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No clicks, no content: The unsustainable future of AI search

(bradt.ca)
137 points bradt | 6 comments | 31 Aug 25 15:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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djoldman ◴[31 Aug 25 16:07 UTC] No.45084227[source]▶
> ChatGPT, Google, and its competitors are rapidly diverting traffic from publishers. Publishers are fighting to survive through lawsuits, partnerships, paywalls, and micropayments. It’s pretty bleak, but unfortunately I think the situation is far worse than it seems.

> The article focuses mainly on the publishing industry, news and magazine sites that rely primarily on visits to their sites and selling ads.

I'm not sure where this comes from. The way forward for publishers of content like newspapers is subscription fees and has been for a long time.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist revenues are subscription fee dominant, for example.

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add-sub-mul-div ◴[31 Aug 25 16:13 UTC] No.45084284[source]▶
Who will pay for a subscription fee for journalism if people get trained to receive their information from an opaque tl;dr machine rather than primary sources?
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1. djoldman ◴[31 Aug 25 16:16 UTC] No.45084317[source]▶
Americans already, and increasingly, report getting a good chunk of their news from social media:

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-med...

Folks who want more traditional journalism will pay for it.

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2. giantrobot ◴[31 Aug 25 16:37 UTC] No.45084518[source]▶
> Folks who want more traditional journalism will pay for it.

If that is a tiny minority of people then there won't be a critical mass available to pay real journalists. No journalist can afford to work on long form investigative stories on minimum wage.

Even relatively straightforward legwork on a completely local story requires some driving around doing interviews. A whistleblower isn't going to just do a Zoom call with a journalist. A journalist can't get a first-hand account of an event from watching a webcam.

Good journalism isn't cheap. It doesn't have to be lavishly expensive but it's definitely not cheap. If only the New York Times can pay to hire journalists there won't be any meaningful journalism because they simply cannot scale to cover the world let alone the country.

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3. insane_dreamer ◴[31 Aug 25 16:55 UTC] No.45084711[source]▶
Social media doesn’t provide news. It provides regurgitation of actual news by journalists (who need to eat) and a lot of hot takes and commentary on the actual news by journalists. Take away the journalism and you’re left with Reddit hot air.
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4. pixl97 ◴[31 Aug 25 17:54 UTC] No.45085279[source]▶
Eh, in that case most 'news' doesn't provide news but opinions and commentary.

Conversely a lot of 'news' in its raw form is posted to social media.

What you're talking about is long form journalism which is expensive and not popular with the 30 second soundbite population we've grown.

5. djoldman ◴[31 Aug 25 19:45 UTC] No.45086413[source]▶
Ok.

If Americans don't value traditional journalism enough to pay what it may cost, it will go away.

6. djoldman ◴[31 Aug 25 19:47 UTC] No.45086430[source]▶
Americans don't care.

Journalism and news compete with entertainment.

Everyone needs to eat. Lots of jobs have gone away and lots have been created. Just because industries shrink doesn't mean they should be bailed out or supported.