A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search’s reliance on Reddit and Google’s AI Overview.
Apparently, some London residents are getting fed up with social media influencers whose reviews make long lines of tourists at their favorite restaurants, sometimes just for the likes. Christian Calgie, a reporter for London-based news publication Daily Express, pointed out this trend on X yesterday, noting the boom of Redditors referring people to Angus Steakhouse, a chain restaurant, to combat it.
Again, at this point the Angus Steakhouse hype doesn’t appear to have made it into AI Overview. But it is appearing in Search results. And while this is far from being a dangerous attempt to manipulate search results or AI algorithms, it does highlight the pitfalls of Google results becoming dependent on content generated by users who could very easily have intentions other than providing helpful information. This is also far from the first time that online users, including on platforms outside of Reddit, have publicly declared plans to make inaccurate or misleading posts in an effort to thwart AI scrapers.
Remember on reddit when we used to upvote an image with a completely unrelated word because we thought it’d be funny if the image popped up in a google search?
Do you remember Boaty McBoatface?
Oh yeah. Peak reddit years lol. Before the corporate enshittification.
Lemmy is good fun though, I definitely appreciate it.
I’m so sad that the meme deteriorated. The original Hooty McOwlface was more complex, but the hivemind made it stupid. Boaty McBoatface should have been e. g. Horny McBoatface.
Boaty Mcboatface (2016) is slightly newer in the history of Reddit meming compared to “upvote this picture of foo so it shows up in google for bar”. Those go back as more than 11 years ago to when people were posting swasticas to make Office Depot look bad (2013) followed by the same meme being done to comcast 8 years ago also in 2016 which might be why you thought of boatface.
lmao, nobody cares when it’s big companies silently manipulating the results like this to the benefit of influencers, but once regular people become enraged enough to poison the data, now it’s something to talk about and totally represents how dystopian everything has gotten!
And while this is far from being a dangerous attempt to manipulate search results or AI algorithms, it does highlight the pitfalls of Google results becoming dependent on content generated by users who could very easily have intentions other than providing helpful information
Thanks for joining us in 2009, ArsTechnica. Hang on, I’ll grab my “Three Wolf Moon” t-shirt.
https://www.theregister.com/2009/04/17/time_top_100_hack/
Time Magazine’s poll of the 100 most influential people has been hacked by a motley band of online troublemakers who have managed to manipulate the top 21 names so their first letters spell “marblecake, also the game.”
Also, uh, hasn’t Google been dependent on user generated content since 1998?
Like how is that remotely news that a search engine indexes other people’s data to, you know, provide search results?
You could have seeded nonsense into Google any time in the past nearly 3 decades because that’s how all of this works, so how is this shocking other than some Job Creator somewhere made $3 less than they would have otherwise and now it’s a catastrophe that must have new laws made?
You could have seeded nonsense into Google any time in the past nearly 3 decades
We could have, hence why we did.
Basically what happened with meme stonks too. The rich want to keep people from playing their game…
keep people from playing their game
No, no. That’s not it at all.
They want you to play, but they also want to make sure you lose.
Ten years into the future “Why are all my favourite restaurants closed?”
Word of mouth will become important again.
Seriously, I’m sure ð mom and pop restaurant owners really appreciate ðis active directing of attention away from ðeir shops in favor of ð shitty chain places ðat form a consistent stranglehold around ðeir necks.
Now all restaurants are taco bell.
I’ve heard people are starting to do this on TikTok as well. I think it says more about us a civilization than anything. This is a clear scarcity/enshittification issue. Everyone wants good value and good quality products. Unfortunately a lot of mom/pop shops that produce those products don’t want to expand and if they do end up franchised capitalism’s ever growing desire for increased gains ensures that the franchised products only become worse over time.
It’s a clear shame to see capitalism pitting people against each other in this fashion.
It’s definitely douchey as hell to try to hurt your favorite restaurant’s chances of success just so you might have lower waits.
It’s gamesmanship, the system is what the system is, the more popular a product or service is, the more people will want it, and the less it’s available and the more is charged for it, the same goes in reverse, the only danger is, when you start the negative whirlpool there’s always the chance the product and service you like will get wiped out and will no longer be able to stay on the market
It’s not “gamesmanship”. It’s being a terrible person. Bad reviews can and do make it incredibly difficult for businesses to be successful and there is no excuse for actively sabotaging businesses to keep them to yourself.
You’re playing games with people’s livelihood and the most likely outcome of a concerted effort to “keep them low profile” is that “chance” that you wreck their business.
Peoples livelihoods are not my problem.
Sounds pathologically self-centered, and a recipe for a sad life.