The question, did all traffic really go to AI companies? May be just there are so many jumping and blinking adds that users simply don't like it. Like youtube is unwatchable without add blockers or other add skipping tricks.
As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
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Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#72Earlier 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…
Hilariously, half of the examples you cite are laws created/influenced/strengthened by incumbent businesses of the past with the explicit goal of reducing competition and making it difficult for new entrants to compete.
Let's take copyright law for example. Set aside the fact that the entire basis of copyright law is EXPLICITLY to give businesses a "monopoly," which is the exact opposite of competition. Your issue with AI is that they are violating or trying to change the meaning of copyright law? How do you square that with the past 250 years of history of businesses successfully lobbying to strengthen and change copyright law in order to protect their monopolies and weaken competition?
Or let's look into taxi laws. Where for decades taxi medallion owners and fleet operators in NYC lobbied to prevent the city from issuing new medallions.
You seem to believe that laws increase competition and that resisting/changing/lobbying against the laws is meant to decrease competition, which is plainly untrue. Often the exact opposite is true, which is the very definition of regulatory capture.
Capitalism is a system that seeks to benefit the common man by incentivizing profit-seekers to compete to create new innovations, to deliver goods faster/easier, and to lower prices. It also seeks to disincentivize profit-seeking through non-competitive means that don't benefit consumers, e.g. monopolies, oligarchies, regulatory capture, false advertising, etc.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#73Hopefully everyone's learned not to build their business on top of any Google product. Who knows when they'll cancel it.
Given the monopolies, what are the alternatives? For video content, Youtube is near monopoly with alternatives no better than Google. Same goes for mobile app, website (traffic via Google SE), offline store (search/reviews on maps)
Maybe I should have qualified that with new Google Product.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#74Earlier 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…
If this is the consumer winning I’d rather be losing. As far as I can tell, free market means let the monopolies control everything.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#75Earlier 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…
Our society should have a way of protecting people that invest a decade into mastering a field from being made obsolete overnight. They're not business owners banking money the whole time and now needing to pivot, they're regular people being screwed out of their livelihoods. I agree that stifling innovation and disruption isn't the way, but we need something That initial investment in time/energy is what we need to…
Yes. The cheesy “disruption is always good” is cutthroat SV capitalist kool-aid. It CAN be good, but just assuming it is good because disruption is dogmatic at best. Especially in a country with near to zero safety net. The consumer always wins is a fairy tale.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Apples to oranges. No amount of studying Rembrandt paintings would permit a human to paint 9 of them every minute. 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 t…
> 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?
I would hope if we all had brains powered by AI we would recognize how stupid the game we're playing is and end it already, do away with the notion of money as a whole, and just set about living good lives, since that's what AI itself largely suggests we do. However, if this extremely tenuous metaphor is be executed as is presented, if indeed a human could look at a Rembrandt, and subseqently produce 9 copies of it per minute, no, viewing it shouldn't be illegal, but selling the copies absolutely should and would be.
Like if you just want to obsessively generate AI art and... idk, staple it to your wall? That's not illegal, nor even unethical. You don't need to generate it either, you can just print things, and have them.
> 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.
No shit.
> Capitalism and the competitive market have created more prosperity and taken more people out of the cold than any other economic system in history.
It also starves 25,000 people to death per day.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I didn’t downvote you, but I do disagree. 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.…
What you are saying here is fundamentally very different from the original downvoted comment. You’re saying this behavior is bad and should be corrected by the government. The original comment sidestepped the ethics of the behavior on the insistence that it would be fixed by market forces.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#78Earlier 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…
If this is the consumer winning I’d rather be losing. As far as I can tell, free market means let the monopolies control everything.
Literally the entire narrative right now among online business owners, big and small (influencers, creators, indie hackers, startup founders, etc.) is that this is a golden age for aspirational new entrants and entrepreneurs.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#79Earlier 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.
Apple literally forces you to own an iphone (and a Mac) for you to develop for iPhones. And they also force their users to only be able to install apps through the app store. "If you don't like use an alternative" is not a valid take here.
Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The revenue is clout
Clout doesn‘t pay the bills.