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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

#271

Post by sethhochberg »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #258
_benj wrote: post #26

I’ve seen this shift in my own usage. I find myself appending “Reddit” to the end of my searches a lot more often, I have pinned Wikipedia to the top of my search results (in kagi) and I haven’t visited stackoverflow in months, although I see that perplexity quotes it quite often when I ask it coding questions… I’m just a sample of one, but it’s certainly interesting to see how apparently I’m just one of many

I also used this tactic for questions about certain products, but I no longer use it in general because reddit has become riddled with bots, AI stories, astro-turfing campaigns, etc. It's hard to come across something genuine any more. This has been the case even before the AI craze of course, but now it's virtually unavoidable. The whole platform has become a giant shit hole.

I find the trick with product reviews on modern reddit is to skip over anything positive and look for what people are complaining about.

If I’m shopping for something deliberately enough to be digging through reviews I’m probably pretty sure it’ll solve the problem all the positive reviews say it will solve. But I want to weigh that against all the negative feedback that might be removed or downplayed in big marketplaces or commercial review sites.

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

#272

Post by 3vidence »

ehnto wrote: post #128
rchaud wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, rath…

I've never really thought of this as a strong benefit before but this seems like a good argument for app development in 2025.

Started my career as a web developer and always have a soft spot for it but from a hobby developer standpoint hosting and deploying a site feels like an uphill battle with little upside.

Theres a lot to not like about app development but after you get approval for your app it's pretty hands off.

Heck on android you can just distribute the raw APK on a Google drive. Or just keep the app locally for yourself.

I probably have about 20 self made apps on my phone and they each give me a bit of happiness.

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

#273

Post by Johnny555 »

I don't think CNET can blame AI for its downfall, it's just not a very good site.

It used to be a good place for tech news (after all, they are "news.com"), but now they are mostly a review site with shallow reviews seemingly based on what they read on manufacturer and retailer product pages... and of course, with lots of affiliate links so they get their cut if you buy a product based on their review.

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

#274

Post by kibwen »

BrenBarn wrote: post #159
johnfn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, not sure I agree with you about SO. The experience I have with SO 99%+ of the time is that I google my question, get a result on SO which has a correct and decent quality answer, and I'm back to work. That's a pretty great experience, and I certainly wouldn't say that it misses the bar to be a 'quality platform'. I do agree the moderation is overbearing at times, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwate…

> After all, where is GPT 5 going to scrape the next set of answers for new libraries and frameworks..? From its own incorrect answers that got parroted around the web.

In the grim darkness of the future, we deliberately base the APIs of new libraries and frameworks on the hallucinations of the most popular LLMs.

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

#275

Post by kibwen »

3vidence wrote: post #272
ehnto wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, rath…

I've never really thought of this as a strong benefit before but this seems like a good argument for app development in 2025. Started my career as a web developer and always have a soft spot for it but from a hobby developer standpoint hosting and deploying a site feels like an uphill battle with little upside. Theres a lot to not like about app development but after you get approval for your app it's pretty hands of…

> after you get approval for your app it's pretty hands off.

For about a year, after which point both Apple and Google will arbitrarily remove your app from stores for not keeping up with the platform update treadmill.

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

#276

Post by ashleyn »

darth_avocado wrote: post #15
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.

Quora has sucked for a while now. When the second answer on every question is completely unrelated to the question asked, in some weird attempt to make you look up more content on the site, the site starts losing its usefulness.

Yahoo Answers walked so Quora can run.

Quora today is mostly stuff like "can u get pargnet from givng oral????" or "Is it normal to find my sister attractive?"

It's like the Nazi bar problem except instead of Nazis, it's low quality troll bait.

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

#277

Post by giancarlostoro »

TZubiri wrote: post #229
giancarlostoro wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. Even worse your question is slightly different and you asked it because the one they just linked as a duplicate didnt help or didnt fit fully. I get so angry when someones asking the right question but some a-hole SO mod closes it almost as if they took no care to compare context and want to meet some obscure metric…

Still, much of ChatGPTs success in code can be owed to SO success in generating a mountain of useful googleable archives. See stacksort: https://xkcd.com/1185 Remember that the objective of SO is not to provide answers to users who post questions, but to provide answers to users who google questions.

My frustration is that I google questions wind up in SO and a mod links to an irrelevant but related question from 20 years prior.

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

#278

Post by ipaddr »

dredmorbius wrote: post #178
psunavy03 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there are subreddit coups where someone ousts the old mods and starts banning people according to a whole new set of opinions . . .

Rather (in)famously, /r/xkcd, which was overtaken (for a time) by militant Muslim anti-semite neo-nazi holocaust deniers. The subreddit was eventually reclaimed, but it took some months. There's an account of the hostile takeover and clawback here: https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of... > (2014).

I read the discussion. What does unrelated views not expressed on your subreddit matter. Why the need to get rid of a mod who at worst has a sidebar to other subreddits they control. If the mod is black, white, Asian, wears fur coats or believes in a flat earth; none of that should matter unless it's affecting your subreddit. Let people be themselves you would be surprised by many of your co-worker real life.

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

#279

Post by apwell23 »

yalogin wrote: post #266
apwell23 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot see the use for Webmd and other sites that provide information along specific verticals, anymore. You want hallucinated medical information? How is this not entirely absurd. I feel so angry that person who wrote this comment already knew that its absurd but proceeded to make this comment and prbly got upvotes.

Wait, why do people use WebMd? Is it used by medical professionals? I thought its for regular people diagnosing their problem for fun. All of that information they can get from their doctor. For really specific information like symptoms for a disease, I cannot imagine there be a hallucinations. Even if it did today, it will only get better over time. I don't see it as a problem with this specific use case. I am one o…

you are using chatgpt for medical info today because it might get better tomorrow? your comment wasn't what you plan to do it in future with it, you claimed you are doing all those things today. Now you are talking something about future hypothetical.

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

#280

Post by scarface_74 »

corentin88 wrote: post #2

Content marketing is dead. AI has killed it. One of our main marketing channels was writing SEO-oriented articles on our company’s blog. The traffic has steadily decreased over the last year despite huge efforts. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead though.

And those is suppose to be a bad thing?
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