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No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

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Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#31

Post by insane_dreamer »

kleiba wrote: post #13

The argument seems flawed to me: by "killing the web", they refer to the example of a company adding SEO'd information to their website to lure in traffic from web searches. However, me personally, I don't want to be lured into some web store when I'm looking for some vaguely related information. Luckily, there's tons of information on the web provided not by commercial entities but by volunteers: wikipedia, forum us…

People create content for free but not to be sucked into some machine that funds a $T company who mixes it up and spits it out without attribution. You want to share info for the sake of it but you also care deeply about how it’s presented and would like people to come read it on your site. So all that volunteer stuff will be killed along with all the recipe sites because those people aren’t going to put in the time and effort without some financial return (the pages of ads we detest but put up with).

In the short term it will feel liberating; in the long term it will kill the web.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#32

Post by insane_dreamer »

djoldman wrote: post #3

> ChatGPT, Google, and its competitors are rapidly diverting traffic from publishers. Publishers are fighting to survive through lawsuits, partnerships, paywalls, and micropayments. It’s pretty bleak, but unfortunately I think the situation is far worse than it seems. > The article focuses mainly on the publishing industry, news and magazine sites that rely primarily on visits to their sites and selling ads. I'm not…

Yes but it also means journalism will be reduced to a few voices who can grow their subscription base large enough to survive. That is not a good thing.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#33

Post by insane_dreamer »

djoldman wrote: post #11
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will pay for a subscription fee for journalism if people get trained to receive their information from an opaque tl;dr machine rather than primary sources?

Americans already, and increasingly, report getting a good chunk of their news from social media: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-med... Folks who want more traditional journalism will pay for it.

Social media doesn’t provide news. It provides regurgitation of actual news by journalists (who need to eat) and a lot of hot takes and commentary on the actual news by journalists. Take away the journalism and you’re left with Reddit hot air.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#34

Post by insane_dreamer »

nextworddev wrote: post #23

This take is wrong. What’s really going to happen is that content creators will still create content, despite the economics making less and less sense. .. mainly that’s because that’s the only game left

Not if they can’t afford to pay the bills.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#35

Post by kleiba »

quectophoton wrote: post #28
_Algernon_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia continued existence is not dependent on ads or clicks.

You just made me imagine if Wikipedia had titles like "Is the Heliocentric model wrong?" or "The third planet of the Solar System has a generic name! Learn everything about it", and half of it behind a paywall. Or worse, if its content were distributed in short videos: "What to know what's that giant fire ball on the sky? Watch until the end!", with a like-and-subscribe animation covering the bottom 20% of the video…

10 shocking secrets about the solar system!

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#36

Post by argentinian »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #34
nextworddev wrote: post #23

This take is wrong. What’s really going to happen is that content creators will still create content, despite the economics making less and less sense. .. mainly that’s because that’s the only game left

Not if they can’t afford to pay the bills.

There are a lot of artists and creators that create while they work in a job not related to what they create.

Money is not the only motivation to create.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#37

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

I can't bring myself to "Google" anything anymore.

Every single time I open up google and try searching for the information... I get frustrated being forced so do the agentic work and sift through the crap... and I fall back on ChatGPT or Gemini.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#38

Post by visarga »

The content is now created in private chats with AI, probably a trillion tokens per day flow between humans and LLMs. When new AI models are made they will incorporate some experience from past usage. This dataset might be the most valuable source for training AI and solving our tasks. So in case humans decide to abandon publishing, there is a new experience flywheel spinning up.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#39

Post by CharlesW »

zb3 wrote: post #15

"Content" that is made for clicks is precisely what I'd want to disappear from the universe.

You'll still see it, but in laundered form, indistinguishable from non-placed content. We just won't be able to block it, because its origin will be hidden in the system.

I think I'm going to miss the world where I could more easily trace the provenance of information.

Re: No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

#40

Post by bgwalter »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #32
djoldman wrote: post #3

> ChatGPT, Google, and its competitors are rapidly diverting traffic from publishers. Publishers are fighting to survive through lawsuits, partnerships, paywalls, and micropayments. It’s pretty bleak, but unfortunately I think the situation is far worse than it seems. > The article focuses mainly on the publishing industry, news and magazine sites that rely primarily on visits to their sites and selling ads. I'm not…

Yes but it also means journalism will be reduced to a few voices who can grow their subscription base large enough to survive. That is not a good thing.

Yes, for example the Miami Herald is still accessible without a subscription and was the prime investigative newspaper in the case of a Palm Beach resident (not Trump!) who cannot be mentioned here. They did excellent work.
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