- cross-posted to:
- books@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- books@lemmy.ml
My title might be a bit hyperbolic, but stuff like this worries me. I love to read and I love reading on a kindle. This has been going on for a while, but it has now reached absurd levels.
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Behind the Bastards just did a two-parter on this phenomenon but with children’s “books.” Icky stuff. Great episodes, but ugh that this is even a thing.
Part One: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000617646703
Part Two: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000617949358
“Folding Ideas” does amazing work on YouTube around exposing grifters in well structured, long form explanations of their grifts.
One of their videos looked into a group of growth hustler type folks, a pair of twins. Part of their scam was automating the process of creating fake books like this from start to finish to sell them online for passive income.
Highly recommend anything this channel creates. Worth your time to have a focused sit to watch the journey unfold (especially if interested in the main subject of this post).
I fully second this. Folding Ideas is a first-class educator. I would still be completely in the dark on NFTs and Crypto without him, and “In Search of a Flat Earth” completely changed my perspective on flat earth adherents (i.e., I am much less amused by it).
Flat Earth adherents? What’s their dirty secret?
No secret, I just used to think they were being stubbornly dense, like goofy idiots. His video contended that it’s more malicious than that, born out of evangelical arrogance and an unfulfilled need to be smarter and more “moral” than everyone else.
I feel like I turned out similarly, except the exact opposite.
To me, it’s really, really important to be correct. Not to think I’m correct, mind you, but to actually be correct. One of my fears, therefore, is to be wrong about something without realizing it, especially if other people do realize that I’m wrong.
I wonder what that says about me.
I would like to peruse a copy of apricot bar code architecture! Surely, it must be one of the books of all time!
Indeed. Written by one of the writers.
I didn’t totally get it. So, people are using AI to generate fake books, but how are the fake books getting into the top 100?
Likely bots recommending them.
I, too, have snorted scornfully at this shameful state of affairs.
This is solvable problem, things will just need time to adapt.
If this indeed breaks Amazon then at least that is one silver lining of AI. It’s a shame indie authors are losing their platform, but they’ll find another.
It would make it even more important to have sites like Goodread where books are recommended by communities.
There’s even a federated alternative, BookWyrm!
…I guess these days the Fediverse is my hammer of choice, and every problem with the internet is a nail.
Not everything has an answer yet, for example Discord, there’s alternatives but none on Fedi. Also somebody earlier was mentioning fanfiction sites, there’s problems with all the existing ones and again, no Fedi alternative. However, not everything needs to be federated, look at Wikipedia for example.
The Discord alternative probably should be end-to-end encrypted, so I guess Matrix or something would be a better alternative than the Fediverse. Or just IRC if it’s public ;) In either case it’s probably a good example of where the Fediverse is not the solution (but decentralizzato might still be).
Fanfiction I guess could be federated - I don’t know how these services work. Personally I’m waiting for a good federated TripAdvisor/Yelp alternative that can be integrated with OpemStreetMaps.
Wikipedia is wonderful, and probably shouldn’t be decentralized. Then again, it’s one of the few good things about the contemporary internet (along with archive.org).
Unfortunately it is extremely sparse vs goodreads. Maybe someday it will catch up, but I really didn’t find it useful right now. Then again I am def a lurker on goodreads so where I read lists and reviews from doesn’t matter that much.
I guess what I don’t get is what were people using GoodReads for? Because I’m using BookWyrm to just track what I already wanted to read and use the review system as a way to sum up books for myself.
I don’t think these particular books are even generated by large language models - from the examples the content is just meaningless nonsense.
I had to pull my kindle unlimited membership… it’s just a pile of crap.
I had kindle unlimited a decade ago and it was decent. Lots of good sci-fi and fantasy.
Then overnight the entire catalog became “shape shifting billionaire stepbrother bear” and other trash. It’s like browsing your spam folder.
So like the rest of Amazon then? Never used kindle, but Amazon for physical goods has been a dumpster fire for a while - completely overrun with dropshipped garbage, to the point it’s actually difficult now to find quality stuff in the sea of “brand s” with random string of capital letter names, all using the same poorly photoshopped image…
The kindle eink reader is amazing and absolutely great. However I don’t use KU and rarely buy books on it. I mainly use my library and read the borrowed books on it. As a piece of hardware it’s one of the few Amazon builds well. I’m surprised too.
This. I own a basic Kindle because it only cost me $60, and while I could upgrade to a better e-reader from a less monopolistic company, it’d just be a bit of e-waste I don’t need to produce, and in the meantime Calibre + NoDRM / DeDRM means I can read books from anywhere on it.
This is going to be the real result of the large language model hype train, massive floods of basically worthless “content” made simply to pump metrics and fool investors.
I’m not saying that there is no useful applications for the tech just that none of those are particularly marketable nor do they generate a lot of monetizable utility.
And more importantly it’s not AI anymore than auto complete, spell check are. People insisting otherwise almost seem like they’re trying to start cults.
“Meanwhile the government” by Rentlar
The company was founded in the late afternoon by its founder in a rush to create a more prominently displayed flag. I don’t want your kids to know when you get to work.
…View this and much more riveting writing coming soon to the Amazon Bestsellers list!
I, for one, can’t wait to read Apricot bar code architecture
Sounds like an indie band
Well, that’s all the more reason to not try to monetize through Amazon. But Patreons seem to only be about 0.5% of the people who Follow a story on Royal Road. Well, I’ll have to keep working on more incentives I guess.
What I don’t understand is who is downloading and reading these books?
My guess is: adventurous readers who are intrigued by a small snippet, then figure it out on page 2 after they’ve bought it already.
Judging by the article even the snippets are pure nonsense:
Black lace pajamas, very short skirt, the most important thing, now this lace pajamas are all wet.
It could be vastly improved upon with the new LLMs, but these are just complete rubbish.
It’s surprising to me that they didn’t at least have a human write/steal the title and blurb. You’d think that’d work better than books with obviously gibberish titles.
When your listing is written in a way only fools fall for you avoid the hassle of people that know better wanting to return things or complain. It’s the same concept as email scams.
More bots
We should stop making rankings of books…
Be the change you want to see in the world!
It’s the Dead Internet Theory in action. While it stays a conspiracy for the Internet as a whole, it is definitely true at particular websites. There are many communities which are just controlled by bots and have no real people there.
