Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands
I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!
Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):
It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:
Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:
Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.
Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.
That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.
Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:
(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)
Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:
https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:
One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.
A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."
Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:
The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.
Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.
This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:
There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:
The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:
https://moneygroup.pr/
Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:
https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/
All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:
As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.
A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).
Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:
Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.
Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.
As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:
As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.
All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.
Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:
This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:
We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:
Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:
Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:
But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.
It cheated.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A/N - I'm sorry this took so long I hope you all like it though! I'm gonna start working on the next part through my shift tonight and hopefully get it posted tomorrow!
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The jungle gives them exactly one day of grace. It arrives with klaxons and crew and a mood swing so sharp it almost feels rude.
“Campmates,” Ant says, already smiling like he knows this is about to get ridiculous. “It’s time to take on… the Celebrity Cyclone.”
Aitch squints at him. “You’ve said that like it’s meant to be exciting.”
“It is,” Dec adds cheerfully. The outfits arrive like a threat.
Capes. Tight shorts. Colours so bold they feel personal. Aitch emerges first and Ally actually has to grab Morgan’s arm to stay upright. Red cape. Red shorts. Painted on. No mercy.
“I am no longer Aitch,” he declares. “For the cyclone, I am the Red Hot Chilli Stepper.”
Tom wheezes. “You cannot name yourself that.”
“I just did.”
Tom’s next. Blue cape snapping dramatically, blue shorts sitting dangerously low. He strikes a surfer pose without irony.
“The Sapphire Surfer,” he says calmly. “I ride the waves of chaos.”
“You slipped over walking out of the bog yesterday,” Ally points out.
“Waves,” Tom replies solemnly.
Then Morgan steps out.
Orange. All orange. Cape flowing. Shorts offensively tight. A man dressed like a high-vis warning sign with confidence issues.
He spreads his arms. “The Pumpkin."
Aitch squints. “You look like a pumpkin that’s found self-belief.” Morgan grins.
Ally comes out last.
Silver cape catching the light. Silver shorts glinting like armour. The jungle seems to pause, even if it’s just in her head.
“The Sapphire Songstress,” she announces, lifting her chin.
Morgan’s grin shifts. Softens. Something quieter underneath it.
“Yeah,” he says, almost to himself. “That fits.” They line up, capes flapping, nerves buzzing.
The cyclone hits like a physical argument. Wind screaming. Water slamming. Foam balls flying with intent. Ally yelps when the first blast takes her sideways, laughter ripping out of her before she can stop it.
“THIS IS AGGRESSIVE.”
Aitch is howling, sliding, shouting his own nickname every time he manages to land.
“RED HOT CHILLI STEPPER DOES NOT FALL.”
Morgan plants himself instinctively between Ally and the worst of the blast, arm braced like he can square up to weather.
“You good?” he shouts.
She nods, soaked, hair plastered to her face, eyes bright. “Don’t you dare let go.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Tom wipes out spectacularly, skidding across the floor on his stomach.
“I’M SURFING,” he yells anyway. They fight. They slip. They laugh until their ribs hurt.
When the horn finally sounds and the cyclone dies, they’re wrecked. Drenched. Shaking with adrenaline.
Ant grins. “Congratulations, campmates. You’ve won yourselves a feast.”
Aitch drops to his knees. “I would like to thank my red shorts and my delusion.”
That night feels unreal. Food keeps coming. Real food. Plates piled high. Silence broken only by satisfied noises and the occasional stunned laugh. Ally eats until she has to physically stop herself.
“I’m… full,” she says, incredulous.
Morgan leans closer. “Say that again, slower.”
She nudges him with her knee. “Don’t ruin this for me.” They sit shoulder to shoulder, capes long forgotten, warmth replacing the ache that’s lived in her chest all week.
Aitch raises his mug. “To the final four,” he says. “Mental.” They clink cups. Laugh too loudly. Talk over each other. Stay up longer than they should.
