> In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!
But I think it makes a lot of sense for very popular consumer products. In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT etc exist for free, but with ads, rather than not exist at all. Preferably with an option to pay and remove ads
Nowadays I'm happy to pay for Youtube premium or LLM, but back during my student days I could not really afford it - and I'm glad there was a free tier (with ads)
>In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT
I don't use any of these except YouTube (if only I could find the content elsewhere…) and I still pay for them when I purchase anything advertised on these properties because, of course, the companies advertising on Google makes all their customers pay for the free (lol) services. All advertising expenses are included in the price of the products, even if you never saw any ads.
We could easily charge for each of these services and still have them. Advertising is not necessary at all. It's just a way to make others pay for your services. It's a free riding problem to externalize costs on those who don't partake in the scheme.
Pay your share and don't call free what others will subsidize. Unless if a public service and we collectively agree on the split (vote and taxes, which we can debate publicly)
Google is/was in a somewhat special situation that they could show you ads that were relevant to what you are looking for. In 95% of the websites I visit this is simply not true.
As usual just because Google uses it and seems to be successful with it doesn't mean that it will work for normal companies as well.
ChatGPT in theory has the potential to show relevant ads as there service involves the user stating what they want. So they could actually present relevant ads. We'll have to see how it turns out.
dktp|1 month ago
> In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!
But I think it makes a lot of sense for very popular consumer products. In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT etc exist for free, but with ads, rather than not exist at all. Preferably with an option to pay and remove ads
Nowadays I'm happy to pay for Youtube premium or LLM, but back during my student days I could not really afford it - and I'm glad there was a free tier (with ads)
rcMgD2BwE72F|1 month ago
I don't use any of these except YouTube (if only I could find the content elsewhere…) and I still pay for them when I purchase anything advertised on these properties because, of course, the companies advertising on Google makes all their customers pay for the free (lol) services. All advertising expenses are included in the price of the products, even if you never saw any ads.
We could easily charge for each of these services and still have them. Advertising is not necessary at all. It's just a way to make others pay for your services. It's a free riding problem to externalize costs on those who don't partake in the scheme.
Pay your share and don't call free what others will subsidize. Unless if a public service and we collectively agree on the split (vote and taxes, which we can debate publicly)
gehsty|1 month ago
I struggle to understand people getting butt hurt about a free service showing its users adverts, that will keep the service free.
They should have done this earlier, so their adds would be better by now, and they have a better chance against Google.
bhaak|1 month ago
As usual just because Google uses it and seems to be successful with it doesn't mean that it will work for normal companies as well.
ChatGPT in theory has the potential to show relevant ads as there service involves the user stating what they want. So they could actually present relevant ads. We'll have to see how it turns out.