| ▲ | jdw64 10 hours ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Personally, I think this is a good idea. But the core problem is this: How is a newcomer supposed to build reputation now? Without exaggerated business promises or capital, basic online reputation usually depends on writing. In fact, my own first step into freelancing came because someone found the articles on my Korean blog interesting. So the question is: if the subscribers are bots, what benefit do they actually give me? If bots become the readers, then what matters is whether they can provide any kind of symbolic capital or real capital. I can build caching with Redis without much difficulty, but I worry that if this continues, the result may simply be that LLMs learn from my writing while no benefit returns to me. People write partly to organize their thoughts, but also partly to gain symbolic capital. That is one reason why I write my own posts instead of using an LLM to write them for me. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ryandrake 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I think in general, "Writing on the Internet with the intent to make money" is effectively dead, or at least soon to be dead. AI+bots mean we now have the "infinite typewriter monkeys" from the thought experiment. With infinite supply, the price goes to zero. We need to stop this treadmill of trying to "build reputation" and stop focusing on "symbolic capital" and "clout" and whatever else bloggers are going after. You're not going to get it, and even if you do, you're not going to be able to "monetize" it. If you have a need to write, write. Maybe a handful of actual people will read it, maybe not. But, I wouldn't try to do it for a living. The reward will have to be the cathartic process of writing itself, and not in how much attention it gets, how much it "blows up" or how viral it gets. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | pixl97 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
>How is a newcomer supposed to build reputation now Dead internet manifest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | nilirl 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I feel that pressure of not knowing how to definitively compete on the internet, especially when there's so much AI created noise. I'm a copywriter and I used to get hired to write posts on behalf of founders on LinkedIn or for their company blog. Now, the last three jobs I had were all focused on sending cold email. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | whstl 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I dunno. SEO spam made by human-robots already killed the first half of the internet in the late 2010s. Mostly driven by low-paid freelancers writing without expertise and plagiarizing other articles like crazy. It has been virtually impossible to find real information in some areas if you don't personally know which website is reliable or not. That's why we devs used to go to StackOverflow, and people use site:reddit.com when searching Google. LLMs just exacerbated all of that, but it was already happening. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | mmarian 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
By syndicating everywhere you can and inviting discussions (Reddit, HM, etc). The reality is that your blog post would've rarely been found anyway due to the SEO blog spam. I managed to get some great discussions through sharing my posts on Reddit and HN. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | johng 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What's worse, is they train on your content, and very often you don't even get an attribution link. So the end user never even knows it was your site that provided the information and you never even get a single clickthrough. It's not like the SERPs where someone would click through, read your site, hopefully find it interesting and useful and come back. It's going to be a serious problem and I've already seen sites that are down 90% in traffic simply because AI is scraiping them, answering the questions themselves and never providing a linkback. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | robhoeijmakers 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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