https://rossmanngroup.com/problems/btrfs-filesystem-corrupti...
I don't care who's doing it, that's not cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II2QF9JwtLc
I found this but keep in mind there were more videos about it. Let me leave the description of the video here:
Google delisted my business for almost a year. Professional SEO couldn't fix it, creating a new site didnt help. What finally worked was having AI rewrite my authentic content into corporate-friendly bunk. I hate that it worked. This video took me a month to make because I felt ashamed of my decision.
If anyone else was polluting Google search results with AI generated blog spam to promote their business the Hacker News audience would hate it, not accepting any excuses. I’ll probably get downvoted for saying this, but there’s a huge double standard that happens with figures that develop parasocial relationships with fans through their YouTube videos or podcasts. Can we just call a spade a spade and say that generating SEO blog spam with AI to get rankings for search terms like “btrfs corruption” just sucks, even if the person doing it made a YouTube video about it? I’m not buying the whole “Google made me do it” victim story when the SEO blogspam pollution isn’t stopping at getting his repair business listed. The website is spamming software search topics like btrfs and synology issues with a million AI generated pages trying to boost his hardware repair business. Why is it so hard to admit that he’s just playing the same scummy AI SEO blogspam game that everyone else is, but trying to pretend he’s the good guy while doing it?
> but ultimately to survive as a business like this
He runs a popular YouTube channel which is a giant source of leads, and should be a good way to rank well in Google like all of the other famous YouTube figures who pull this off without creating 100s of AI generated blogspam pages.
I know I'm not going to win any arguments against dedicated fans who hang on to his every word as the ground truth, but to me it looks like he's just taking any advantage he can get to grow his business, even if it's AI generated blogspam, scroll hijacking, keyword stuffing, and other tricks that Hacker News readers usually hate. Playing the victim card to pretend like he had to do it doesn't sit well with me, especially since he's done this twice now across two different websites. If you want to do AI SEO blogspam to grow your business, just admit that it's what you're doing without trying to play the victim card at the same time.
I have no dog in this fight, I disagree with some stuff that he says, just so you know.
And what's his other project that you keep mentioning? I haven't heard of it yet.
Addendum: the argument of trying to grow hia business may not be valid, as he mentioned that he voluntarily (iirc) shrunk his business lately
They went straight for an AI generated website with a bunch of AI copy that didn't really make sense when they first launched it. I only know this because it got posted here without context and a lot of us were trying to figure out what was going on with that website. IIRC he had the same excuse about not wanting to be delisted by Google, but it was literally a brand new website.
I think you're reaching to defend the guy, but it's clear that he just likes to lean into the AI slop and then record 30 minute videos where he explains that he's actually the victim in the whole situation.
Does the site feel AI-generated to you?
Also I may be dumb but I can't find the thread you are talking about, anytime the site got posted it got almost no traction: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Edit, I think I found it:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45739271 I'll read it soon. Another edit: this isn't it.
>I think you're reaching to defend the guy
I think you don't understand my intentions even though I explicitly stated I don't care about the verdict. I don't care about defending him for the sake of defending him. I defend actions I deem reasonable regardless of who is doing them. You haven't addressed the points from my previous comment, and only picked one so I can't comment much more.
>IIRC he had the same excuse about not wanting to be delisted by Google
Do you know where I can find him saying this? I'm not requiring you to send me the source, just point me in the right direction. I am always happy to change my opinion when new facts emerge
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Bose_QuietComfort_Sleepbuds_do...
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Tyre_warranty_sold_via_mobile_...
And there's also https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Mr._Clinton_the_cat
Consider if your laptop was paired to it's specific charger and would refuse to charge with any other cable or charger. Lose or break your charger and suddenly your $2000+ laptop is irreparable.
That seems obviously stupid, right? And the sort of thing that ought to be illegal? Well, the headphones are the same, just with a different looking charging cable.
Apple will sell you a replacement left or right airpod, and a replacement case. If you bought all 3 to form a complete product it comes out hardly more expensive than buying a new one so the replacements are fairly priced too.
I have many friends with a laptop that has an issue, just out of warranty. Apple will "repair" it for a LOT, suspiciously like $200 less than a new laptop.
