AI, Fake News, Fake Reviews, Bad Searches, Social Media
AI
It is interesting that most people now think artificial intelligence is the best thing since electricity was invented. Of course, electricity is a real thing but how much information in the world wide web is now fake?
Fake Searches
AI has been writing Amazon reviews for years. More than half of them is fake as well as what you see on Facebook, X, and TikTok (for example) as well as search information that is provided when you search the web. Google search will bring up anything. Is it real? A while ago if you entered a search into Google and asked if it was okay to eat a rock a day –Google responded that you could eat a small rock a day and that was just fine and healthy. Never trust the Web for medical advice. Just as bad as that advice is that dictionaries online may not define a word correctly, or an antonym or synonym could be just wrong if you looked it up. Just think of what that could do to the meaning of what you were writing or responding to? Just one wrong word can change the meaning of an entire sentence.
Quote by Suzy Kassem: “We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them.”
If you don’t have an actual published dictionary at home, you could be saying things that have the wrong meaning if you trust AI. If you buy a book online, is it from the true author or is it from AI? Did the author use AI to write the words or was it really in their own words and thoughts?
This a link that is out on the Internet. It defines enshittification. While the word is real it can be defined many ways depending on how AI interprets it. Clicking the link above has about the best definition that I can find though there are many on the Internet. I must wonder though was it written by a human or AI.
The word enshittification describes how far the Internet has degraded over the years. If you want to read a book about enshittification click here. Cory Doctorow has done a pretty good job explaining it.
Fake News
If you read the news, are you reading something that is true or published by AI? AI can be trained to write entire news blogs all by itself. There are programs where you can have information published on your website daily (WordPress for example) and you don’t have to do a thing. It is all automated by AI. If you want to make some cash, you just place some ads on your page that will generate revenue for each visit and just let AI do the rest. Google News is one of those platforms. It imports articles from multiple sources for you to read. It places ads on the page and generates Google cash. AI is generating titles for these articles as well. You will know this when you read the article, and it has nothing to do with the headline. Of course, AI generated it as “clickbait” so the generator of the website can collect ad revenue. Hopefully I have made this enough of a topic to make you interested. If you have ever read Google News you will see how obscure the articles are. Everyone knows about fake news, or do they? Read social media and comments on news articles and there lies the answer.
If you want something that is real go to a library or bookstore to get it, and then you probably won’t get something that doesn’t have some sort of AI influence if you are purchasing material that predates the twenty first century. (2000 or prior). That practice works for basic information, but information over the last 25 years is quite diluted. It will require lots of research to find the truth and even then you might question the results.
Why Watch Press Conferences on the News? (TIP)
President Trump is about the best example today to make sure that AI and fake news can’t push lies to the public. He holds live news conferences every day. Live press conferences can’t be manipulated by AI. What he says is real and you can be sure it is what he said. If you rely on the news from the web, then be prepared for fake news because AI can be trained to rewrite what he said with different political viewpoints (Left, Right or Center).
Live Video right now is the only way to avoid enshittification. AI can create video, but it can’t (as of yet) change video frames and text as it is being presented live. I am sure in the next few years AI will be able to change it (with a slight broadcast delay). News sources already twist the words with enshittification to put their spin on it. That is why there are virtually no trusted news sources left. Video can be altered – Think of the CBS scandal with Kamala Harris and her video interview. It was edited before being published. That is not live video so it cannot be trusted to be real.
Search Engines
Search engines are infested with AI. There isn’t a search engine out there that doesn’t do an AI summary at the top of the search result page. Most people read that summary and skip the rest of the search page but is the summary true? Can eating one rock a day be healthy? According to Google it was until it was fixed. Google, Bing and thousands of other websites are packed with advertisements. (DuckDuckGo) is an exception but how are those ads generated? They are generated through AI. Browsers like Google Chrome read your web-browser history and then generate ads based on what it finds. Every time you go to a website there are hundreds of connections to other websites (hidden) beside the page you are viewing that AI is getting information from. Chrome is the worst for privacy but there are lots of flavors of browsers out there. Safari and Firefox work to block links to third-party websites but no browser catches them all. Ad-blockers somewhat work in preventing the ads from being displayed, however AI still knows what you have been looking at even if you blocked the ads from displaying on the page you are reading.
All of us use search engines to find information. I highly recommend you deep dive into your searches for the information several pages from the top results. You can guarantee all the top results are created by AI.
