[heavyset_go]

> I am betting hundreds of thousands, rising to millions more little sites, will start blocking/gating this year. AI companies might license from big sources (you can see the blocking percentage went down), but they will be missing the long tail, where a lot of great novel training data lives.

This is where I'm at. I write content when I run into problems that I don't see solved anywhere else, so my sites host novel content and niche solutions to problems that don't exist elsewhere, and if they do, they are cited as sources in other publications, or are outright plagiarized.

Right now, LLMs can't answer questions that my content addresses.

If it ever gets to the point where LLMs are sufficiently trained on my data, I'm done writing and publishing content online for good.

[zifpanachr23]

I don't think it is at all selfish to want to get some credit for going to the trouble of publishing novel content and not have it all stolen via an AI scraping your site. I'm totally on your side and I think people that don't see this as a problem are massively out of touch.

I work in a pretty niche field and feel the same way. I don't mind sharing my writing with individuals (even if they don't directly cite me) because then they see my name and know who came up with it, so I still get some credit. You could call this "clout farming" or something derogatory, but this is how a lot of experts genuinely get work...by being known as "the <something> guy who gave us that great tip on a blog once".

With AI snooping around, I feel like becoming one of those old mathematicians that would hold back publicizing new results to keep them all for themselves. That doesn't seem selfish to me, humans have a right to protect ourselves and survive and maintain the value of our expertise when OpenAI isn't offering any money.

I honestly think we should just be done with writing content online now, before it's too late. I've thought a lot about it lately and I'm leaning more towards that option.

[heavyset_go]

Agree with your assessment. I enjoy the little networks of people that develop as others use and share content. I enjoy the personal messages of thanks, the insights that are shared with me and seeing how my work influences others and the work they do. It's really cool to learn that something I made is the jumping off point for something bigger than I ever foresaw. Hell, just being reached out to help out or answer questions is... nice? I guess.

It's the little bits of humanity that I enjoy, and divorcing content from its creators is alienating in that way.

I'm not a musician, but I imagine there are similar motivations and appreciations artists have when sharing their work.

> I work in a pretty niche field and feel the same way. I don't mind sharing my writing with individuals (even if they don't directly cite me) because then they see my name and know who came up with it, so I still get some credit. You could call this "clout farming" or something derogatory, but this is how a lot of experts genuinely get work...by being known as "the <something> guy who gave us that great tip on a blog once".

Yup, my writing has netted me clients who pointed at my sites as being a deciding factor in working with me.

> I honestly think we should just be done with writing content online now, before it's too late. I've thought a lot about it lately and I'm leaning more towards that option.

The rational side of me agrees with you, and has for a while now, but the human side of me still wants to write.