this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Oh no...
Okay, Digg has my cautious attention...
And they lost me.
What's wrong with AI summaries? AI has it's uses. A long as it's just adding some metadata I don't see nothing wrong with it.
For me the big questions is what are they going to do to stop bots, spam and internet points farming. So far they didn't reveal any plans.
The thing that's mostly wrong with AI summaries is that people don't click through to the page the summary summarizes. So those sites don't get ad revenue. That's ad revenue is the backbone of the internet for a lot of sites. If there's no site posting the information then the AI has nothing to summarize and provide an overview of. The pivot to AI LLM's is likely to kill the companies who aggregate links, and they're pushing for it hoping to make it profitable in the long term because they've been actively enshittifying ad aggregation via search for the purposes of big number must go up (you know, for the shareholders). It's defeatist to the current business model of most of the internet. And the shareholders do not care so long as they get their money.
Don’t ad blockers have a similar effect?
Not exactly. People don't click on ads when ads are blocked. But ad aggregation companies get paid in a couple of different ways. Click through is a big one, but ad impressions (eyeballs that supposedly viewed an ad) are also a thing. And impressions pay, just not as well as clickthroughs. Ad companies haven't stopped paying aggregates for ad space. That's why ads on paid services have gotten more egregious. It's not because they aren't getting paid. It's because they want both.
For what it's worth, you can (and some do) pay for subscriptions to websites or services on the internet. But nobody is paying ad aggregation companies with the intent of seeing ads regardless of the reality.
Also, ad blocking as a whole is for security as much as it is for quality of life. Ad aggregation companies have a habit of taking the money and asking questions only when they get complaints (if then) and as a result, they don't leave users who want to protect themselves another choice.
Of course, there's also the fact that one way or another the web can't just be free. Someone somewhere has to pay for the resources that make it run and the upkeep it requires.