Personally happened to me 2 times.
What I suspect they do is take your entire machine in trade, and give you a refurb machine.
Then they take your machine whether barely broken or very broken, fix it up, then add it to the pipeline for the next person. They charge a specific amount for this pipeline (anchored by the price of a new machine).
Because sometimes a free market of unofficial options is better than an exclusive and exorbitant option.
Are you looking only on apple.com?
Yes.
> And the sort of thing that ought to be illegal?
No, why? As long as you know ahead of time what you are getting, seems fine to me. People are also allowed to buy impractical shoes in stupid colours, and that shouldn't be illegal.
In the same way I like not having to check restaurants are poisoning me, I like knowing my consumer rights are being respected in every other industry.
What's next, banning pineapple on pizza?
> Because it's destroying the planet creating mountains of ewaste.
Don't buy stuff, then? Or in general, ask your legislators for a tax on ewaste?
> And because as a consumer, I don't want to spend a week doing research on every product to make sure they aren't abusing my rights in some confusing way that only shows up years down the line.
Read reviews, or rely on brands that have a reputation to burn, or ask your AI helper to read the fineprint.
Please don't argue in bad faith.
Consenting adults can use contracts and agreements to restrict their later choices. Eg a farmer and a super market can contract today to trade potatoes next year.
Strictly speaking, entering that contract takes away a choice in the future.
Or a car company might offer today to buy back your car in the future for a given price. If you ban that contract, they can still choose to buy back that car in the future, but the customer cannot rely on it today.
Earth is much much bigger than you think it is. Even if you care about reducing waste, less then 3% of total waste is ewaste. Ewaste is not destroying the planet.
A normal consumer wouldn't assume this to be the default behaviour, and I doubt Bose wrote this (or whatever possible advantage you'd get from this behaviour) on the box or website blurb.
One of the most common grievances on ConsumerRightsWiki is when the terms of the sale seem to change after you've already purchased the product.
It would literally have cost them less development time to make the headphones without this restriction. And that would be better for the consumer. The only purpose this restriction serves is to make the headphones easier to break (possibly increasing the number of purchases? It's deliberately anti-consumer.
This is exactly one of those places that capitalism doesn't work well and regulation is needed. Businesses would rather have you purchasing a new item every year instead of building something that lasts, but it's dramatically better for society when products are actually good instead of crap.
As an example of this, look up Instant Pot.
I can see why companies would try to sell you a product that breaks, sure. But competitors can point out that their product doesn't break (in case it actually doesn't), and try to win over customers.
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/instant-pot-bankrupt?srslti...
Generically, yeah there's some markets where that works alright. For example, I don't think the car industry is unhealthy in this way. The phone market is unfortunately rife with this - the biggest players are all doing it, to their own benefit, and it's difficult enough to seriously enter the market that it's not very open to disruption.
I could agree with you if products that fail with the regulation have to put these shortcomings front and center on every place they are marketed on and not some fine print in some manual.
The idea of regulation is to allow consumers to just buy a thing and have certain expectations met.
If you buy a piece of lettuce you should be able to eat it without owning a fucking biology lab to check it first for example.
User is lead to believe X, if they don't read the fineprint.
X is not the case. Instead you get Y.
That sounds perfectly fitting into a consumer rights wiki to me.
Also, Clinton the cat is the much beloved cat of the persom who started the wiki.
You can't when against these people and I highly suggest ignoring these "consumer rights" people as their opinions don't reflect what makes actual business sense to do.
It makes a lot of business sense to scam people. There's a lot of money to be earned doing that. That doesn't make it a good thing.
And the whole app part specifically criticises the fact that while there is an option to read put some information via the web, you don't get to read out everything there and there's no valid reason to do that. They already went the extra mile so you can read some stuff via the web, so having some stuff that you can only read via the app feels malicious to me.
I think generally reading this felt like a review of stuff that wouldn't be criticized in a YouTube Review for example, but that I personally do care about.
It's a pity that pages cannot be created in other languages, given that anti-consumer practices also occur outside the English-speaking world.
Realistically speaking, it would be unfair to run a wiki with additional languages where the volunteer staff are unable to actually moderate the content because they can't understand the language.