I had something nice going with allaboutberlin.com. It helped people and covered my bills. I spent most of my tine building helpful things.
Now I'm down three quarters of my traffic and my inbox is filled with LLM-generated outreach. I'm competing with AI trained on my work, and with slop websites generated with that AI.
The original research is still necessary, but it has to happen with a dwindling audience and a shrinking revenue. I have to worry a lot more about paying rent, so I have less time to contribute to society.
Worst of all, LLM noise has filled every crevice of my life. It's billboards, blogs, music, videos, social media. It has filled the world with spam and nobody is happy, but everyone's Christmas bonus depends on adding oil onto that fire.
I mourn the loss of our internet, our culture, my career and my business all at once. And for what? We're all worse off!
I am still in touch with some college buddies. How hard you work seems disconnected from what results you get. Being good at networking, selling yourself and applying effort judiciously helps more.
I help people settle in Berlin. The guides on my website used to be a bible for immigrants.
So far LLMs have killed 75% of my traffic, but my income is still acceptable, so I'll keep going. If it gets worse, I don't know.
The information I share is as hard as ever to acquire. I still need to poll experts and my audience, but my audience is shrinking and I can't incentivize experts with as much business as I used to. All the spoils go to parasitic AI companies and slop sites.
Still, the work matters, and the job is fun. I'll keep doing it for as long as I can. In any case, my backup profession (coding) is also threatened by AI.
One thing I'm trying is building a community for immigrants. You still need humans, and I want to build their watering hole.
Have you investigated how much of your business has been diverted by AI agents scraping articles from your site and essentially presenting them to the users through their UI?
And related, do you see a future where info products become much more proprietary/hidden due to scraping?
That sounds a bit like "enrichment" for pets. We all go a little nutso without it.
My apartment has a great view on nature. I see the sunrises and the sunsets, swallows racing across the evening sky, a chestnut's whole cycle, and all that lives in my balcony garden.
I cannot overstate how much it does for my happiness. I love the morning routine of caring for my garden. I love to watch things grow and seasons change.
I think our caveman brains need this sort of thing.
Mine is a notebook, a sketch book and a reading device. I read books and queued Instapaper articles, take meeting notes, and make digital art. I love that device to bits.
I read through that and think it's balanced and well-thought out. Especially this bit:
> You don’t need their permission if ... the people in the picture are participating in a public gathering, parade or similar event, and they are not the focus of the photo
And this bit:
> The permission can be implied: ... If everyone in the picture is smiling at the camera
It doesn't stop you taking photos in public if other people are present. You just have to take care that they are not identifiable.
In practice, that qualification allows people to walk around with a cellphone or 360 degree video camera in front of them, film everyone, and upload it as a 'walking through a city' video to monetize on YouTube. They don't blur the faces, and people presented in it, who are clear and identifiable, have no recourse (mostly because YouTube and Facebook ignore complaints). If it were people taking individual photos it would be different, because photo taking is more limited (but still too privacy invasive if strangers are identifiably photographed) and the focus is usually on the person or his companions, but when video, cloud, and YouTube enter the picture it becomes a different practice.
It also doesn't protect people's data privacy. Capturing their image in an iPhone or most Android phones means, for basic people, the photo is scanned and stored in the cloud. All identities (on a 50 megapixel camera) are marked and stored automatically.
These two issues are the heart of my question. Those European laws were arguably adequate in addressing the issue 20 years ago, but technology has changed the shape of the issue.
Now I'm down three quarters of my traffic and my inbox is filled with LLM-generated outreach. I'm competing with AI trained on my work, and with slop websites generated with that AI.
The original research is still necessary, but it has to happen with a dwindling audience and a shrinking revenue. I have to worry a lot more about paying rent, so I have less time to contribute to society.
Worst of all, LLM noise has filled every crevice of my life. It's billboards, blogs, music, videos, social media. It has filled the world with spam and nobody is happy, but everyone's Christmas bonus depends on adding oil onto that fire.
I mourn the loss of our internet, our culture, my career and my business all at once. And for what? We're all worse off!
reply