this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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And all we get in return are chat systems that make up bullshit facts. I mean, I don't disagree that they can actually do some useful stuff, too. But the proportion of the public that benefits from them in any meaningful way is tiny compared to the cost to the rest of us. I hope a tornado lands on Elon's gas-powered monstrosity in, where, Tennessee, I think? Destroy that shit, please.
Unlike this place, I bet most people out there actually enjoy Google's AI summaries. I mean, it's almost the Wikipedia article verbatim, but if you just need to know what a thing is, they actually save people time
Our culture disintegrates every time we choose convenience over everything.
Wao, I watched this video yester, precisely about how detrimental all this bullshit is to us right now. How disconnected from reality and self-reliance it is making us.
Here's the link to the video if anyone is interested (yes, I know, it's YouTube, but I saw it in newpipe, Sue me) :
https://youtu.be/KkR5OXhKnbc
Our... web search culture?
And in return, they drive traffic away from the sites that collect the information in the first place, causing the sources to lose revenue.
In the case of Wikipedia, it saves them money
It saves them money in the same sense it saves every other information source money, it reduces traffic. But just like other sites can't serve ads without traffic, Wikipedia can't prove its worth and ask for donations without traffic. Eventually, people will start asking themselves why they need to support Wikipedia when Google's AI tells them everything they need to know, unaware that Google's AI can only do so because it scrapes Wikipedia without paying for it.
The evidence so far is that the AI summaries have driven away traffic from Google.
They have driven traffic away from the websites, not from Google itself
Considering Google has the worst AI in the entire industry I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true. This is Google’s Siri moment.
It is not like I did not have access to that information before. I don't need to be trapped in some closed browser environment labeled as "search"
You had to look at all the results yourself before getting to the thing you wanted. Similarly, before search engines existed you could just find the information by directly accessing the website