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AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

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Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#121

Post by gcanyon »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #95
ForTheKidz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora has never, in my memory, provided any value to the internet. The answers it seems to provide to google are seemingly inaccurate and also seem completely unmoderated. Furthermore you seemingly have to pay to even ask answers to get updated.

> Quora has never, in my memory, provided any value to the internet. In the very early years of Quora, quite a lot of answers there were written by experts in their area.

I'll never forget when I read the question, "Who is the mayor of San Jose?" on Quora, and the answer was "Joe Bloe is the mayor of San Jose. Source: I'm Joe Bloe, mayor of San Jose."

Reading that defined Quora in my mind for the next few years.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#122

Post by inetknght »

nitwit005 wrote: post #101
inetknght wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most topics require data or information in some form, which requires time to accumulate. You end up rate limited. Even at the scale of a decent sized company, you often can only produce interesting content occasionally. That sounds like a good thing tbqh

Sure, but it implies writing "quality content" won't work as a replacement.

I don't think it implies that at all.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#123

Post by inetknght »

immibis wrote: post #16
joelthelion wrote: post #8

The ones that struggle had pre-existing issues : - quora pivoted from quality content to cheap clickbait - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. And so on. In short, quality platforms are fine.

Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.) It's like Stack Exchange doesn't want questions and answers any more, just wants to harvest Google traffic and shows ads. Actual content production is too hard.

> Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.)

ChatGPT would ban you for asking the wrong kind of question instead.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#124

Post by immibis »

crote wrote: post #52
immibis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The new way of doing SEO blogspam, which involves LLMs, is the way forward. Sadly, downvoting this comment won't make it not be true.

I've personally been seeing an overall shift in the direction of a strong dislike for any kind of low-effort content. People are pretty hostile towards AI-generated content, so any platform wanting to remain relevant is going to have to take measures to keep out AI-generated content. If you allow it in, it'll quickly become 99% of your overall content and all the human consumers will leave. As a side effect I'm seein…

People are hostile towards all types of spam, but it still happens.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#125

Post by atonse »

diamond559 wrote: post #110
Legend2440 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely. LLMs are smart enough to answer questions from documentation or from other sources, even if the exact question wasn't asked anywhere. But Q&A websites do contain information that might not be in other sources, so there would be some loss.

That's just copying from better sources, doesn't mean the ai is "smarter".

AI can also answer any question in your own language.

Imagine all of stack overflow seamlessly translated to, say, Thai or Vietnamese.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#126

Post by immibis »

inetknght wrote: post #123
immibis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.) It's like Stack Exchange doesn't want questions and answers any more, just wants to harvest Google traffic and shows ads. Actual content production is too hard.

> Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.) ChatGPT would ban you for asking the wrong kind of question instead.

I tried asking ChatGPT if Palestinians deserve human rights, to see if it still gave an answer like the one that went viral. They have fixed the answer, and I was not banned.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#128

Post by ehnto »

rchaud wrote: post #64
dougb5 wrote: post #34

AI is killing my website but in a different way than what's discussed in the article: Content scrapers are completely out of control, spiking my serving costs and degrading performance for human users. There seem to be hundreds of them and they've gotten very good at looking like human users so they're hard to block or throttle. I can't prove they're all AI-related scrapers, but I've been running the site for 25 year…

Even my barely visited personal website is using almost 10GB bandwidth per month according to Digital Ocean. My website is 90% text with no video, so I imagine it's just bots and scrapers hitting it all day. I'm very close to password protecting the whole thing aside from the homepage.

Same, I get next to no value from the personal website these days. Certainly not worth being exposed to the harsh realities of the web in 2025.

A sad state of affairs, but it was predicted decades ago that commercial interests would turn the internet into what it is today, even without AI. Layer on the dead internet theory slowly coming true, and walled gardens almost feel like the last bastion of free internet, rather than being what brought it to an end.

There's probably some nuance there, maybe the walled gardens allowed us to be comfortable letting it get this bad. Either way, what's gone is gone.

I am getting a lot of joy from local net and just making little devices at home, that is giving me the same excitement that the web did in the past!

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#129

Post by ehnto »

inetknght wrote: post #122
nitwit005 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it implies writing "quality content" won't work as a replacement.

I don't think it implies that at all.

It depends on your medium, many platforms require a lot of throughput in order to rank highly in their algorithms and reach people.

If your business requires volume not high value customers then you need to play the volume game. But if you have high lifetime value customers, you could get away with fewer articles of higher value, authoritive, trust and reputation building content.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#130

Post by edgarvaldes »

gcanyon wrote: post #121
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quora has never, in my memory, provided any value to the internet. In the very early years of Quora, quite a lot of answers there were written by experts in their area.

I'll never forget when I read the question, "Who is the mayor of San Jose?" on Quora, and the answer was "Joe Bloe is the mayor of San Jose. Source: I'm Joe Bloe, mayor of San Jose." Reading that defined Quora in my mind for the next few years.

>Reading that defined Quora in my mind for the next few years.

Because he was an impersonator? Or because he really was Joe Bloe?

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