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Google Is Killing Retro Dodo & Other Independent Sites (retrododo.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It honestly breaks my heart to write this article,
but I want to be as transparent as possible with
our readers because you are the ones that have quite
literally kept our lights on over the past five years,
and you deserve to know the truth about what’s happening
behind the scenes, so here it is.
Retro Dodo is on the brink of collapse… because of Google.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

This site has been a great source of news about all things retrogaming.
I support them on patreon now and hope they will make it through!

Some of their articles are a bit quirky, with the writing style suffering from occasional diversions which may even turn into rant or two. But I find this somewhat endearing rather than annoying. It conveys that they love doing what they've been doing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

And the enshittification continues. Everything to squeeze a little more money for themselves.

Fuck everything about Google

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

This is a good example of why monopoly power is dangerous

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Google has way too much power & influence. BREAK THEM UP!!! This status quo is ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

😔

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Google Search brought in lots of revenue (comparatively), but in return they became dependent on the whims of a crazy-large tech company that has turned the corner into a full-on IBM-style corporation. I've seen this kind of thing happen with people advertising local businesses on Facebook and then the algorithm killing their income overnight. You have to treat it as a large risk to your business and do everything you can think of to mitigate it. Which maybe they were, I don't know, but I wouldn't want my business to be reliant on the good nature of a huge tech company like Google.

[+] [email protected] -23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

This just sounds like more people complaining about AI "stealing their work" and "algorithms not pushing my content."

Google does show a summary of sites or information that is generated by a computer. And it does create that summary using the publicly posted and available text on publicly accessible webpages. This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing. The generated text (that I have seen) almost never matches word for word exactly what is on a single webpage.

And regarding the algorithm, trying to do what we used to do before by abusing it with SEO is exactly what Google and other search engine want to stop. And they have every right to change algorithms to do that. Just because it worked in your favor for years and suddenly it doesn't help you specifically anymore doesn't mean Google is targeting you, your site, or small content creators.

And being honest, I have personally never seen RetroDodo on the first page of results of any relevant search I have made, ever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

The big difference is when a user clicks on their content and summarizes it for themselves, the content creator is paid for an ad view. When a computer does it, they aren’t. If a user shares their summary they are plagiarizing and can be sued for damages. When AI does it, the current system is too bad so sad

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing.

It's entirely different. Scale matters.