that I'm reading AI slop and there's no actual answer in the pages and pages of text.

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VagueAnodyneComments 15 points a year ago

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Tenderizer78 10 points a year ago

Tried looking up how to bake wholemeal bread with just plain wholemeal flour and white bread flour (I can't buy wholemeal bread flour at my supermarket). AI really is everywhere and it's making the internet useless.

Guess I could've done the before:202X trick.

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MoonMelon 4 points a year ago

If you can find it, I keep a small bag of straight-up wheat gluten and I add a spoonful or two when I want to make stronger flour. A small bag lasts forever and a little goes a long way.

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wuphysics87 8 points a year ago

No, but I've had A LOT more cloudflare 'prove that you are human' boxes. And I had an infinite loop captcha. I don't have much in the way of extensions, and I wasn't using a vpn

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kurumin 8 points a year ago

Good idea

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fmstrat 1 point a year ago

Self-host SearXNG. Then you can blacklist sites, while getting all the other advantages of a search aggregator to boot.

Hopefully someone will make a plugin to do this over time.

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