| ▲ | carcabob 4 hours ago |
| If ads are clearly labeled as "ad" or "sponsored", and they only appear for free users, I think seeing ads is a pretty reasonable price to pay for those who want to use the service for free. If they're not labeled, or are shown even to paying users, I think that's a problem. |
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| ▲ | gpt5 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| All ads start as clearly labeled and distinctive. Then via the magic of iteration and A/B testing they magically evolve to become visually indistinguishable from the rest of the content except for what’s required by law. |
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| ▲ | HPsquared 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They'll eventually want to set it up so you read the sponsored content first, before seeing the tag saying it's an ad. You're more likely to absorb it then. Especially if it's LLM-generated to fit with the context, the message will slip right into the mind. Then a little "(Sponsored)" at the bottom after you've already consumed the ad. This is a bit like how ads are presented on X, they look like regular posts or replies but they usually feel off topic and you're thinking "huh, this doesn't fit the discussion". But LLMs will allow much more seamless and sneaky ads. | |
| ▲ | MattDamonSpace 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You don’t say https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/16/iphone-apple-app-store-search... | | |
| ▲ | musicale 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The iron law of encrapification: if a company can make more money by downgrading the user experience, it will. I imagine within Apple there were still people who advocated for a better, more transparent user experience, but ultimately they seem to have lost out to services people who just want to grab more money. It's unfortunate because user experience was a core differentiating advantage for Apple that got them to where they are now. | | |
| ▲ | MarsIronPI 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | IMO that's unavoidable when you're a public company beholden to shareholders who only care about short term stock prices. OK, maybe not all shareholders are playing the short game, but I feel like a lot of them are. | | |
| ▲ | musicale 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I miss Tim Apple saying that there were things (accessibility) that Apple did that weren't based on ROI, and people who disagreed should get out of the stock. |
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| ▲ | estimator7292 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't understand, Apple users did get a more "transparent" experience /s | | |
| ▲ | musicale 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hahaha. On an unrelated note I immediately turned off Liquid Glass. |
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| ▲ | amelius 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And of course they will start collecting more information about users, and build an entire intelligent data extraction system around it. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | oblio 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Come now, don't be evil! |
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| ▲ | 46493168 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >only appear for free users Why would advertisers prefer people without money to people with money? |
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| ▲ | RobertRies 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The question is flawed. People who do not pay for ChatGPT often have money and prefer not to pay for for a subscription for several reasons including, but not exclusively:
1) They don't use ChatGPT often enough to justify it
2) They use alternatives primarily (a subset of #1)
3) They choose to spend their money on other things | | |
| ▲ | 46493168 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | How can an advertiser tell the difference? Which is a stronger signal of having money: paying for something, or not paying for something? Furthermore, with all those reasons, why would advertisers prefer those people in ChatGPT? Advertisers are trying to change your behavior, usually to spend money the way they want you to. If you’re rarely using the service and don’t easily part with money, you’re probably less worth persuing than… well the person who is the opposite of those things. |
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| ▲ | seattle_spring 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Plenty of free users have lots of money. Not wanting to pay for something != not being able to pay for something. | | |
| ▲ | smogcutter 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | But being willing to pay for something is a pretty good indicator for being willing to pay for other things too. | | |
| ▲ | tartoran an hour ago | parent [-] | | Advertisers are salivating at paying users but paying users really don't want any advertising in their product because they're paying not to have any advertising. That does not mean somebody will not cave in and shove advertising in regardless. |
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| ▲ | vb-8448 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Maybe at the beginning ... but with time? who knows ... Btw, the end game is probably having ads in the llm context .... or directly in the llm training set. |
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| ▲ | plagiarist 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ads will lower the quality of the training data, an RAG is more likely. Pay to get your product's INSTALLME.md ranked under some specific semantic vectors. |
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| ▲ | mmanfrin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Every other iteration of a service that introduces a free ad-paid tier then ratchets it to bifurcation of premium in to 'premium' and 'premium with no ads' and then on and on. |
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| ▲ | Havoc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just like Google at the beginning |
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| ▲ | Hoasi 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My bet is that there will be ads for both groups. The paid group is arguably more valuable from an advertiser’s standpoint, and you can target heavy users with more granularity. |
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| ▲ | Insanity 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They already confirmed it’ll also appear in the (lowest) paid tier. |
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| ▲ | jmugan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree but I fear it won't stay that way. They boil us frogs slowly. |
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| ▲ | whiplash451 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The article says they will be clearly labeled and only for free accounts |
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| ▲ | ehhthing 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They will also appear to users paying $8/month, not just free. | | |
| ▲ | dangus 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sounds like the “pay enough to get better models but not remove ads” tier, kind of like the basic Netflix plan. |
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| ▲ | hedora 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And if you ask chatgpt about major sponsors, a few years from now, it’ll honestly answer, even if that means badmouthing them, etc. Also, everyone gets a free pony. | |
| ▲ | Rebelgecko 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sometimes it's a fallacy, but sometimes the slope really is slippery (see: cable TV, Netflix, etc) |
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