we live under capitalism.
Comment on Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?
FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 months ago
Why does everything have to be about money?
redempt@lemmy.world 4 months ago
FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 months ago
And yet there are still hobbyists. We only "live under capitalism" to the extent that we have to, people still do things for reasons other than money.
Aatube@kbin.social 4 months ago
Hobbyists still have to pay domain costs if they want to host a discoverable hobby site
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
delete by the almighty
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Well people who make content are already suffering for a collapse of ad prices. News sites are shutting down left and right. Not everything is about money, but they need revenue or external support to continue operating.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
I see the advent of AI browsers much like ad blockers; the web has become increasingly user-hostile and users are pushing back. Advertising was never sustainable, and that has only become more apparent over the past decade. This is a long-overdue comeuppance. The cost of the advertising economy is extraordinary and cannot be measured in mere dollars.
I miss the internet from the 90s, when sites were information-dense and operated mostly as a public service by enthusiasts, usually for free. Of course, that was not sustainable as the Internet became more popular, because the cost of serving a thousand people was, like, couch-cushion money, but the cost of serving billions of people…well, I don’t have millions of couch cushions to plunder.
But also, the cost of web site operation today is artificially high, largely because of advertising and the incentives that an ad-driven market creates. What was once a few KB of text is now many MB of ads, scripts, layouts, and graphics, or even GB of videos, all for the sake of manipulating users into viewing more ads. Commercial sites do not compete on the quality of information; they compete over ad impressions. This was not borne out of need, but out of economic incentives that are misaligned with the needs of society, individuals, and, yes, even content producers.
This isn’t new, of course. I remember the same conversations back in the 90s and early 2000s. First with Sherlock, then later with Google.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 months ago
People who make content for money are suffering from a collapse in ad prices. There are people who make content because they enjoy making and sharing content.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
That’s not what we’re talking about… we’re talking about news. Real news, with investigative journalism costs money. You need to pay for people to be on the ground, travel expense, etc.
willya@lemmyf.uk 4 months ago
This thought that everything you consume online should be completely free is insane. If everything we consumed online was just someone’s hobby there’d be even more trash.
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
There sure was a lot less trash when the web first came to the internet and there weren’t any paid sites. Of course there was a lot less everything.
1984@lemmy.today 4 months ago
Not everyone creates content to make money. This discussion and this thread is not about making any money, as an example.
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I have a long-running blog for fun, so you’re preaching to the choir. But some things can’t replace a dedicated journalist, particularly at local level, sitting in city council meetings, chasing leads, and interviewing people.