Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> 1) view their page for ads 2) click on their affiliate links 3) buy the product they're selling.

1 and 2 are trivial to detect. 3 is harder but still not impossible given Google's machine learning capabilities and existing datasets.

Downrank or ban ads & affiliate links and you remove any incentive for creating spam sites in the first place.



So you’d downrank sites like Tom’s Hardware or wired.com? Both of which show ads and have affiliate links


If other content that doesn’t have those annoyances matches my search query then I would absolutely want to see it first.

This would also put pressure on content creators to tone down the ads or explore alternative monetization models.


Do you pay for Consumer Reports?


I paid for Which? which is the UK equivalent. Would've subscribed again when I needed it (and there's been a few times since) but their dark pattern upon unsubscription put me off from going anywhere near them again.

I also spend 50£/month on Patreon to support the creators I watch regularly.


The problem is half the time the ads are Google ads anyway.


That's the ultimate problem - Google has a conflict of interest with their users which is why the quality has gone to shit.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: