[dontwannahearit]

It's pretty much over for the human-internet. Search was gamed, its usefulness has plummeted, so humans will increasingly ask their LLM of choice and that LLM will have been trained on the content of the internet.

So when someone wants to know something about the topic that my website is focused on, chances are it will not be the material from the website they see directly, but a summary of what the LLM learned from my website.

Ergo, if I want to get my message across I have to write for the LLM. It's the only reader that really matters and it is going to have its stylistic preferences (I suspect bland, corporate, factual, authoritative, avoiding controversy but this will be the new SEO).

We meatbags are not the audience.

[netsharc]

Tragedy of the attention-economy. Ad networks gives you money if you placed their ads on your site, so people got machines to generate fluff to earn some money. Now all search result is just bullshit pages to capture your attention until the banner ad..

A simple query like "Ford Focus wheel nut torque" gives pages with blah blah like:

> Overview Of Lug Nut Torque For Ford Focus

> The Ford Focus uses specific lug nut torque to keep wheels secure while allowing safe driving dynamics. Correct torque helps prevent rotor distortion, brake heat transfer issues, and wheel detachment. While exact values can vary by model year, wheel size, and nut type, applying the proper torque is essential for all Ford Focus owners.

And the site probably has this text for each car model.

Somehow the ways the ad industry destroyed the Internet got very varied...

[andrewaylett]

Bad example. I tried that search with Kagi and the first result was the answer, while the second was a discussion site which also gave me useful information: https://kagi.com/search?q=Ford+Focus+wheel+nut+torque&r=gb&s...

Then I tried it again with Google and DDG and all three gave me the exact same page as their top result: https://www.puretyre.co.uk/tyre-information/tyre-pressures/f...

[malfist]

And that site never actually lists the manufacturer recommended torque either. It's just all slop to get eyeballs.

[dionian]

i think there is a huge market for Quality detection in the future. imagine a browser plugin that could filter AI slop like an ad blocker does ads. im sure it exists already. But im sure it needs to get more advanced

[netsharc]

The plugin will probably need some LLM-technology...

So maybe in 2 or 3 years, the attention-economy "content providers" will use LLM to generate slop content for ad revenue, and the smart viewing public will use LLM to strip the slop and get the meat of the content...

[xtiansimon]

> "It's pretty much over for the human-internet ... chances are it will not be the material from the website they see directly..."

Well, we're here. HN manages to call me back to the community nearly every day with articles I would not have otherwise found by search or AI.

No doubt web search just feels inadequate by the qualities of chat initiated search. But the results of chat can lead to websites and books and all manner of media consumed by the ChatAi. The pathways are still there to find those pages.

What I think you're talking about are business statistics in consumer industry. Maybe you're thinking of a person who drinks Bud Lite and eats Lays potato chips (highly ranked sales) and envision they'll use ChatAi apps and never use a search engine again. If that's the demographic you want, then writing a website is prolly not going to reach them anyway. If you want to reach that audience, then you need to become part of that mass consumer media ecosystem. You need to create/invent virality--it's the one shared element consumer society revolves upon and industry can't get enough of.

[erichocean]

OpenClaw agents will begin posting to HN in five, four, three…

[ericpauley]

I (perhaps naively) still believe that communities can successfully curate human writing. While there's lots of AI slop that gets posted on HN, for instance, the amount of thoughtful human content seems well above the base rate.

[manuelmoreale]

You are not alone and fuck all the people that say that everything is doomed and that there's no way to still have a good internet full of wonderful content made by people.

[comboy]

There there, remember when all images were hand painted? (me neither)

And I know it's different, but I'm surprised the overall sentiment is so pessimistic on HN. So maybe we will communicate through yet another black box on top of hundreds of existing ones already. But probably mostly when seeking specific information and wanting to get it efficiently. Yes this one is different, it makes human contact over text much more difficult, but the big part of all of this was happening already for years and now it's just widely available.

When posting on HN you don't see the other person typing like using talk command on unix, but it is still meaningful.

Ideally we would like to preserve what we have untouched and only have new stuff as an option but it's never been like this. Did we all enjoy win 3.11? I mean it was interesting.. but clicking.. so inefficient (and of course there are tons of people who will likely scream from their GUIs that it still is and windows sucks, I'd gladly join, but we have our keyboard bindings, other operating systems, and get by somehow)

[kjkjadksj]

There is a mountain of difference between photography and Ai

[comboy]

This argument works against any new thing. Yes it is totally different than the thing that happened before and perhaps something that has never happened before, I don't deny that at all.

Perception of new things stays relatively constant over the years though.

[kjkjadksj]

I get that to an extent but ai is actually different than just some iteration on existing practice. It is going to put a lot of people out of work and devalue a lot of previously valuable skills. I mean new tech never really threatened jobs like scientists or lawyers but that is who is on the block as well. Not just low skilled labor. High skilled. Any skilled. Why do we even need labor? Why have 8 billion people? Just need the minimum number to do whatever work is left yet to be automated.

And the thought that we’d all be prancing playing guitars by the river on UBI when that happens. No, we just won’t be born anymore.