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I hope Anthropic or someone pulls an Apple and has the taste to say no to ads. Maybe it will just be Apple. (Even their resistance is slowly fading..)

We don't need to jam ads into every orifice.

I hope there's more value to be had not doing ads than there is to include them. I'd cancel my codex/chatgpt/claude if someone planted the flag.

OpenAI seems to think it has infinite trust to burn.

3 comments

You give too much credit to Apple in the AI age. Especially since they've already partnered with Google to power Siri with Gemini now.

Apple is a has-been. Anthropic is best positioned to take up the privacy mantle, and may even be forced to, given that most of their revenue is enterprise and B2B.

I agree with you and it's really sad that Tim couldn't take Apple in the direction of user safety over profit.

I hope there's some layer between Apple and Gemini but only those at the helm can be trusted to make that happen and I don't trust them to choose users over the dollar.

> I hope there's some layer between Apple and Gemini

In the press release Apple said they will be running this on their own hardware (both on-device and private cloud). They're not going to be directly routing requests to Gemini hosted by Google.

This obviously doesn't preclude some kind of data sharing arrangement, but there is at least some indirection between the two.

If you don’t want ads, pay for ChatGPT. If you aren’t making them money via ads or subscriptions, why should they care about you?

I think they really should charge with micropayments, and they could even roll out their own currency for that if need be. Ads suck.

Actually, all the AI companies together should choose a micropayment system to focus on. I know in fashion, I've seen what would seem like competing brands center around a common "pillar of influence."

Also, if (long-tail?) AI companies work together, they could install appliances and terminals around cities. The most immediate use case - transport timetables. It seems like a no-brainer the more I think about it. Especially good for tourists who don't speak the local language. Governments may end up wanting to do that anyway and could subsidize the cost. It really depends on how fixated people are to owning their own screen, versus using someone else's. Those city screens could end up billboards anyway - especially for local businesses. They could print for a fee too and third parties could pay to get their app listed. Also, it's worth considering the increase in wealth inequality and rising hardware costs for people to own and stream into their own device. So this could be like the Internet Cafe 2.0.

Incidentally, there's a recent thread about someone streaming HN to a cheap display: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699782 - why not have such displays around town? I guess one major problem is vandalism.

People have been suggesting a micro payment system for the web for over a quarter century

https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-Micropayment-Markup-19990825/

Why would you want to use a terminal for mass transit instead of your phone?

I prefer dumb phones, and then prefer to not have to carry one 24/7. Device lock-in is a whole other discussion. Why can't phones be switched off anyhow in terms of telco signal? Yet their Wifi and Bluetooth can be. Weird. What are they doing in stealth?

Look how cheap x402 transactions are (ie almost free) https://gemini.google.com/share/cbf1adb1570c It's a new thing - have business models adapted accordingly?

"source" of an LLM chat

https://www.x402.org/ >AI agent sends HTTP request and receives 402: Payment Required

>AI agent pays instantly with stablecoins

Smells like a weird ad to me.

Well, I was thinking of integrating payments into the scrolling chat, the more you scroll down, the more payment increments you hit. It happens in the background, and there can be a tally somewhere on the screen of how much you are spending. Also, compute usage can be used as a multiplier.

More is written about it here: "https://gemini.google.com/share/6113940b8e1e "What are the best examples of x402 payments being made currently?"

From what I've read on HN, running advertising technology is an expensive and complex undertaking. I'd be trying to skip it altogether and keep the subsequent costs, intrusions and headaches away from users.

The other good thing about micropayments: being able to instantly divert some of the revenue back to content and training sources. That'd make it more righteous too and make it more conducive to cooperation from them (eg realtime pings.) Content will improve as a result, better justifying the costs. Could lead to less bot rampage too lowering bandwidth costs overall.

It'd also remove the temptation (hopefully) for AI companies to resort to black-hatting: scamming, backdoors and trojans to recoup their costs. That's seriously important and code-checking can become less of a priority and thereby result in time-saving for end users.

You don’t think your preference for not using a smart phone makes a viable market do you - seeing global penetration of smartphones is 90% and even higher among those who can afford to travel?

I think compulsory 2FA and the trend towards must-have downloadable phone apps is a problem, but that may not be fully evident... yet. In my experience, being tied to a phone and phone number is a problem. Also, when you carry your phone, your funds are at risk too from tech-jacking (as opposed to car-jacking) .. especially with crypto, right?

"I keep a cheap travel eSim plan active on it so that if I am somewhere sketchy I can leave my main phone at home." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46639157

It's a personal choice - you are also tied to a battery charger. Wait, solar panels are getting better.

Why is it so difficult to run a mobile app on a PC? Why can't there be a device that I connect to my laptop to turn it into a phone (voice + texts) whenever the need arises? Weird. What's with the identification required at SIM point-of-sale? Is someone trying to track me or something?

So now instead of carrying a phone around with you to make a call, you want to carry around a laptop?

Again, your use case is not a business model. What next bring back pay phones?

Oh. I do pay since basically the day they offered it. It's not a matter that they should care.

No ads is a point of product differentiation. One among many. But in some sense ads are a natural resource curse that pervade the whole company. Again, I point to Apple vs Google/Meta.

People who haven't seen an ad or paid a subscription in 20 years are still trying to figure out why no one listens to their opinion on how to make the internet better.

I wouldn't hold my breath...

Not sure if you're referring to me, or making a more general comment.

I'd listen to someone who has managed to not see an ad or pay for a subscription in 20 years. Sounds pretty impressive.

Me, I've seen a lot of ads and happily paid for chatgpt plus, pro, and the api. Not that I think that privileges my opinion.

Apple makes tens of billions of dollars per year on ads. Your conception of Apple and who they are have diverged.

Apple's ad revenue is ~5% of company revenue? It seems like the split could be a lot higher. They might have to give up something for that though.