• FaceDeer@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    Oh no, we may have to go back to an Internet where people posted web pages because they wanted to share information rather than to make a buck.

    • stockRot@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Will we also have to go to a time where we’ll have to buy physical newspapers so that journalists can make a living? Or do we expect them to also share information just for the sake of sharing information?

      • Toine@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        You don’t need physical newspapers, but if you want good journalism you should definitely pay for your news.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        Unlikely. Some new approach to paid journalism will need to be developed. But that’s already the case, AI’s just driving the existing trend further.

      • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        That never left. We’re still buying our local newspaper concerning 60000 people. It is way more relevant than any piece of news you might find on the web.

  • Windex007@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    In relatively short order, the majority of web content will be AI generated anyways. People will be mad that other AIs are stealing what their AIs wrote. The technology and business aspirations have accelerated us towards a shittier and shittier web experience for a few decades now. I think we’ll hit some kind of web-shit-singularity within 5 years.

    • ATDA@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I don’t think I’d be nearly as upset if the ai weren’t copying the click bait headlines, and “word padding like a fifth grader to get to five double spaced pages” writing style.

    • edwardbear@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s much simpler than that. AI is going to continue makingn it worse, until the big tech companies say that they have a solution which will be web2.0 and solves ALL the problems of the legacy net (problems the big tech is causing lol). Then they will have total information control and regulate the net out of the kazoo.

      Imagine visiting a website and “oh oh, apparently you haven’t met the daily quota yet, because you used the toilet. unfortunately your access to the web is restricted.”

      I’m telling you, AI (which is not even real fucking AI) is being pushed to the forefront because big tech fucking knows what’s to come. And then they’ll snatch control with the pretense being “it’s just to fix AI, we swear wink wink

        • edwardbear@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I don’t mean the current versioning of the web.

          I mean that https, ipv4 and dns servers will be abandoned altogether and everything will be incorporated, no more NGO’s, no more vpn, no more Tor, and FOSS will be exterminated.

          That’s the corporate dream, the cunts.

    • VampyreOfNazareth@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Then, a new net technology will be created that bypasses ISP and government spy boxes. Many CEO’s will pay politicians to imprison users.

  • Louisoix@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I know it’s a small and unimportant thing, but it’s still kinda annoying that some authors (editors?) choose a phone with a giant black hole in the middle of a screen to show something on thumbnails.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    This isn’t keeping me up at night. I’m fully confident advertisers will figure out how to ruin this and get their money.

    • ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Like, for example, breaking my ability to back out of this Engadget page on Connect for Lemmy’s default web browser so I had to close the app and reopen it.

      • kubica@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        In browsers you can long press the back button, and it will show the history so you can really jump where you want. Not sure if on Connect you can but maybe is worth a shot.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    The conversations and debates keep circling around one core concept of our civilization that is slowly becoming outdated because it is the main bottleneck in our development and the development of technology.

    Capitalism and the money system.

    Human needs require all of us to make a bit of money in order to survive.

    Human greed demands that we want to go beyond survival and just become enormously wealthy without regard for anything or anyone.

    AI is quickly out pacing us and nothing is holding it back because the possibilities are limitless now. The only thing holding it back is our own collective greed. To AI the internet and communications is a place to exchange information not a place to make money.

    And to me the problem is the small group of individuals that want to maintain the system of generating all the wealth for them. Because the answer is simple, if wealth were more equally distributed in the world and everyone everywhere were happy and healthy with what they had and they no longer had to worry about surviving, there would be no backlash of worrying about advertising on the internet and in how to compensate people for their work.

    We worry about the money system because 90% of humanity constantly has to fight to have a piece of it and 10% of it has complete control of all of it and never wants to let go.

    This isn’t a problem of internet advertising and compensating creators … it’s just a symptom of wealth inequality and until we solve that problem, AI will just keep chipping away at civilisation beyond our collective control.

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    This is only a temporary “problem”. Eventually, ads will be incorporated into the story, and/or advertising companies will include clauses in their contracts. I imagine those clauses will DEMAND that websites include advertising in AI readers or not get paid for any ads they run.

    Think enshittification. AI readers are only ad-free now in order to make them seem like an attractive option, and get people hooked on using them. I bet the numbers have already been calculated and decided on. Once AI readers are used by enough people, the ads will start.

    • nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Yup. Just like ads on cable TV, ads on streaming services, now ads in your AI. Even worse, the ads in AI may not even be labeled and just tweak your results slightly to favor certain products and the process hidden from the end user since hey, it’s so complicated even human programmers can’t figure out how to make the AI process transparent and verifiable.