For a few hours, the jungle gives instead of takes. Night settles kind. Ally falls asleep fuller than she’s been in days. Food in her stomach. Morgan’s presence steady beside her. The fire behaving, just this once.
Morning comes far too quickly after such a nice night. Ant and Dec step into camp while the air is still cool and everyone’s movements are slow.
“Campmates,” Ant says gently. “The public have been voting.” Ally’s stomach drops like it remembers before she does. Aitch goes very still.
“The campmate leaving today is… Aitch.”
For a moment, no one reacts.
Then Aitch lets out a breathy laugh. “Fair enough.”
Hugs happen fast but they’re heavier now, full of last things.
Aitch pulls Ally into a fierce squeeze. “You don’t shrink now,” he murmurs. “Promise me.” She nods against his shoulder, throat tight.
He grabs Morgan next, knocking their foreheads together. “Final three,” he says. “Go on then, Pumpkin.”
Morgan’s smile wobbles. “Go be loud somewhere else.” When Aitch walks away, the space he leaves feels immediate.
Final three.
Ally sits hard on her log, staring at the ground.
Tom exhales slowly. “This is mad.” Morgan reaches for Ally’s hand without thinking, fingers threading through hers like they’ve done it a thousand times already. She squeezes back.
“We’re still here,” he says quietly.
She nods. “We are.”
The jungle hums on, indifferent and ancient. But Ally doesn’t flinch this time. She leans into Morgan’s side, silver and orange pressed together, heart still sore, still full. Final three feels like standing on the edge of something terrifying and bright.
Starts in the past but cuts to 1998 halfway through.
Everyone speaks in English to the girls so they can perfect their English, but speak Russian (with subtitles) to eachother.
Movie starts with Natasha already partway through her training. It opens on the creepy red room gun kata the same as the MCU Widow movie. Training by various harsh women with harsh methods, Melina Vostakov is the only one that shows kindness.
Girls sleep with one hand handcuffed to the bed (this is to ensure they don't run away, as shown in Agent Carter series).
Red room training
Red Guardian (Alexei) comes in for inspiration (all full of himself) and some fight training for the girls.
Red room training.
Ballet classes.
Red room training.
Handcuff bed time.
Learning American watching American movies, cartoons and TV shows.
Red room training.
Some relationships with other widows. She makes friends with little Yelena (Natasha's ballet class goes in as Yelena's group goes out) and a couple of other girls (Oksana and ?) in secret, even though that is actively discouraged.
Handcuff bed time.
Red room training.
Then that fight to the death game that we saw Dottie Underwood play in flashback in that Agent Carter episode. Tasha's first kill is one of those friends (not Oksana). She's a little shocked at first, but quickly settles. Yelena tries to ask if she's okay but is struck by a teacher.
"Black Widows do not have friends"
She then becomes cold and distant to the other girls.
Red room training.
She becomes Dreykov's star pupil and we see her first mission. No wavering after killing some horrid crime boss and escaping his gang, taking some of them out on the way too.
Young Natasha assassinations montage!
This can be quite a short part of the movie, though it sounds long.
S.H.I.E.L.D. breaks up a Leviathan operation that is full of young widows. They take them to a S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital facility and are making progress in deprogramming them.
We see Red Guardian disagreeing with Dreykov, saying they should storm the facility and take the girls back. Dreykov says Alexei is too soft and spots Natasha. Sends her to infiltrate the facility, pose as a deprogrammed young black widow and burn it to the ground, no survivors. She wavers at the thought of killing all those girls. He says that S.H.I.E.L.D. are our enemy, using powered people to subjugate countries where they operate, to American control. We will not be controlled by S.H.I.E.L.D! Do it for your country, do it for Leviathan, do it for me or your teachers whatever works for you...
Do it for Yelena.
She pretends to not be interested in her, "Why would I do it for her?"
"She is your friend."
"Black Widows do not have friends."
