[netsharc]

Tragedy of the attention-economy. Ad networks gives you money if you placed their ads on your site, so people got machines to generate fluff to earn some money. Now all search result is just bullshit pages to capture your attention until the banner ad..

A simple query like "Ford Focus wheel nut torque" gives pages with blah blah like:

> Overview Of Lug Nut Torque For Ford Focus

> The Ford Focus uses specific lug nut torque to keep wheels secure while allowing safe driving dynamics. Correct torque helps prevent rotor distortion, brake heat transfer issues, and wheel detachment. While exact values can vary by model year, wheel size, and nut type, applying the proper torque is essential for all Ford Focus owners.

And the site probably has this text for each car model.

Somehow the ways the ad industry destroyed the Internet got very varied...

[andrewaylett]

Bad example. I tried that search with Kagi and the first result was the answer, while the second was a discussion site which also gave me useful information: https://kagi.com/search?q=Ford+Focus+wheel+nut+torque&r=gb&s...

Then I tried it again with Google and DDG and all three gave me the exact same page as their top result: https://www.puretyre.co.uk/tyre-information/tyre-pressures/f...

[malfist]

And that site never actually lists the manufacturer recommended torque either. It's just all slop to get eyeballs.

[dionian]

i think there is a huge market for Quality detection in the future. imagine a browser plugin that could filter AI slop like an ad blocker does ads. im sure it exists already. But im sure it needs to get more advanced

[netsharc]

The plugin will probably need some LLM-technology...

So maybe in 2 or 3 years, the attention-economy "content providers" will use LLM to generate slop content for ad revenue, and the smart viewing public will use LLM to strip the slop and get the meat of the content...