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It's all about scale. The impact of your personal shopper is insignificant unless you manage to scale it up into a business where everyone has a personal shoppe

by rapind 1y ago

It's all about scale. The impact of your personal shopper is insignificant unless you manage to scale it up into a business where everyone has a personal shopper by default.

mbrumlow 1y ago
Well then. Seems like you would be a fool to not allow personal shoppers then. The point is the web is changing, and people use a different type of browser now. Ans that browser happens to be LLMs. Anybody complaining about the new browser has just not got it yet, or has and is trying to keep things the old way because they don’t know how or won’t change with the times. We have seen it before, Kodak, blockbuster, whatever. Grow up cloud flare, some is your business models don’t make sense any more.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  > Anybody complaining about the new browser has just not got it yet, or has and is trying to keep things the old way because they don’t know how or won’t change with the times. We have seen it before, Kodak, blockbuster, whatever. You say this as though all LLM/otherwise automated traffic is for the purposes of fulfilling a request made by a user 100% of the time which is just flatly on-its-face untrue. Companies make vast amounts of requests for indexing purposes. That could be to facilitate user requests someday, perhaps, but it is not today and not why it's happening. And worse still, LLMs introduce a new third option: that it's not for indexing or for later linking but is instead either for training the language model itself, or for the model to ingest and regurgitate later on with no attribution, with the added fun that it might just make some shit up about whatever you said and be wrong. And as the person buying the web hosting, all of that is subsidized by me. "The web is changing" does not mean every website must follow suit. Since I built my blog about 2 internet eternities ago, I have seen fad tech come and fad tech go. My blog remains more or less exactly what it was 2 decades ago, with more content and a better stylesheet. I have requested in my robots.txt that my content not be used for LLM training, and I fully expect that to be ignored because tech bros don't respect anyone, even fellow tech bros, when it means they have to change their behavior.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    Tech bros just respect money. Making money is very easy in the short term if you don't show ethics. Venture capitalism and the whole growth/indie hacking is focused around making money and making it fast. Its a clear road for disaster. I am honestly surprised by how great Hackernews is, to that comparison where most people are sharing it for the love of the craft as an example. And for that hackernews holds a special place in my heart. (Slightly exaggerating to give it a thematic ending I suppose)
- julkali 1y ago
  Do not conflate your own experience with everyone else's.
- goatlover 1y ago
  Some people use LLMs to search. Other people still prefer going to the actual websites. I'm not going to use an LLM to give me a list of the latest HN posts or NY Times articles, for example.
nickthegreek 1y ago
How is everyone having a personal shopper a problem of scale? I was going to shop myself, but I sent someone else to do it for me. At this moment I am using Perplexity's Comet browser to take a spotify playlist and add all the tracks to my youtube music playlist. I love it.
- rapind 1y ago
  I didn't use the word "problem". In fact I presented no opinion at all. I'm just pointing out that scale matters a lot. In fact, in tech, it's often the only thing that matters. It's naive (or narrative) to think it doesn't. Everyone having a personal shopper obviously changes the relationship to the products and services you use or purchase via personal shopper. Good, bad, whatever.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  We'll see more of this sort of thing as AI agents become more popular and capable. They will do things that the site or app should be able to do (or rather, things that users want to be able to do) but don't offer. The YouTube music playlist is a good example. One thing I'd like to be able to do is make a playlist of some specific artists. But you can't. You have to select specific songs. If sites want to avoid people using agents, they should offer the functionality that people are using the agents to accomplish.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Let's look at the opposite benefit to a store if a mom that would need to bring her 3 kids to the store vs that mom having a personal shopper. In this case, the personal shopper is "better" for the store as far as physical space. However, I'm sure the store would still rather have the mom and 3 kids physically in the store so that the kids can nag mom into buying unneeded items that are placed specifically to attract those kids' attention.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    >o that the kids can nag mom into buying unneeded items Excellent. Personal shoppers are 'adblock for IRL'. >You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

by rapind 1y ago

It's all about scale. The impact of your personal shopper is insignificant unless you manage to scale it up into a business where everyone has a personal shopper by default.

