4 ms·
> Both are well worth the effort of creating an account to read them. Talking about how AI broke the web, while gating the content in a way that breaks the web
by chrismorgan 1y ago
> Both are well worth the effort of creating an account to read them.
Talking about how AI broke the web, while gating the content in a way that breaks the web, which they’ve been doing since before the AI/LLM threat came on the scene.
(According to <https://medium.com/whats-new-in-publishing/inside-the-economists-data-driven-paywall-evolution-dd28f0913b7a https://medium.com/whats-new-in-publishing/inside-the-econom...>, they always had a soft paywall, but they diminished their free article limits steadily until it reached zero and became a hard paywall in 2019.)
- JimDabell 1y agoOne of the reasons people prefer AI to visiting the source websites is because the source websites have so often made it such an unpleasant experience, making you jump through hoops and navigate a maze of dark patterns. Meanwhile, AI gives you what you want without all those roadblocks. This is like Napster vs iTunes all over again. People started paying for media online as soon as it became convenient to do so. You make things inconvenient for people, you’ll lose out to whatever the more convenient option is.
- johnnienaked 1y agoWho? Who prefers AI?
- frizlab 1y agoIf this is an owl joke it’s hilarious
- JimDabell 1y agoChatGPT alone has 800M WAU and there have been several articles recently describing how AI has a large chilling effect on search engine referrals, including the article we are currently discussing. This is very clearly a mainstream preference.
- johnnienaked 1y agoGoogle search was dying long before ChatGPT
- JimDabell 1y agoYou seem to be ignoring the article, the two articles linked in the first paragraph of the article, and most of my comment.
- johnnienaked 1y agoYour statistic doesn't really say anything, and it doesn't answer the question I asked. I, and Im not alone, would very much prefer old google to new AI slop.
- frizlab 1y agoI do too. And I have it (Kagi).
- coffeefirst 1y agoThis might get worse. The free open web was economically dependent on reaching large audiences by search and social, and supported by advertising. Without that scale, you're looking at more paywalls and membership programs. The smaller the niche, the more expensive and tighter the program needs to be. A lot of that gating went into effect after social media start suppressing links. If you believe in making quality products available to mass audiences—information wants to be free and all that—this is a problem.