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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

#81

Post by _DeadFred_ »

csallen wrote: post #72
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #54

Earlier 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…

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 wi…

Please follow HN etiquette and respond to my position not call it hilarious. Also sorry for the wall of text.

You ignored my point on copyright and 'what about'd your own as if that makes copyright law somehow not currently exist. Without copyright you would have market failure. Who will invest in Bob's business if Tom can just undercut him? Who would make a multi-million dollar movie in your world? Write text books? How can Bob start a business doing those things if he can't get investment? This is a BASIC premise of the modern economy. Modern society wouldn't exist, and historically western society (starting when first applied in the "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning" in the early 1700s) has understood and embraced it's benefit. Business can't build their business around ignoring the law and then say 'our business model won't work under the current law' and then benefit from first mover advantage because they started by making illegal moves. Capitalism is not anarchy, it works within frameworks and constraints, including the law. Rewarding lawbreakers with 'first mover advantage' or additionally in AIs case special new legal carvouts creates INCREDIBLY perverse incentives.

For NYC you are arguing that it's OK for businesses to ignore laws that impact them. I disagree, I don't believe capitalism is 'anarchy'. Capitalism MUST exist in a framework with government regulation, as classical capitalist philosophy points out. Again all you are saying is 'tech is above the law because I don't like the law' and 'breaking the law if it means profit is TRUE capitalism'. Business was free to push to change the law NYC. They are not free to just ignore the law. They should definitely not benefit from first mover advantage when they got to be first by breaking the law.

Please don't say what I believe, but instead respond on substance. I believe businesses should not build their business on ignoring the law, using BILLIONs in funding (which combined with business corporate legal protections shields them from consequences of breaking the law), in order to distort the market and force a carveout for themselves and give themselves an unfair first mover advantage. I don't think lawbreaking is competition or capitalism. I believe if a business created their market penetration through breaking the law that even if the law is changed after the fact that specific business should be banned from the carveout as they had an unfair/illegal first mover advantage versus those that followed the law. Your model encourages and rewards law breaking and unfair competition, not healthy competition/capitalist growth.

I seem to believe that we are a nation of laws, that capitalism exists with in constraints, on of which are laws, and that breaking laws that get in the way of billionaire founders wishing to exploit an industry segment isn't competition/capitalism. Breaking laws to get an unfair competitive and/or first mover advantage should be punished not rewarded, as to do otherwise creates horribly perverse incentives.

I notice you didn't point to a single legitimate/untarnished unicorn.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#82

Post by blibble »

csallen wrote: post #67
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

> Capitalism and the competitive market have created more prosperity and taken more people out of the cold than any other economic system in history.

there is no guarantee this will continue to be true forever

I don't see how capitalism survives in a future where nearly all humans are redundant

it will be feudalism, not capitalism

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#83

Post by _DeadFred_ »

spacemadness wrote: post #75
AstroBen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wish you would have broken out the reality that disruption plus zero safety net = some people made homeless, some people commiting suicide, lots of people going hungry. The reality that a large amount of people 'disrupted' later in life don't recover to where they were.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#84

Post by brokencode »

slg wrote: post #77
brokencode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, that’s what I’m saying too. I think AI companies will have to pay for content to be competitive in the market. Either that or I guess they could write their own content.

Yes, the government needs to force them to stop stealing first. Similar to how the government stops contractors from going to Home Depot and stealing all the two by fours.

The government doesn’t force contractors to buy wood, it only stops them from stealing it. It’s the profit incentive that leads contractors to buy wood.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#85

Post by drdem »

azemetre wrote: post #21
dpacmittal wrote: post #5

Is 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.

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.

It’s colonial, but mostly Offerwall just seems like a big company decision. It has a name somehow worse than “paywall”, and I don’t plan to pay anyone for their content, especially if some of it is going to a big company. The reasons are that I don’t need to, it’s not important enough, and I don’t want to think about it.

A better idea would be a non-profit federated subscription similar to music services. You just use it, you don’t have to think about how much you pay for each page you read, and the federation keeps your identity private. You could even upvote or downvote a page if you wanted more of your percentage to go to someone or none of it. You could decide how much you could afford to pay so it could be affordable and free to the poor. You could vote even if you didn’t contribute and your vote would be considered equal.

But, the odds of that becoming a thing are incredibly low. It would require some sort of identity, which could be misused. And the web is meant to be like the outdoors- you go outside and move around in it mostly freely. It’s not a zoo where you pay admission.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#86

Post by azemetre »

ceejayoz wrote: post #37
csallen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this had The web has led to 10x more content being published in the past 30 years than was published in all of human kind's history before. And that's not including short-form posts/comments/reviews/chats/etc on social media and forums and communities. The amount of increased competition and commoditization of content is insane.

> I think this had I worked at a newspaper for years, during the early days of social media (I made our Twitter account, even... and once dropped an accidental f-bomb on it). I remember the video push; it was a huge change to workflows, hiring patterns, technology needs, etc. It was built on lies and bad data, and media outlets really haven't recovered since.

It's hard to not see this as unintentional by big tech because now these same media outlets are completely subservient to their platforms. Very few media outlets can be the New York Times most are confined to Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music.

It most be nice to have a 40-50% blood extraction machine when these same media companies would have owned their advertising networks if this were 30 years ago.

I can't think of a single company that wouldn't want a 40% boost in revenue.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#87

Post by xnx »

grugagag wrote: post #41
citizenpaul wrote: post #19

Google really is braindrained if the best thing they can come up with is to rebrand pop ups.

Let’s not forget Google was sleeping on AI and it still is. They were ahead at some point but didnt know what to do with it.

> sleeping on AI and it still is

How is Google still sleeping on AI? Don't they have the best available models at every size?

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#88

Post by csallen »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #76
csallen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The vast majority of people who are starving to death every day live in high conflict countries and/or places without functioning capitalist market economies. Percentage wise, it's almost certain that fewer people are starving to death than at any other time in human history. It boggles my mind that people can see and hear these stats and still rage against capitalism.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#89

Post by csallen »

blibble wrote: post #82
csallen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Capitalism and the competitive market have created more prosperity and taken more people out of the cold than any other economic system in history. there is no guarantee this will continue to be true forever I don't see how capitalism survives in a future where nearly all humans are redundant it will be feudalism, not capitalism

I'm just as curious as you about what the future holds. But while we're living in the present, we shouldn't be throwing out what's working.

Re: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

#90

Post by xboxnolifes »

beej71 wrote: post #69
AstroBen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

A few of us will. :) I give my stuff away for free with no ads. Maybe the web will get small again.

It will be small again. Less high quality content in the future is the current path.
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