“Perhaps I shall send her with you, she has never been on a mission before, yes?”
"I didn't say I wouldn't do it"
“We send little Yelena with you?”
"I work better alone."
“Very well.”
She infiltrates the base and is treated very nicely by S.H.I.E.L.D..
We see the other girls playing, they invite her to join them. She declines.
We see her pining for this way of life, and agonising over what is to come.
The signal comes in the dead of night. She hesitates, just momentarily, then follows her instructions, she has covertly gathered combustible material over a number of days, disabling the fire alarm/sprinkler system, setting the fire and sealing all escape routes behind her, wipes away a tear. Night guard sees and goes to raise alarm but she quietly takes him out, sets fire to their paper files and sets explosives on their hard drives. The fire is raging by the time she's finished. Some S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives are woken by the fire and rush to help, but it's too late. She takes some of them out on the way. Explosions!
She is rewarded with the Ohio mission, forming a unit with Melina, Alexei and Yelena. They warned not to get soft while they are away. We see them practice being a family, arriving in their new home. They work on the photo album, a whole year photographed in one day. As they do it they start to relax with each other and goof around. They really enjoy the Christmas pictures.
Cut to black, little visual or audio snippets, "going on an adventure", "Leave that, get in the car", the plane, Melina gets shot, "they have safe houses in Budapest, we have arranged one of our own, memorise the address", Cuba, snippet of Tasha's freakout when they try to take Yelena, "It's going to be okay", sedative, shipping container opening with Leviathan soldiers outside, separated from Yelena, both screaming for each other, snippet of red room training and cut to black.
Still in black, knock on door, cut to 1998 Natasha standing in front of said door. Pretending to be (someone).
Some time has passed. She has killed many in that time.
She has been sent solo to kill an elderly Dottie Underwood, they fight. Dottie manages to retreat upstairs to the bedroom, Mexican standoff. But Natasha recognises the handcuff marks on the bedpost, she wavers, Dottie begins to talk (Dottie says something like they finally found me... I made one mistake 50 years ago... They don't care about you... You're only as good as your last mission... What was your last mission... Sao Paulo? Ah yes, the ambassador's residence, the ambassador, his family, 3 staffers, 2 guests, 4 security operatives and a catering company...My dear, how many lives have you taken? For whom? Mother Russia? Leviathan? Are you loyal? Or did they threaten you? No? Someone else then... A little friend of yours perhaps? Yes, I know, I know, Black Widows don't have any friends... They sent you to kill me because of what I know, the location of their red room, where they take poor little girls to brainwash them into killing machines... Take me to S.H.I.E.L.D. instead and defect, have a life that doesn't leave so much red in one's ledger... Everything I remember about the red room, all that I have learned about Leviathan since is on this microfilm... It could take them down... No Leviathan, no red room, no red room, no widows... Your friend will be free). Dottie calls Peggy Carter, phone tapped. They are attacked by Widows on the way in. Dottie saves Tasha's life at the cost of her own (a little less red in my ledger...) and gives her the microfilm (old school!) with lots of Leviathan secrets and the location of the red room.
She attempts to defect, meets Peggy but keeps the microfilm hidden. Gives Peggy Dreykov's name ("General Dreykov? Special envoy for Russia, advising the US administration towards the end of the cold war. Track him down..."). Regrets it, panics.
She is left with Agent Clint Barton as her handler, but freaks out at night in the cell with no cuffs on the bedpost and escapes, calling in to Melina. Melina listens, says she can't help her, apologises (secretly giving her a coded safe house location “Do you remember what I said to you in the plane? Do you? It is so important…that you should do as you are told…Turn yourself in Tasha”) and hangs up, flashes back to actual plane conversation and safe house comment. Hunted by Leviathan, Widows, Hawkeye and S.H.I.E.L.D., she flees to the safe house in Budapest.