mbrumlow 1y ago

Well then. Seems like you would be a fool to not allow personal shoppers then. The point is the web is changing, and people use a different type of browser now. Ans that browser happens to be LLMs. Anybody complaining about the new browser has just not got it yet, or has and is trying to keep things the old way because they don’t know how or won’t change with the times. We have seen it before, Kodak, blockbuster, whatever. Grow up cloud flare, some is your business models don’t make sense any more.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
> Anybody complaining about the new browser has just not got it yet, or has and is trying to keep things the old way because they don’t know how or won’t change with the times. We have seen it before, Kodak, blockbuster, whatever. You say this as though all LLM/otherwise automated traffic is for the purposes of fulfilling a request made by a user 100% of the time which is just flatly on-its-face untrue. Companies make vast amounts of requests for indexing purposes. That could be to facilitate user requests someday, perhaps, but it is not today and not why it's happening. And worse still, LLMs introduce a new third option: that it's not for indexing or for later linking but is instead either for training the language model itself, or for the model to ingest and regurgitate later on with no attribution, with the added fun that it might just make some shit up about whatever you said and be wrong. And as the person buying the web hosting, all of that is subsidized by me. "The web is changing" does not mean every website must follow suit. Since I built my blog about 2 internet eternities ago, I have seen fad tech come and fad tech go. My blog remains more or less exactly what it was 2 decades ago, with more content and a better stylesheet. I have requested in my robots.txt that my content not be used for LLM training, and I fully expect that to be ignored because tech bros don't respect anyone, even fellow tech bros, when it means they have to change their behavior.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Tech bros just respect money. Making money is very easy in the short term if you don't show ethics. Venture capitalism and the whole growth/indie hacking is focused around making money and making it fast. Its a clear road for disaster. I am honestly surprised by how great Hackernews is, to that comparison where most people are sharing it for the love of the craft as an example. And for that hackernews holds a special place in my heart. (Slightly exaggerating to give it a thematic ending I suppose)
julkali 1y ago
Do not conflate your own experience with everyone else's.
goatlover 1y ago
Some people use LLMs to search. Other people still prefer going to the actual websites. I'm not going to use an LLM to give me a list of the latest HN posts or NY Times articles, for example.

nickthegreek 1y ago

How is everyone having a personal shopper a problem of scale? I was going to shop myself, but I sent someone else to do it for me. At this moment I am using Perplexity's Comet browser to take a spotify playlist and add all the tracks to my youtube music playlist. I love it.

rapind 1y ago
I didn't use the word "problem". In fact I presented no opinion at all. I'm just pointing out that scale matters a lot. In fact, in tech, it's often the only thing that matters. It's naive (or narrative) to think it doesn't. Everyone having a personal shopper obviously changes the relationship to the products and services you use or purchase via personal shopper. Good, bad, whatever.
SoftTalker 1y ago
We'll see more of this sort of thing as AI agents become more popular and capable. They will do things that the site or app should be able to do (or rather, things that users want to be able to do) but don't offer. The YouTube music playlist is a good example. One thing I'd like to be able to do is make a playlist of some specific artists. But you can't. You have to select specific songs. If sites want to avoid people using agents, they should offer the functionality that people are using the agents to accomplish.
dylan604 1y ago
Let's look at the opposite benefit to a store if a mom that would need to bring her 3 kids to the store vs that mom having a personal shopper. In this case, the personal shopper is "better" for the store as far as physical space. However, I'm sure the store would still rather have the mom and 3 kids physically in the store so that the kids can nag mom into buying unneeded items that are placed specifically to attract those kids' attention.
- pixl97 1y ago
  >o that the kids can nag mom into buying unneeded items Excellent. Personal shoppers are 'adblock for IRL'. >You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.