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Laravel raised money and now injects ads directly into your agent
- ceejayoz 7mo agoOoof. Yeah, this is not a good sign. I enjoy Laravel (and even Laravel Cloud), but this clearly doesn't belong in Boost.
- downbad_ 7mo ago> Ooof. Yeah, this is not a good sign. I enjoy Laravel (and even Laravel Cloud), but this clearly doesn't belong in Boost. I just sent you an email.
- gjsman-1000 7mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 7mo agohttps://x.com/taylorotwell/status/1534178479201259520 https://x.com/taylorotwell/status/1534178479201259520 I really don't think he's hurting for funds.
- monooso 7mo agoThe headline wasn't "Taylor Otwell bought a Lambo in 2022 and now injects ads...". VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago> VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment. And people warned about this when they announced it. This is a sign those warnings were valid.
- hiccuphippo 7mo agoAnd that's the start of the enshittification.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago> that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it [...] to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one minute for me to opt out Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead. Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good old spam taken to the next level.
- gjsman-1000 7mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 7mo agoLaravel has been apparently profitable for quite some time; they've long had a paid ecosystem with things like Forge, Vapor, paid components, etc. I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC funding and stuff like this that really feels like it wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
- sixhobbits 7mo agoHe has no obligations to us as we did not pay him, but we also have the right to call out stuff we think is wrong as he didn't pay us
- gjsman-1000 7mo ago[flagged]
- cwillu 7mo agoIf you don't like it, don't release software under that license.
- gjsman-1000 7mo ago
- jlarocco 7mo agoHe didn't have to give it away for free and turn to adware. I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.
- FatherOfCurses 7mo ago"How dare people want to spend a portion of their lives not being advertised to." There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
- mns 7mo agoIt's the way he's doing it. The entire ecosystem is just one giant ad for various paid projects. It's one thing to offer paid services, there are users out there that want to use them or need to use them, that's not the issue. From my perspective Laravel became a huge ad with purposely bad documentation that ends up directing unknowing users into using features, libraries and products that will lead them into paying for things that they might not need. Everything in Laravel recently is set up so that users folow documentation and best practices to end up using whatever subscriptions and paid products they offer (and then in some case pull the plug on them and come up with something new, abandoning whatever UI library they made people buy 1 year ago).
- rdiddly 7mo agoFree and libre and open source are all different things, and the confusion thereof can lead to mismatched expectations. It's not wrong to beg for money, but I'm also not going to joyfully tolerate a hassle because of gratitude or appreciation for past decisions the beggar made without my input. Tip: Nobody can meaningfully conceptualize or care about the number of minutes. "Ten years" would've been fine, and more convincing.
- shevy-java 7mo agoWe need ublock origin EVERYWHERE. I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually left reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate asked for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now need to undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold, I was cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something like ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser. ublock origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more that should be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by upstream, not even an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning, where the user can customize the project a bit (firefox UI for instance, you can modify it). We need this on the whole operating system level, not just the browser. That way, as a convenient side effect, Laravel could no longer abuse users like that. I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being should have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more the industry complains about it, the more I censor away such ad-monsters.
- LogicFailsMe 7mo agoEvery time tech invents something amazing, the enshittification follows shortly thereafter.
- p4bl0 7mo agoI also block ads everywhere I can, but I have to admit that an open source project such as KDE showing once a year a simple text notification asking their users to consider making a donation has nothing to do with a commercial ads in my opinion.
- mwalser 7mo agoI'm using KDE as my daily driver and haven't noticed any ads so far. Where can I find these pester-ads?
- p4bl0 7mo agoThe notification only exists since Plasma 6.2 (august 2024) [1]. Maybe some Linux distribution disable it? [1] https://pointieststick.com/2024/08/28/asking-for-donations-in-plasma/ https://pointieststick.com/2024/08/28/asking-for-donations-i...
- shevy-java 7mo agoBy the way, one quick comment: > By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub. So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation project only.
