zlacker

>>i13e+(OP)
It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model that has destroyed the internet (and much of tech with it) and this episode feels like just another turn of the downward spiral.

The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite: Grabbing the content people generate online, paying nothing, and using it deftly to serve advertisement on the basis of private behavioral traits that are gleaned by prying open and subverting the use of all pieces of IT people use.

It is not too difficult by now to imagine alternate tech universes (Philip K Dick style) that have nothing to do with this nightmare, where more or less the same technologies empower individuals and companies and organizations rather than squeezing them dry. The combination of oligopoly status, moral laxity and political dysfunction means we are simply sitting around like sheep discussing whether a new butcher is about to get sharper knives.

>>colleg+Dw1
Google started out noble, but was poisoned by its own success and by extension, poisoned everything it touched. The web, as a platform, is nearly dead. Walled garden phone apps are almost completely dominate. The revenue model is on such shaky ground that almost all remaining websites either went clickbait with a pox of ads or paywall. I would not be able to list more than 5 websites that survived Ads and SEO, perhaps only Wikipedia.

These LLMs will be the end. They will capture enough of the user attention that the few remaining ad supported sites will be wiped out. “Content”, that low quality grist every site is filled with to capture users for a few seconds before they click on will become worthless, no different than the low quality crap the LLMs spew out.

Finally, we will stop trying to keep the bloated corpse of the web alive and will move on. It will be the death of a dream. At least we can all let go and focus our energies on a new dream. Whatever that dream is, I hope high quality, human created art, knowledge, opinion and creativity is at the center of it.