Co-incidence or Urban Myth?

"Google recognizes posts created from ChatGPT and downgrades them in search"

I've seen similar comments on several Instagram reels (I'd never followed them by the way they were pushed at me), google news, youtube and a couple of blog posts. Sounds like a bit of viral hype/myth to me but thought I would check my blog stats.

Well isn't that a coincidence?

I still doubt that things are moving that fast, and are so competitive. Maybe they are. There does seem to be a race to claim technical dominance of the ChatAI and AIart fields. Also I'm not sure I yet trust OpenAI to be driving the developments, there are the issues of secrecy, open letters by many important people and experts to have a pause in building of bigger models and not forgetting the whole issue of the ethics of scraping the uncensored net for data. Finally, it is logical that having the training of these deep networks based on these unverified sources include all the bias and unfettered untruths that are increasing within the unrestricted websites and social media, with many of those publishing "content" hiding behind anonymity, What should we expect?

Personally, I'm not thrilled that Google might be one potentially trying to dominate yet another field/service that so many people are flocking towards. Google has an extensive history of introducing new things and then killing them, They prefer to call it deprecation.

Anyway I'm suspicious it might be true and I rather let those interested find my thoughts rather than have to get through an unnecessary layer of possible google "censorship". So no more blog posts written (or even reviewed) by ChatGPT. I'll still be investigating how artists and photographers might use and be affected by this technology. 

So, if you are interested in my opinion please stick around.

Not Building on Rented Land

Putting all your eggs in one basket that is controlled by one of the big social media suppliers may be very cheap but it is a very risky strategy. 

I am getting so frustrated by all the “little” changes in anything social media or “free” internet services (are you listening Facebook & Google, ah didn’t think you were). Failed updates to the operating systems (are you listening Microsoft) don’t help. Things like changes to passwords or enhanced “security” (aka for the service not us), buttons and functions that once worked having disappeared or just hanging.  Trying to build a coherent structure across any of these services is at risk of instant and unannounced disruption and disappearance. It is going to frustrate your loyal viewers trying to find you, as much as you.

It is the uploading and sharing of photos/images that most annoys me (and blogger/google photos is not without blame here). The quality of the actual displays on most services is not good, Compression down to the lower resolution screens at the display time is generally not great (presumably to reduce bandwidth and lag time). Flickr may be an exception here. Also it is not uncommon for images to get “lost” in the flood. Algorithmic selection on these services favours the “celebrity” and more of the same, not the original and quality and especially not the creative. So even your friends may be lucky to see your posts if you haven’t made the algorithms target views or likes in the first short time period.

Is there a solution? Maybe, we can stop using social media and the “free” services, as the place we base our net presence, because we are not in control of what they choose to show and do. However, if we want to use the Internet to reach a wider audience we can still participate but we need to build a few things on the net but on our own “properties”. They should be at least an email account (not a social media controlled undercover agent or their chat features that seem not be always listening in), probably also our own website (there are many companies that offer reasonable cost options) and domain name. These are stable places you can bring people to with confidence. Somr free or inexpensive services like email newsletters, portfolios and blogs can then be interfaced to spaces that you own and control, not total control by them (read the TOS terms of service). Once these are established you can use suitable social media to bring friends and interested folk back to your presence, with suitable links back to your own places.  

So make sure you are not building on borrowed time or rented ground. Stop chasing traffic, the distracted rabble chasing fame or celebrity on social media, they are just glimpsing works anyway as they scroll past.

Watch this space for my attempts to put this common sense logic into practice.

This came as a bit of a Surprise

I’ve a had a weekend of well meaning folk giving me a hard time because I avoid apple products, particularly the IPad and IPhone and most things “appleverse” (like calling their shop a “city square” and their salespeople “geniuses”). I’m not an apple hater. I still have my iPod, (even though its battery is shot and can’t be user replaced, an incredibly common design flaw in most apple hand held devices, giving them only a guaranteed 2-4 year life expectancy). I just think they are overprices and whilst they do a restricted number of things very well they are pretty inflexible at others… ok I’ll stop there because I don’t want the emotion rhetoric or flame war to start. Anyway it piqued my interest and I decided to look at just who looks at my blog. This is the summary graph by operating system produced by blogger, which hosts this blog

I was surprised! Even If I add together all the Macs, iPhones & IPads its a little over 15% of my readers. So the apple fanboys probably won’t be reading this anyway. What did stun me was the number 39% for Linux users. Obviously I assume I must appeal to the free thinkers, less conventional and nerdy types (or maybe just search bots) as well as the corporate world and more precisely those that can afford the cheaper PCs (windows user 38%). The lesser surprise is the also small number of phones 10%, whereas my website stats have shown viewing with a smart phone to be approaching 50%. Is this because blogger is a bit ordinary in mobile mode or there are no popular HTML “readers” for mobiles. Maybe I am not seeing the true picture, but perhaps it is good that I have avoided the “shiny new toy” syndrome that seems to just focus on gear, (most photography podcasts, you tubers, blogs, and owners of the latest apple gear) not how they can be used. It steels my resolve to return to the mission I started with this blog over 15 years ago, that is “Things They Forgot to Tell You About Digital Photography”.

A decade older, ..but any wiser

This blog turns ten years old today. It began with a simple enough objective, Exploring the Creative Potential of Digital Technology and it is still pretty much wandering around the same themes. If you want to spend a bit of time looking around try the label cloud down on the right or type a topic that interests you into the search box. You won’t find any specific camera reviews, as originally promised, but you may find a lot about ways to use them along the way. Looking at my blog stats, I have improved views from around 1000 a month, when I set up the counter in 2005, to over 2000 now (see graph below). The blips in 2012 to the peak in 2013 were due to link spammers, so I probably need to knock off around 2000-3000 page views from the total. Still 80K is a decent number, not spectacularly popular (or worse viral success) but encouraging to continue all the same.



So my advice is still the same get a camera, especially one you are happy to use (anything from a smartphone, Mirrorless up to a DSLR, they are all good these days) and learn how to use it. I hope the collection of ideas over the last decade helps you see some of the Magic of Digital Photography.

Onwards into the unknown …and more to learn and share as I go