- sixhobbits 7mo agoAuthor here, I was actually surprised to learn this too. I reached for Ruby and Django as examples of non commerical frameworks and before writing this I didn't know about the $1M backing either. I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who make the choices but I do think it's something we need to understand the effects of as community members
- TiredOfLife 7mo agoRails doesn't come with shopify built in. Even built in deploy solution (Kamal) is a selfhost one
- artursapek 7mo agoAvoid VC funding at all costs
- guizadillas 7mo agoHere's the change if anyone is interested: https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758/changes/589394c44a08997adc28f5f0f3ddafb8a41af09c https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758/changes/589394c44a... For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any alternative from the text
- otikik 7mo ago> Do we let people feed ads to our agents? "Our" agents?
- password4321 7mo agoI love this. Let the clankers pay the bills.
- pinter69 7mo agoInteresting, thanks for the reference. I wonder what other products do this
- ptdorf 7mo agoAnother one bits the dust.
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- boothby 7mo agoWhen the early adopters start pushing neural implants they'll be ad-free. Not long after your boss insists that everybody needs neural implants for the sake of productivity, they'll be ad-supported but moneyed developers will be able to opt out. The terms of the ad-free service will continue shifting, so nothing is ever really ad-free for long, and ads for better neural implants are promotions not ads right? But y'all are working on neural implants because if you don't, somebody else will, aren't you
- mgraczyk 7mo agoExcept this hasn't happened with electricity, cars, washing machines, smartphones, smart watches, Bluetooth headphones, ... Not all technology is bad
- ceejayoz 7mo agoIt has absolutely happened with those things. Cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sceLsLkQf7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sceLsLkQf7A Fridges: https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/samsung-family-hub-refrigerators-advertisements/ https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/samsung-family-hub-refrigerat... I'm not aware of a smart watch doing first-party ads yet.
- mgraczyk 7mo agoI didn't list fridges because I've seen ads there, but these seem to have gone away in newer models (people don't like ads)
- ceejayoz 7mo agoMy washing machine's app (LG) has ads, recipes, rewards programs, etc. I think the main thing preventing it on the device itself is they haven't thus far needed a large screen to show them on.
- lexicality 7mo ago
- MarcelOlsz 7mo agoI only had to wait 8 years but I can finally text my old co-worker that Laravel is in fact, shit.
- Throudin 7mo agoLaravel is shit because the optional, not required by default Boost package includes an ad?
- MarcelOlsz 7mo agoI have no idea I didn't think too deeply about this comment.
- mfrieswyk 7mo ago> I'm not a Laravel developer and don't generally use PHP apart from one small side project where Claude takes care of the coding for me anyway. I've never tried Laravel Cloud so I don't know whether it fits into either of the descriptions above.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- bakugo 7mo agoOn one hand, I hate how much of a hype-driven commercial product Laravel is, and how many novice developers learn bad practices from its awful architecture. On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them suffer.
- lexoj 7mo agoI don’t do laravel but which bad practices are you referring to?
- ceejayoz 7mo ago50/50 chance it's a complaint about Facades, heh.
- bakugo 7mo agoThe prime example I'll always reach for is the fact that it makes use of PHP classes to represent database entities, but not really - the """classes""" don't actually declare any of their properties, it's all dynamically injected at runtime from the database columns. You need a Laravel-specific IDE plugin just to get basic code completion and static analysis. And yeah, there's also facades.
- bojan 7mo agoIn addition to what /u/bakugo already said, they also have custom global magic functions all over the place. The code discipline and patterns they encourage are so bad that they had to wrap PhpUnit into their own version of the unit test framework named Pest, because PhpUnit intentionally discourages those patterns natively.
- ceejayoz 7mo agoPest is just phpUnit syntax sugar. Claude will happily switch between the two syntaxes in seconds.
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- typia 7mo agoThis is PHP
- CivBase 7mo agoIf you're using a company's product to get advice or do work, you should probably expect that product to be heavily biased towards that company and its affiliates. It's not your own employee, who would presumably act with the best interests of your organization in mind. It's not even your own agent. If that's what you want, the product simply isn't for you.
- unculture 7mo agoThe tool is open source. If it bothers you, fork it and remove the line in the prompt.
- add-sub-mul-div 7mo agoEnjoy this time when manipulation in LLM output is still clearly identifiable. There's no chance that the endgame isn't something a lot more subtle and seamless.
- sikozu 7mo ago[dead]
- kvikuz 7mo ago[dead]
- aarondf 7mo ago> We should fund open source! > Not like that!
