The British entrepreneur says search results are plagued with ‘clickbait’

Google has plunged the internet into a “spiral of decline”, the co-founder of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab has claimed.

Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.”

He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”.

Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology.

  • @[email protected]English
    65•1 year ago

    Yeah, let’s absolve the individuals working at the companies who did this from all responsibility by blaming an abstract concept instead.

    Capitalism may be the game, and Google may have only been one of the players, but they’re still playing dirty.

    • @seejurEnglish
      45•1 year ago

      Because if Google didn’t exists, another company would have done the exact same. So yes, I think its pretty accurate to blame the system that make this business plan the only one to succeed.

      • @[email protected]English
        20•1 year ago

        So the people who made those decisions just get a free pass then?

        Come on, let’s hold people accountable. The system sucks, I agree, but the issues are massively exacerbated by the rich and powerful not being held accountable. So don’t let them hide behind economic ideologies or legal entities; point your finger at them.

          • @[email protected]English
            -1•1 year ago

            But which one do you think will lead to change? Blaming abstract concepts, or holding the people who are responsible accountable?

            I see no value in denouncing capitalism.

        • @[email protected]English
          5•1 year ago

          Not defending Google but the truth is legally, the directors at Google have to drive shareholder value and thus every legal opportunity must be explored. Not just a Google issue as many nations have similar laws that drive this sort of behaviour. Money wants to make money and the laws are structured in their favour.

        • @angrystegoEnglish
          5•1 year ago

          There are two opposing positions in this thread and I wholeheartedly agree with both of them.

      • @SpezBroughtMeHereEnglish
        -8•1 year ago

        Capitalism isn’t the problem. It’s corruption. So rather than fix the problem and hold the corrupt individuals accountable, you’d rather stop the symptom. But then the source of the problem is still there and manifests itself elsewhere. But it’s easy just putting bandaids on things, so I can see why that would be the crux of your efforts.

        • @AceticonEnglish
          7•1 year ago

          Corruption is the natural end result of Capitalism.

          Do you really expect that in a society were “Greed is good” Lawmakers and Law-enforcers would magically not be seeking to maximize personal upsides like everybody else and positions of power within the State that could be used for such personal upside maximization wouldn’t attract smooth talkers seeking to become filthy rich???!

          You need to be pretty naive to expect that an environment where the greatest measure of success and discriminator for receiving superior treatment is having lots of money, the people who can get power from salesmanship (which is what politicians are: selers of themselves and of ideas) and being mates with said salesman (i.e. those who get nominated to positions by the politicians) would not be driven by maximizing their personal wealth and the prestige and superior treatment that is given to the monyed.

          Given human nature, Capitalism without widespread corruption is about as realistic Communism (the whole utopia of everybody having the same, not the bullshit that the PRC and Soviet Union deem “communism”) and, funnilly enough. they both fail for exactly the same reason: Greed.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•1 year ago

          I’d have to agree. Morals and ethics (and the lack thereof) are what drives this perversion and the same can be seen in other economic models tried in the past like communism.

          One might argue that companies are forced to do this “because of the shareholders” but in the past companies weren’t always solely focused on short-term gain with long-term term consequences (enshittification) and they made their shareholders plenty of money for longer. It seems the focus now is to burn bright and die out fast, but that path isn’t inherent to capitalism itself.

    • @DadEnglish
      16•1 year ago

      Well let’s move on from the abstract concept and blame the people uphldng the system.