    • VampyreOfNazareth@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Jeffrey, solemnly took a swig from his delicious cold Coca Cola. “Damn” He thought, smirking. “That tastes great, I should buy it more often.” He then drew his sword and charged the Viking shield wall yelling “This is for the Cola!”

  • TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Thank you to Arc for reminding me how much I enjoy browsing the internet and its many unique pages — these soulless generated results are the opposite of what I want.

  • le_saucisson_masquay@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Local news publishers, Karolian told Engadget, almost entirely depend on selling ads and subscriptions to readers who visit their websites to survive.

    Then it’s time to change your business model. Ad driven journalism has shown it’s limits decades ago, this is just regurgitating what other press agencies write and adding some ads over it.

    • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Subsequently, subscription based content consequently isn’t automatically available to crawlers, making it doubly useful.

      P.S.: love your username

  • kayazere@feddit.nl
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    7 months ago

    While I prefer to doing the reading/searching/summarizing myself, rather than have it presented to me, the current website revenue model is so broken with ads, tracking, and other pop ups. The user experience is really horrible.

  • astreus@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Considering how much of the web is AI-generated now (with it predicted to rise to 90% by the end of 2026) we’ve managed to turn a tool for connecting people to a tool for chatbots to talk to one another.

  • shiftymccool@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Arc Browser is better for USERS. Ad companies are just going to have to figure it out. Sounds like a “them” problem to me

    • lurker8008@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Remember Google attempt at DRM for the Internet? That would in effect block this. This and similar are justifying to companies to support Google Chrome only and use their DRM.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        I do not remember Google’s attempt at DRM for the Internet, which is an indication of how well it went for their attempt.

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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            7 months ago

            I just did a search, and according to the articles I’ve found Google abandoned the “Web Environment Integrity” API in November and removed their prototype from Chromium.

            • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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              7 months ago

              Well except that they are continuing with developing it for their Webview browser which is the web browser based of chrome that’s embedded in basically every app anyways.

              Plus Apple has their Web Tokens which are not being fought against which means Google will be desperate to get in on the pie that Apple is getting away with even if it means waiting and coming up with a different name for it.

              It’s still coming. Web DRM and person specific tracking is just around the bend once we get exhausted and distracted enough.

              • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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                7 months ago

                Then I guess I won’t see whatever websites decide to use it (until it’s cracked). Oh well.

                • dustycups@aussie.zone
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                  7 months ago

                  Does that mean you (and me) end up drowning in a pool of 90% AI dead internet comments while everyone who stayed on Reddit or Facebook can talk to their friends in their WEI tracked & profiled walled garden?

                  Shitty choice.

                  The only solution I can see it robust moderation tools on a platform like Lemmy.

                  AI still gets to read everything but at least individuals/communities/instances can be blocked for bad behaviour.

                  What altertatives do we have right now?

    • TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      No offense but I’m not sure you read or understood the main point of the article — there’s not much of an internet for users if there’s no incentive to supply it with content.

  • aheadofthekrauts@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 months ago

    Web creators are trying to share their knowledge and get supported while doing so”, tweeted Ben Goodger, a software engineer who helped create both Firefox and Chrome. “I get how this helps users. How does it help creators? Without them there is no web…” After all, if a web browser sucked out all information from web pages without users needing to actually visit them, why would anyone bother making websites in the first place?

    Do you remember rss feed aggregators and how they killed the web?

    For decades, websites have served ads and pushed people visiting them towards paying for subscriptions. Monetizing traffic is one of the primary ways most creators on the web continue to make a living.

    The AI won’t summarize subscribers only articles. In the end content creators have to focus on subscriptions and less on advertisement revenue. Will this mean less content on the web? Yes of course. However, is this really a bad thing? Less clickbait nonenews articles, less copy&paste repetitions etc.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      For a long time, people put things on the Internet because they thought it was interesting or fun to do so. Ad based stuff has been around longer, but there’s no reason we can’t just accept that maybe the Internet doesn’t make as much money for content creators as we all thought.

      • dustycups@aussie.zone
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        7 months ago

        The ad based stuff seem happy to go with click-baity & AI generated content anyway. The people with the purse strings do tend to be stingy. So much genuinely original content gets ripped of, reacted to etc and diluted away. The loss of professional journalism has been a loss to humanity but it’s one that we might just have to accept.

        Now I’m sad.

  • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Who makes money when everyone just uses a search engine for answers?

    Is this post sponsored by Google or what?