It's actually Hawkeye that tracks her down, he is supposed to retrieve the microfilm at all costs so they can shut Leviathan down for good. Peggy warns him not to underestimate Natasha even though she's only 14, she's seen widows younger than Natasha kill without compunction. Fury adds that he may well have to kill a 14 year old girl in order to retrieve the microfilm, and he must retrieve the microfilm so Fury never has to say those words again.
His presence alerts Leviathan. Dreykov comes to deal with his former star pupil. All hell breaks loose with Leviathan, S.H.I.E.L.D, Widows and local authorities trying to get to her and the microfilm.
Realising she can't go back she covertly stalks a covert Hawkeye, convinces him that she does want to defect, she just freaked out and they flee, hotly pursued (lots of chasing with various vehicles, maybe a fight on a boat?).
However, they can't evade everyone. Clint calls in to S.H.I.E.L.D. and convinces them of Natasha's story, but they have no extraction as there are too many factions in play. S.H.I.E.L.D. suggests taking out Dreykov, which would leave Leviathan and the widows in disarray. Natasha doesn't want to do it, "just get me out of here". Mitchell Carson says "these are the terms for your defection, otherwise we can't help you. Effectively all you've done so far is give us one name and confess to all your own crimes. We can't take down Leviathan without that microfilm and you won't give it to Barton because it's your only leverage. Both of you have been seen, so you can't mail it.".
They discover Dreykov's official residence is in Budapest, but he isn't staying there.
His wife is not at home. His daughter goes to an international school there.
They courier Natasha a uniform, she poses as a new student, befriends Antonia, invites her out to play knowing she will have to ask her father. Antonia walks her to the building and goes in, Natasha gets a visual on Dreykov. Barton radios and asks her if they should carry out the attack. She says wait, Antonia isn't coming back out. Natasha has been reported as a possible sighting by local authorities, S.H.I.E.L.D calms the situation down (they have permission from the government for an airstrike). But this has alerted Leviathan...widows and the Hungarian police and military are on the way. Antonia still hasn't come out. Dreykov is saying, who is this new friend, what did I tell you, trust no one, where is she now. Cut back to Natasha
"Natasha, do you have a visual?"
She hesitates, "Natasha?"
Dreykov looks out of the window, sees her
She sees him see her, sees Antonia looking at her
"We're good to go"
And walks away
Explosions!
Leviathan operatives and Widows are converging on her position, but Barton finds her first, "this way!".
They manage to fight their way out or evade Leviathan but then run into a big group of widows. Everyone draws their guns, they are outnumbered, but the widows don't shoot. "Is it true? Is Dreykov dead?", "Yes. The rocket hit right where he was standing." says Romanov, hopefully.
"And S.H.I.E.L.D. have the microfilm, we can move on Leviathan in the next few days." lies Barton
"You're free" says Romanov.
As they're leaving she remembers Yelena, "If you see Yelena, will you tell her? Yelena? Yelena Belova? Will you tell-" but the widows are getting the hell out of Dodge
Clint urges them to do the same. They sneak into that hidey hole that Nat and Yelena use in the MCU Black Widow movie and have a big heart to heart. Natasha figures Yelena is freer without her now that she's tied to S.H.I.E.L.D.
They talk about the hit.
"No child should ever be put in that position"
"I've done worse. I've got a lot of red in my ledger."
and
"Who is Yelena? Friend of yours?"
"Black Widows don't have friends."
and
"Do you ever have second thoughts about killing someone? Regrets?"
"Every time. But that's just part of being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, being a soldier"
"Yes. That's true."
"But you don't have to be a soldier any more."
They also talk about the farm. Only Fury knows about it as per Age of Ultron.
They fall asleep. Coulson and May retrieve them in the morning.
S.H.I.E.L.D. systematically shuts down the Leviathan operations, ending with the red room and deprogramming widows.
Post credits:- As Natasha is only 14 she goes to live with Hawkeye and Laura. No more violence...for a while.
#project hail mary
#cats of tumblr
#photography
