People didn't provide their information because "information wants to be free or whatever", they provided it in the hope it would help people but also help fund their further exploration of their particular niche, creating a beneficial cycle where they could be funded for their hobbies and in return create useful information for others who followed in their footsteps.
The entire premise of this thread is that search is fucked in large part because there's no incentive to upload any information any more beyond altruism.
The LLM's can figure their own shit out, I'm not feeding them for free.
Re:The Death Knell of Digital Search
by godshatter on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @04:03PM
(#50446301)
When I was putting information out on the internet, I was trying to find a way to unleash my passion for a subject. I wasn't trying to monetize it. At best I was hoping to cover server or DNS name costs. This expectation of monetization for every damn thing is probably my biggest gripe with this whole world we live in today. Ads are bad enough, but it pains me when someone is sharing something they are passionate about on YouTube but still decide they have to ask me to like and subscribe and scrounge for sponsors with products to pitch. It makes everything into a financial transaction. A hot take in today's world, I guess, but it does bother me.
Of course YT creators can do whatever the hell they want. They don't have to listen to me.
If you're someone providing information for free, because information wants to be free or whatever, then you should be happy when a copyright agnostic (ignorant?) AI company scoops it up for their next model. In a way, you're directly shaping the zeitgeist for everyone that uses those models.
You don't have to wait for that one lone person to stumble upon your site. Now everyone gets an answer from an LLM directly shaped in some small way by small changes to a few of a few billion weights.