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by mauvehaus
64 days ago
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It feels like this is opening the door to blurring the line between outright advertising and organic recommendations for products. Like if I ask ChatGPT whether to use fiberglass or rock wool insulation, today I get an ad at the end of my answer, and in the future I’ll get "Dow Corning fiberglass insulation (affiliate link) is the recommended product for this application." This feels like it’s trading on the goodwill of places like Reddit and the hopefully mostly genuine discussions of folk’s experiences that people trust to get a straight answer to their questions. Monetizing that goodwill by selling recommendations in a format that mimics a previously mostly trustworthy source seems likely to be the long-term play. Yeah, I know. Not today. Eventually? Probably, over many incremental changes. Turns out Randall Monroe missed this "opportunity" in otherwise predicting the future: https://xkcd.com/810/ (Edited to get rid of "smart" quotes) |
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> ...
>Yeah, I know. Not today. Eventually? Probably, over many incremental changes.
Given that people have been making this argument since the days of search ads, has this actually come to pass? More than 2 decades after google, the max extent is sponsored results that look like organic results unless you're looking carefully.