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AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?”
298 sats \ 8 comments \ @stack_harder 23h AskSN
When LLMs replace ads and subscriptions as the web’s lifeblood, what fills the void? And what if Google and Wikipedia fade into the background?
Sure, we all hate ads, but like it or not, they do work to sustain things, and V4V models have so far not proven to be economically viable for a business (although it does work great for SN)!
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32 sats \ 2 replies \ @fourrules 5h
Ads already killed the web. There is a narrow window to use LLMs to resurrect it while behavioural modes are liquid and we can finally aggregate all of the real world events and tie online identities and reputation to participation in physical communities, thereby allowing people to enforce moral norms within distributed and decentralised networks, to sanitise digital public spaces without centralised control systems.
AI-slop is an opportunity to convince people to finally defect from the dominant ad funded paradigm, to disconnect to reconnect.
Maybe we can even kill the ad model entirely by creating a service that is monetised in a manner that aligns with user-purposes and make the use of apps that serve ads into a lower-class or socially disapproved behaviour, like smoking or pissing in the public square. Ads and the engagement model has to be associated with dirt, poor digital hygiene. With a sufficiently powerful alternative you could probably propagate that idea to nurture a vibe shift, starting with women and parents, who would then enforce it on the rest.
We're probably too late to save Gen-Z from the worst effects of the ad funded internet and the bunk ideology of 'revealed preferences', but maybe we can prepare the road for Gen-Alpha.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 5h
i dont have enough faith in the majority of humanity for this to be feasible, but it's an admirable vision for sure
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules 3h
I don't think you need that kind of faith, I think you just have to have faith that a healthier more coordinated minority will dominate society. If you have poor digital hygiene you should bare the consequences yourself, and not able to offload the negative side effects on the rest of us. If that means kicking over our nation state democratic system in favour of a more devolved governance system built on hierarchy then so be it, we need to topple the bankrupt gerantocracy somehow.
Bottom line: majoritarianism and healthy digital spaces are incompatible.
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202 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 20h
I just opened this post in a private window with tor and I saw:
  1. No ads
  2. No paywall
  3. Every word in your post
So the solution to your problem is to post. Just post. Post here, post on your self-hosted blog. Start an email list for all I care.
But whatever you do, don't be a sheep and use only LLMs.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 5h
i actually don't use llms for news, i use them for other things that make my work tasks easier, i also have use brave which is good for ad blocking
this question is more for legacy companies like google, that still make the bulk of their revenue on ad sales etc
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 5h
Oh! Google is also a leading LLM company. I also don't really care if they survive or not, but if I were an employee, I'd worry about all this, sure.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 18h
Had to duckduckgo to learn what LLMs are! Never use Google. Maybe I missed something but we all make choices to some extent...while to some extent algorithms are increasingly powerful...we can choose to some extent too...even if the algorithms know most people are lazy sheep. Thank god for linux and Bitcoin. Imo AI is somewhat over hyped but time will tell.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @magnolia_mayhem 20h
V4V is working in a lot of places. Stacker news isn't the only place on the internet that we can use Bitcoin. Look at the whole V4V music and podcasting space.
Yes, there are failures, but there are failures with everything.
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