The exciting thing about search engines becoming useless as a traffic source, is that small publishers and blogs will eventually learn to adopt old technologies to gain traffic: web rings and links sections. This means if you like a blog, there could now be a way to organically discover other blogs similar to it, by following links across multiple sites.
Why would I publish if no one is ever looking for my content? To feed the LLMs? A lot of blogging is done to make money. If no one is searching anymore what is the revenue model? What you’re describing to me seems like passion blogging which already exists and I don’t think the financially interested are going that way if there’s no revenue model.
As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
61–70 of 112 posts
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes it's unfair. It's digital colonialism. What's sad is that other companies keep falling for the false narrative that big tech monopolies act as partners and not the blood sucking leeches they've become to represent.
Competition in the free market is not colonialism. The capitalistic marketplace is meant to involve disruption. That's the entire point: new companies come along and out-compete and out-innovate older companies and business models. The consumer wins. This is not the same as invading countries and subjugating the inhabitants, who have a human right to a peaceful life. No business in a capitalistic marketplace has a "r…
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#63Google really is braindrained if the best thing they can come up with is to rebrand pop ups.
At this point, Google has become a shitty ChatGPT.
In the last few weeks, using both Google and ChatGPT for search, I get a far broader range of links from ChatGPT.
Basically, Google-today is the product of a long history of having and using its search the monopoly for profits and political agendas (include lots of other entities legally and otherwise forcing this use btw). All it's search results were as "opinionated" as an AI even before the appearance of ChatGPT. It's logical that any "green fields" search engine would be better.
Of course, the problem will be that OpenAI and company will face the
Example: The original Phil Specter version of Let It Be (the album) exists on Youtube but it's not possible to easily find it with either Google or Youtube searches (I've a number of times). But easily ChatGPT found a link to the song and album for me (Ole 'Chat gave strings use for google but these didn't work either btw).
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Competition in the free market is not colonialism. The capitalistic marketplace is meant to involve disruption. That's the entire point: new companies come along and out-compete and out-innovate older companies and business models. The consumer wins. This is not the same as invading countries and subjugating the inhabitants, who have a human right to a peaceful life. No business in a capitalistic marketplace has a "r…
Violating/changing the meaning of copyright law and demanding special carvouts AFTER THE FACT is not 'competition'. (AI) Breaking hospitality/zoning laws is not 'competition'. (AirBnb) Breaking taxi/transportations laws and regulation is not 'competition'. (Uber/Lyft) Misclassifying workers to bypass employment laws is not 'competition'. (All 'gig' companies) Operating unlicensed financial services is not 'competitio…
This one is competition though. No one is forced to use Apple or develop for Apple. People purchase Apple because they like their products more than the alternatives.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#65Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violating/changing the meaning of copyright law and demanding special carvouts AFTER THE FACT is not 'competition'. (AI) Breaking hospitality/zoning laws is not 'competition'. (AirBnb) Breaking taxi/transportations laws and regulation is not 'competition'. (Uber/Lyft) Misclassifying workers to bypass employment laws is not 'competition'. (All 'gig' companies) Operating unlicensed financial services is not 'competitio…
> Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent) This one is competition though. No one is forced to use Apple or develop for Apple. People purchase Apple because they like their products more than the alternatives.
From the Wikipedia entry on vertical integration[1]:
>Vertical integration can be desirable because it secures supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product, but it can become undesirable when a firm's actions become anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace.
...
>A firm may desire such expansion to secure the supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product. Such expansion can become undesirable from a system-wide perspective when it becomes anti-competitive and impede free competition in an open marketplace.
...
>The result is a more efficient business with lower costs and more profits. On the undesirable side, when vertical expansion leads toward monopolistic control of a product or service then regulative action may be required to rectify anti-competitive behavior.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be the voice of dissent. I don't think it's unfair. 1. I don't believe that training LLMs on publicly-available content is morally bad. Nor do I believe that it should be prosecutable as copyright infringement, any more than I believe that we should prosecute humans for studying books/art/essays/movies/etc and "downloading" that information into their brains. I'm not a big fan of IP law in general (I think it's…
> I don't believe that training LLMs on publicly-available content is morally bad. Nor do I believe that it should be prosecutable as copyright infringement, any more than I believe that we should prosecute humans for studying books/art/essays/movies/etc and "downloading" that information into their brains. Apples to oranges. No amount of studying Rembrandt paintings would permit a human to paint 9 of them every minu…
That's an arbitrary and irrelevant difference. Proof: if a future society upgraded human brains to have the same power as AI, would you then consider it to be immoral and illegal for humans to witness the works and creations of others? No, you would certainly not, as that would be ridiculous. Or take the inverse: it's illegal to use a copy machine to mass copy and distribute somebody else's work, but should it be legal for a human to do this by hand, since humans are massively slower than a copy machine? No, it shouldn't, both should be illegal.
These examples prove the point that ability/capability/skill are non-factors in assessing the morality and legality of copyright infringement.
> Fuck capitalism and fuck the corporations playing it's game. I don't give a fuck if OpenAI makes a billion trillion dollars or not. I give a fuck whether or not people can continue earning money so they can not freeze to death.
Capitalism and the competitive market have created more prosperity and taken more people out of the cold than any other economic system in history. So either you don't actually care about people's well-being, or you're simply ignorant of the effects of capitalism on human prosperity. I suspect it's the latter since you're 100% focused on only a small slice of what's occurring when competition/disruption occur (incumbents lose profits) and 0% focused on everything else (consumers win en masse as things get cheaper and more abundant, new business opportunities are created, new players increase their profits).
Essentially you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. By trying to do do the shorted-sighted "humanitarian" thing to protect the profits/livelihoods of a small number of incumbents, you're sacrificing the massive benefits for everyone else.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#68I created my own Internet index. That is how I control my discoveries.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#69Is it only me who feels its incredibly unfair for publishers, that not only did big tech trained their LLMs on free content authored by these publishers, but it's also killing their future revenue. It's like stealing from someone and then making sure they never make money again.
Yeah and then what happens in 2026 onwards? No one's going to put in the work to create high quality original content when they can't monetize it..
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could somebody downvoting this explain why? Shouldn’t AI companies pay for the content they train their models on and summarize?
I downvoted because it is naive childlike logic that excuses current bad behavior on the possibility of future good behavior. OP's original comment called this stealing and this response is that the "obvious solution" is that the thief will pay their victim back after turning their stealing operation into a successful business. That is silly. Do people think that if the Pirate Bay is allowed to exist long enough that…
Yes, the AI companies are stealing. This is an area where the legal system needs to catch up.
Once it does, AI companies should have to negotiate contracts with publishers in order to legally use their content. Otherwise they should be open to lawsuits for copyright violations.
This is quite different from Pirate Bay, which is not run by a law abiding company with customers. Unless OpenAI wants to go underground and sell their services on the black market, they will have to play by the rules.