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by simianwords5 hours ago |
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upvoteby badsectoracula5 hours ago|
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The competitor also having ads.

I know Anthropic made these ads about not having ads but Apple also made ads about thinking different, yet once they became successful they ended up thinking the same as every other business.

And once upon a time, Google did not do evil.

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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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just go to openrouter and there are openweight models hosted by independent providers. why would all of them choose ads?
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upvoteby Someone12345 hours ago|
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Then OpenRouter has ads, and the models hosted by third-parties have an ad/ad-free tier (heck, even ads injected into the query response stream).
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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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this is motivated reasoning. the models are openweight and anyone can host them. why would every hosting company use ads? lets be a bit sensible.
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upvoteby jon-wood5 hours ago|
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Are you (and the other’s going all Pikachu face here) really that naive? Have you looked around lately? News is a race to the bottom for clicks and ad revenue, photo sharing sites are turning people into extremists because it results in more ad revenue than just showing your friend’s holiday photos, and search engines prefer giving malware laden installers over the legit version of open source software.

So yeah, the assumption unless shown otherwise is that things will get worse, and the user is just there to be sold whatever shit is paying most.

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upvoteby atherton940275 hours ago|
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I mean your argument is basically saying "in the future Linux will have ads, there's a race to the bottom with operating systems, just look at windows". Tough to justify this train of thought with open weight models
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upvoteby tomrod4 hours ago|
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It almost did. Look at Ubuntu and Amazon.
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upvoteby gloxkiqcza5 hours ago|
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That stands today. In the future the SOTA might move to where models of today are no longer competitive and there no open-weight alternatives available anymore. Let’s hope it’s not the case.
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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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even if that were to happen, its still a better situation than now.
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upvoteby draxil5 hours ago|
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We've seen this process before. If you don't pay, you are the product.
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upvoteby Someone12345 hours ago|
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But people ARE paying and still getting ads in this move.

Their Go plan, which is paid, is getting ads.

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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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There exists no (or very few) subscription service that has no tier without advertisements. You are panicking for no reason.

Netflix?

Hulu?

Youtube?

Spotify?

Adobe?

Duolingo?

X?

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upvoteby SirFatty5 hours ago|
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Then everything is ok since everyone's doing it!
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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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you didn't get my point - no one is doing it and there's a reason why.,
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upvoteby pigpag5 hours ago|
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This is simply not (always) true. Spotify injects ads for Podcasts even for paying users. YouTube has tons of videos with adds built-in by content creators.
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upvoteby Someone12344 hours ago|
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Yep, and a lot of the streaming services listed also inject ads for their own shows into the "ad-free" tier's content (before it begins). Plus ads on the home-page.
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upvoteby simianwords4 hours ago|
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this is an incorrect analogy - the platform is not showing ads but rather the creators themselves.
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upvoteby Marsymars3 hours ago|
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I dunno, I think it's clearly different if Spotify is using their platform to inject the ads vs the creators creating the content with ads included.

Like if Netflix let showrunners inject ads into their shows and provided a technical platform for that, and the Stranger Things creators added ads to every episode... nobody would be like "it's not Netflix showing ads, it's the Stranger Things creators".

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upvoteby 4 hours ago|
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upvoteby tempest_5 hours ago|
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Once one competitor sees the ratchet turn they will follow suit.
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upvoteby marginalia_nu5 hours ago|
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Yeah, once competitors investors see OpenAI making a profit, and competitors not, they ask why.
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upvoteby baggachipz5 hours ago|
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> OpenAI making a profit

I don't think anyone has to worry about that.

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upvoteby marginalia_nu4 hours ago|
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Don't underestimate just how much money you can make off funneling visitors to ads at scale. It's basically Google's entire business model.

If OpenAI plays their cards right, they can definitely end up in a similar position. Yeah a lot of programmers would probably pony up for Claude, but every lazy high schooler in the world would gladly hear about Raid: Shadow Legends to have ChatGPT do their homework for them.

Don't get me wrong it's definitely sucks, but man is it ever a profitable way to suck.

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upvoteby baggachipz4 hours ago|
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This assumes that ads at google's or facebook's level would get them anywhere close to profitability. OpenAI's costs of doing business are only accelerating, all while burn rate continues to get worse. I have no doubt that selling ads will bring in a lot of revenue, but it'll be dwarfed by the numbers OpenAI needs to stop hemorrhaging cash every quarter. The great irony is that the more success OpenAI has in gaining users, the more money they lose at an ever-increasing rate. Lose on every sale, and make up for it in volume!
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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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this won't work because there are way too many open weight alternatives that are run independently - just go to openrouter.
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upvoteby cced5 hours ago|
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Competitors use ads?
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upvoteby tommica5 hours ago|
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I'm "excited" for the era of different locally run LLMs get to have ads baked into them... People start selling ad-space to inject into their training/tuning data. Could be quite lucrative.
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upvoteby runjake5 hours ago|
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Not yet. But they likely will, if OpenAI's ad revenue becomes worthwhile.
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upvoteby tyre5 hours ago|
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Or they view it as a differentiator and focus on a different segment. As I understand it, this is what Anthropic is doing:

1. Focus on businesses and developers

2. Make money on productivity and API platform

Enterprises are particularly sensitive about their data being farmed (e.g. note that paid Google accounts don’t have their emails used for ads.)

Keeping that trust is not a differentiator and existentially important to Anthropic.

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upvoteby runjake5 hours ago|
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I just don't believe that is likely.

I think that, despite Anthropic's present statements, they will move to ads if ads prove successful for ChatGPT or Gemini.

It would be viewed as "leaving money on the table" by their board and shareholders if they didn't.

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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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this is false and not how things work at the enterprise level. trust is important and it is not lost by showing ads in free tier.

trust is lost in other ways.

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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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no they don't
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upvoteby eknkc5 hours ago|
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They will or they will perform worse. OpenAI will be able to offer a better `free tier` as it won't be free after all.
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upvoteby Someone12345 hours ago|
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Not yet, but they all will. OpenAI has shown that customers will accept it.
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upvoteby simianwords5 hours ago|
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name a single product that has

1. many competitors

2. ways to pay for the subscription but no tier exists to remove ads

i can't even think of one.

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upvoteby vntok2 hours ago|
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Ever heard of a thing called television?
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upvoteby 4 hours ago|
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