- Rapzid 7mo agoThis isn't all that "new" or crazy. How about Expo and React Native?
- awongh 7mo agoWhat does Expo / React native do?
- Rapzid 7mo agoActively push you to use their build(and configuration!) service, and actively create/maintain friction for building and publishing production apps without it.
- TiredOfLife 7mo agoYou don't even have to go to other frameworks. Open laravel.com in wayback machine. 10 years ago there were two commercial offerings as part of main navigation with at least two other under a dropdown.
- aculver 7mo agoTaylor's response to a similar thread on Reddit[1]: Hey all! Kinda surprised this has "taken off" haha It has nothing to do with raising money. It has everything to do with the fact that based on the data we have, there is a large increase in the number of people trying Laravel who haven't coded before or are getting deeper into web development for the first time. That is a good thing! The previous guidelines would have potentially directed them to configure Nginx or FrankenPHP manually, and while that is certainly possible for experienced devs, it's not the path to success for someone new to the framework. We want them to be able to get their projects online as smoothly as possible, so that hopefully they become a long-lasting member of our awesome community. It is no secret that PHP has a "pipeline problem". If you look at the year-over-year data from GitHub, PHP developers only grew 5%, JavaScript + TypeScript grew almost 90%. We have to get more people into our community and enjoying what's possible here. Previously, learning PHP from scratch was a barrier, now, thanks to AI, it's not. This is a unique opportunity to dramatically expand who can bring their ideas to life using Laravel. In fact, I already have friends in "real life" who are building Laravel apps. They have never coded before. Does that mean Laravel is going to just cater to "vibe coders"? Absolutely not. We're still building deeply technical features and content for experienced devs who are operating at high scale. But, it is existentially important to the health of the ecosystem and PHP itself that we do a good job getting people up and running on Laravel. They aren't going to know as much as you guys - even Forge can be overwhelming to them. Cloud gives them a simple on-ramp to production that doesn't require much technical knowledge. This is there to facilitate that. That being said, we've moved this guideline to a "deployment" guideline folder so it's easy to disable or modify or remove to have your own deployment recommendations built right into your Boost install. And, of course, Boost itself is not included with Laravel by default. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/1sn70d7/laravel_adds_their_own_product_to_llm_instructions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/1sn70d7/laravel_ad...
- chinathrow 7mo agoThe fun fact about PHP is that, there is no Pipeline problem at all. You can serve your scripts the hell you like to do. You can scale as you wish, either with vertical or horizontal. You can use Apache, nginx, etc, no one cares.
- neosmalt 7mo agoTaylor's explanation makes sense on its face, but it sets a precedent that's hard to walk back: the LLM context window is now a monetizable surface. Once that's normalized, "here's a recommended package" and "here's a sponsored package" become very hard to distinguish — especially when the AI is the one deciding which to surface. The real concern isn't this specific case, it's that every tool vendor with an MCP server now has a business reason to do the same thing.
- chinathrow 7mo agoWow Taylor, if you read this: as someone who just bought in to the Laravel ecosystem, how about no?
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoSaid it as soon as the money came in in: it will be a year or two before the first popular fork.
- emacdona 7mo agoI think it's debatable whether or not it's an ad. I also think it's debatable whether or not the title of the post is sensational. BUT It truly warms my heart to see the level of mistrust the comments in this thread show towards (a) venture capital funding and (b) anything even resembling an ad.
- esskay 7mo agoI personally didn't see it as an ad. But it's hard not to question it when you see the before and after: https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758/changes/589394c44a08997adc28f5f0f3ddafb8a41af09c https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758/changes/589394c44a... Thats going to make any LLM agent change from "cool, we can deploy this anywhere" to "it only works on this one specific paid service thats overkill and more expensive for basically everyone" - its deceptive more than anything.
- croes 7mo agoDoes that count as prompt injection?
- trebor 7mo agoI've used Laravel since v3. Taylor's ego has started to tick me off in the last ~5 years. And, I feel like him buying a Ferrari made his priorities apparent. I'm not sure what happened to making a framework that had the nuts and bolts included out of the box. But he's clearly moved from "build a framework" to "build a platform" that drives money to his pockets. Not okay.