Hackers love AI because it can make web pages to resemble the real one. Just think about searching for Chase or Bank of America and clicking on the first links you see. Are they real or fake links? Are you giving your login information hackers and thieves? Most people just aren’t savvy enough to look at the link that appears in their browser. That is why they spend billions of dollars on virus programs and programs that claim to provide safe browsing. You would be smart to look at every link when you open the page. BankofAmerica.com is a real website but the fake ones could hide. This link (fakewebsite.bankofamerica.com)is a fake link. Yes, it has Bank of America in its link but that doesn’t make it real. The host domain in this case is fakewebsite and AI or hackers could create a fake login page where they could capture your login information when you think you have logged into the real website. Read about domains and sub domains. You need this knowledge to surf the web. Then you would know if you were clicking on a real link or not.
Fake Reviews
Most reviews on any marketplace you choose to shop are created by AI, not people. This is how the reviews on many items get to 5 stars but they are completely junk or fakes. Amazon is not alone. Every retail website has fake reviews. Some companies do as much as they can to stop the fraud while others let it go. I never complete reviews because what is the point? If I left a bad review AI probably wouldn’t let it get posted to the website or would rewrite how many stars I gave the item. There are pages of legal releases on websites on how your information can be used. Some of the top reviews in Amazon only have thirty reviews, all fake of course trying to get you to buy some piece of garbage they are selling. Other items may have thousands of reviews. Amazon is trying to fight this, but it is a losing battle to AI. If I buy something I don’t rely on any review. I rely on the quality of the manufacturer. If it is a kitchen product for example Kitchenaid (that has been around for decades) it is usually great quality, just like Samsung, Apple or Sony. If it has a manufacturer’s name you have never heard of it probably isn’t any good (I am sure there are exceptions).
Enshittification does not stop at product reviews. It is infested in movie reviews, restaurant reviews and concert reviews. How many of those reviews are real? Ever eaten at a restaurant that YELP has stellar reviews and it is total crap? How about a movie like Barbie, Snow White (2025 release), Superman (2025) or the Marvel releases with “she hulk?” I have not seen any of these but financially they were all a flop at the box office for “wokeness” or embedded politics, but most of the reviews were great. Yes, that is enshittification. So can you trust movie reviews? Probably not because the movie plots and reviews were introduced into AI long before their releases. You best review on a restaurant is a good friend of yours and that would be the same advice on movies. Those would be real reviews. Concert goers will tell you who is good to see live.
Social Media
Social media has the largest amount of AI influence out there. If it is on social media, it is probably generated by AI or someone is posting bad information that AI gave them that they thought was real. There is so much fake news out there that is posted on social media, and then there are huge discussions about it. People throw hate posts at each other based on something that isn’t real. Facebook has tons of AI generated ads to click on because my wife uses it and I have seen them. She blocks Facebook to family and friends only. I am not on any social media. I use my website to generate my thoughts, and my website is my writing (just like this article). AI has not generated any of this article and it will be listed on a search page ranked somewhere at the bottom of the searches on enshittification. My recommendation is to block social media to family only and block all the news and political nonsense. It doesn’t belong there anyway. Facebook was built with the intention of family sharing photos and life interactions between family. It was never intended to be used as news or political source.
As you have noticed I have not talked about politics here even though I used an example of President Trump doing daily news conferences and why I think he does them. This article is supposed to be a wakeup call for those that are enshrined in enshittification. Most of the Internet has evolved into that.
If you want to read something real on the Internet, find a real blogger like me, or go to the library or bookstore and purchase a good read that was written before AI was introduced into the world. There is lots of material out there. Buy a real Bible. Buy a real short-story or read a real history book. Wikipedia isn’t where you should be going for your information.
Finally, when shopping for an item go to a store and look at it before you buy it online because you may find it cheaper. There is nothing like the real thing to help you make your decision. I buy lots of items from Amazon. Due to their free return policy (for subscribers) if it is not good quality, it goes back in the box and is returned (free of cost for me). Usually I buy things that I have already researched or use and it is just cheaper than driving to the store.
Enshittification has completely infected the Internet so it is no longer the place to go for reliable information. If you are old like I am the best information will come from people you know and are friends with. If you must rely on the Internet for research you will have to dig deep into the hundreds of search pages to find some sort of reality. Most likely the results that are not on the first several pages of the requested information have been infected yet, but you can never be sure anymore.
This blog has been written to provoke thought. Where I may not be 100% correct on everything, I write I believe that this blog should provoke thought and carefulness when using the Internet. You may find with proper training the Internet can still be a useful tool. If you are going here to learn something that a person put on UTube or how to instructions it is a great place for information. If you are learning a software program like Word or Excel it has some great tools. If you want to build a deck or stairs there is great information. The Web is full of great things to help you. AI isn’t all bad but it can be used for nefarious reasons so be aware of that. Happy surfing!