[Traster]

Perplexity has really convinced me about this. There is a clear difference between automated bots scraping data at bulk for later use, and automated bots working on behalf of users on direct requests. I can see a reasonable argument that some of the first type of automation could be tolerable for websites with strict limits, the second type I think by default should not be tolerated at all.

Perplexity's value proposition appears to be "we're going to take the stuff off your website, and present it to our users. We're not going to show them your ads, we're not going to offer them your premium services or referrals to other products, we're going to strip out the value from your content and take it for our users".

You can argue all you want about whether that's 5k impressions a day or 1m impressions a day. It should be 0 impressions a day. It is literally just free-riding.

Also, they're meant to be a professional company taking VC money to build a business, why are writing whiny posts like a teenager? The impression I get with a lot of these companies is that their business is losing money hand over fist, they have no idea how they're going to make it work and they look absolutely panicked as a result. They come across like a company I would want to be nowhere near.

[skeledrew]

> Perplexity's value proposition appears to be "we're going to take the stuff off your website, and present it to our users. We're not going to show them your ads, we're not going to offer them your premium services or referrals to other products, we're going to strip out the value from your content and take it for our users".

This, exactly this is a primary reason why I use Perplexity. I want the valued content, without the unnecessary distractions that I'll never consciously touch anyway (there have been accidental clicks now and then, because some site designers really want people to click that ad and go all out to embed it into the content, and it only leads to great annoyance and sometimes a promise never to visit that site again).

[Traster]

Yes and the result will be one of two options: option a (more likely) the underlying sites will literally just disappear, their business model no longer works and the content that you want (but apparently not enough to respect the authors) will cease to exist. It will most likely be replaced with AI slop replicas of the content you wanted. Or option b (much less likely) the content you want will move behind premium services where AI companies will have to negotiate subscriptions you will have entered the cable TV bundle era of the internet.

[skeledrew]

Oh there's also part c where, once a or b happens, it'll clear the way for quality non-SEO content by creators who just want to share with 0 expectation of any return, which will finally see light once the return-optimized stuff has died or been walled away. The internet will be back to how it was before and meant to be with content shared for fun and/or interest, not profit, taking the front scene.

[bwfan123]

google was also accused in its early days of free riding on other people's content - google news still remains controversial. Also, in its early days, google did not have to deal with a large counter-party like cloudflare which is now a gatekeeper of sorts.

The problem I see for chatgpt/perplexity and the like is this: for good responses to many questions, they have to index the web real-time. ie, they become a search-engine. However, they cannot share revenue with the content-providers since they dont have an ad-model. I wonder how this would be resolved - perhaps thru content licensing with the large publishers.