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Perplexity got ads

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Re: Perplexity got ads

#261

Post by tyrooo »

visarga wrote: post #160
dtromero wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inline citations. I use perplexity all the time to find HackerNews or Reddit threads on certain topics, or conduct baseline research on topics. It will return the standard LLM answer but with inline citations which I can then use to verify or explore further.

Use https://hackersearch.net/ for RAG and copy-paste the response in any LLM. I wish reddit had semantic search as well. For X I can use Grok.

Reddit answers (https://www.reddit.com/answers) kinda serves this purpose but AFAIK, its not available for everyone yet

Re: Perplexity got ads

#262

Post by jjtheblunt »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #230
wrasee wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested. So I went to their site and I have to say it's quite refreshing. But then - a few bucks a month turns out to be $5/month, and that comes with a limit of 300 searches/month. That's an average of just 10 a day and while in practice I probably wouldn't actually hit that limit it's uncomfortably low enough that the added fiction of each search having a tangible cost is just a non-starter. I can't he…

The "right way"[0] to use Kagi is the unlimited search tier ($10/mo) and then aggressively rank domains in searches. Within a few weeks, the search quality improves tremendously, because I have filtered out the domains responsible for low-quality results, and up-ranked the domains I find to be most useful. [0]My opinion. Probably true.

My opinion too.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#263

Post by onemoresoop »

jasode wrote: post #229
elorant wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're oversimplifying the narrative. It's not ads per se that bother. It's the tracking part. Make ads contextual like they used to be and there's no problem at all, actually they might turn to be interesting. Keep tracking me all over the web and you grow the desire in me to block the living shit out of everything.

>It's not ads per se that bother. It's the tracking part. No, people are irritated by just the existence of ads -- with-or-without the tracking. E.g. the "native" advertising of sponsors embedded in Youtube videos or podcasts have no technical way to track the audience and yet people are still annoyed such that they use Sponsorblock to get rid of it. https://www.google.com/search?q=sponsorblock Lots of ads-without-tr…

If only ads were expensive to display there’s be a lot less and probably people would be okay with them. The sheer amount make them unbearable to many. Remember magazines people were paying for had ads and people didn’t hate them?

Re: Perplexity got ads

#264

Post by onemoresoop »

cedws wrote: post #64
imposterr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Perplexity Pro? That thing they tried and found that no one was willing to pay for cuz users say they want paid options but then jump boat to the free things always? https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/faq/what-is-perplexity-pro

There’s too much choice for the consumer to charge for it. If not Perplexity then I can just use Phind, ChatGPT, or Claude for free. Google got off the ground because they had magic sauce that made their product noticeably better. LLM-based search engines don’t have that, especially when they’re using an LLM built elsewhere.

I remember at the beginning Google had the most user friendly ads back when agressive pop-up ads were everywhere. But once they grew they changed all that.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#265

Post by nickpsecurity »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #230
wrasee wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested. So I went to their site and I have to say it's quite refreshing. But then - a few bucks a month turns out to be $5/month, and that comes with a limit of 300 searches/month. That's an average of just 10 a day and while in practice I probably wouldn't actually hit that limit it's uncomfortably low enough that the added fiction of each search having a tangible cost is just a non-starter. I can't he…

The "right way"[0] to use Kagi is the unlimited search tier ($10/mo) and then aggressively rank domains in searches. Within a few weeks, the search quality improves tremendously, because I have filtered out the domains responsible for low-quality results, and up-ranked the domains I find to be most useful. [0]My opinion. Probably true.

There’s also the idea of vote with your wallet. What we spend can be a tool to change the landscape. Enough people paying $10/mo. for Kagi might keep a good, ad-free option in business.

Similar to why many people pay for OpenOffice and Ubuntu. They want them to keep existing.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#266

Post by lupire »

cudgy wrote: post #75
mikae1 wrote: post #2

Surprise! Companies eventually need to make some money.

If consumers aren’t willing to pay for something, doesn’t that say something about the true value of the product to the consumer?

Yes, we know that individual consumers in general are not economically rational. The modern economy is built on this thesis.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#267

Post by pyth0 »

rajup wrote: post #158
sandspar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe YouTube can't exist without ads but the next thing might.

You can literally pay YouTube to avoid ads, watching the mental gymnastics folks on here do to complain about YouTube Premium is my favorite pastime.

I pay for YouTube premium. But it simply would not exist to the same scale or utility if that was the only model that was funding it. Incredible to see the mental gymnastics needed to avoid that fact.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#268

Post by lolinder »

jasode wrote: post #229
elorant wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're oversimplifying the narrative. It's not ads per se that bother. It's the tracking part. Make ads contextual like they used to be and there's no problem at all, actually they might turn to be interesting. Keep tracking me all over the web and you grow the desire in me to block the living shit out of everything.

>It's not ads per se that bother. It's the tracking part. No, people are irritated by just the existence of ads -- with-or-without the tracking. E.g. the "native" advertising of sponsors embedded in Youtube videos or podcasts have no technical way to track the audience and yet people are still annoyed such that they use Sponsorblock to get rid of it. https://www.google.com/search?q=sponsorblock Lots of ads-without-tr…

"People" vary widely in what irritates them, and the most vocal people are usually the outliers, not the average. Which creates the environment you describe: some outliers complain a lot about ads in all forms (myself included), while the majority of people continue to prefer free things with ads.

Note that this is not the same thing as the outliers who complain about ads also choosing free-with-ads products. I never choose ads given a choice, but my wallet-vote isn't strong enough to counteract the majority that do.

Re: Perplexity got ads

#269

Post by bdangubic »

adaptbrian wrote: post #236
bdangubic wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree except when it is overwhelming. ads are so prevalent these days that many brains (mine included) look at every ad as a scam

It just depends where you consume media. I've never felt so unreachable (via ads) online in 25 years of using the internet for play and work.

It just depends where you consume media.

hmmmm I am not sure what you mean here? wherever I consume the media I will be bombarded with ads (regardless of my blocking skills...) :)

Re: Perplexity got ads

#270

Post by jtbayly »

This seems like a very dangerous play.

The selling point of these AIs is that they can give you accurate answers. Mixing up answers and ads like this seems like a recipe for loss of trust.

I know it’s the same thing that Google did with search results, but this seems different to me.

That question is obviously correctly answered by “It’s not. Here are several alternatives that are just as good and better and cheaper or even free, etc.” But we know that won’t be the answer.

So what is the result of typing that question directly? Is it different from the result of clicking the question as an ad? Can I get the right answer anymore? Will the interface show that the answer itself is an ad? Can I switch back to an un-“bribed to give me the wrong answer” interface?

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