And the enshitification cycle continues...
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Do you think it’s possible to run the cycle too quickly? Like, shouldn’t you make sure your product has been ~~widely~~ maximally adopted first before you make it shittier?
May be that’s just hopium
Even the enshittification cycle got enshittified.
Glorious.
Late stage enshitification.
yes, this is how bubbles pop
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They're already getting sued over ChatGPT helping people commit suicide. Imagine the uproar once the advice comes with ads for rope, knives, etc...
If the product is free...
BigTech 101
They actually put ads in paid products also now. :)
Never enough ads, never enough revenue.
How soon till they put ads in the ads
The businesses who run ads must themselves pass through a slop-page littered with ads to be able to index their ads.
The big problem is that we have long stepped over that line.
Now even when you pay you are still shown ads (maybe, but not surely, not-targeted) and your data is still scrapped and analyzed to hell and back.
The fact that they’re pivoting to full enshittification is the strongest signal yet that the AI bubble is collapsing. There won’t be an AI-driven mass-unemployment revolution this time around. OpenAI has given up on trying to build that.
Anyone else concerned that the AI bubble is actually an everything bubble, and more or less represents the devaluation of the US dollar? We have a lot of debt, we can’t necessarily keep raising interest rates to slow down spending (as that would make the debt’s impact far greater), and so they’re printing money onto the deficit. Meanwhile, you have the White House eye balling cryptocurrency, letting banks hold it alongside gold, … what does all of this mean?
https://www.theblock.co/amp/post/333107/jpmorgan-debasement-trade-bitcoin-gold
https://matrixmag.com/chinas-gold-corridor-a-structural-shift-in-the-global-financial-order/
It doesn't mean anything. You're just rules by greedy idiots.
Everything means something because meaning is created, not discovered. They can be greedy, idiots, and still know how to come out on top of a failing empire.
I really think there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye. There being winners implies there being losers also. If the ultra wealthy can come out on top, it leaves the rest of the US with a debased currency on bottom.
Is gold up 2x since 2 years ago, or is the US Dollar loosing its purchase power at a rate not seen since 1970s (Nixon took USD off gold) and 2008-11 (global housing crisis)?
Suddenly, Elons stock-performance based bonus benchmarked at $1T makes some sense…
I dont know about that. I think the fear right now is that these companies wont get enough revenue to justify their enormous evaluations. By putting ads in the product, they increase revenue but also increase Enshittification.
I wont be using chat gpt if it becomes annoying. But many will, everyone today who is used to constant ads will.
So im thinking this will work against the bubble popping. But I could be wrong.
If the service was truly viable they wouldn't need to be supporting it in that way so early. Ads might delay the bubble popping but it's not a good sign IMO. Selling ads is going to be a lot more difficult than getting millions or billions of dollars from investors.
Yes exactly. What they really want to offer is an AI employee replacement service. If they could replace one of your employees who makes $40k/year then they could easily charge $30k/year for the service and you (the business owner and AI customer) could add $10k to your profits.
The fact is that they can’t do that. They can’t even make money charging thousands of dollars a year for basic LLM service that people use to write emails and the like.
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I suppose identifying AI is going to be a lot easier when users copy and paste answers that contain some sort of ad roll.
It’s gonna be really hard to argue your Grapes of Wrath essay wasn’t AI generated when you submit without proofreading and don’t catch the sponsored ad for Walmart+ grocery delivery.
I don't know that I agree. AI will continue to grow stronger and heartier, just like Campbell's new Extra Chunky™ All Americanado™ Chicken Noodle Soup.
After reading this I’m convinced we’ll not only know it’s AI but be able to identify which platform. We’ll get to a point where people will go must’ve used Gemini it’s the only one still serving Factor ads 😂
Hmm stunned disbelief, I tell ya. How on earth did anyone ever think this could happen, big corpo putting ads inside the most hyper targeted machine the world has ever seen. How could they ever decide to do this
Ublock origin. Hold my beer!
Likely won’t work at all, there’s only a single network request coming back
Element zapping is still a thing.
I would bet a crisp dollar that OpenAI is going to implement this in the least blockable way possible
You're absolutely right! You should celebrate your vast knowledge with a bottle of Coca Cola® as you've figured out how to outsmart big tech, hard as good companies like Facebook try to serve you with relevant advertisements to help you improve your life (like how Maybelline can help your complexion issues) try, you've definitely outsmarted me!
Haha yeah maybe there is hope, somehow. :)
Too bad larger LLMs require ungodly amounts of VRAM, or self-hosting would be a good alternative. LLMs have their uses, but they’re not useful enough to put up with ads.
I feel like nobody read the article. It mentioned an “ad carousel” which would be a fairly standard way to offset costs on free plans. I don’t see that specifically as being enshitification. Now, if they start altering AI responses, that is definitely enshitification. I have no doubt they will eventually get there, but I don’t think that’s what this article is about.
All ads are enshitification.
Excellent question! When I am sad about my dad dying, nothing helps me like the cool refreshing taste of an ice cold Coca-Cola™. Click here to buy one on Doordash™ right now!
I think we’ve hit the end times for AI. The biggest player in the space OpenAI couldn’t be profitable by selling its services to business, nor directly to consumers. Subscription moneys nor licensing its models is working too. So the last avenue they have is this, shilling to marketers hoping for scrap.
On top of Nvidia having to stop selling RAM I think the breaks are about to hit AI and hard once the current supply runs out. I wonder how long that could take?
Oh no. I'll have to look at ads while I make use of their fantastic and totally useful product, oh yeah, never mind.
You're having a conversation in ChatGPT and all of a sudden you're being bombarded with questions like how swell it'd be to buy something from Amazon or play this shitty-ass app game with MTX.
What a timeline...
Sounds like my AI usage is gonna fall from "infrequent" to "never", if the ads are indeed unblockable...
Imagine it writing your essay about Nazi Germany for you and in the middle it asks you whether you think Göring would have enjoyed a Big Mac right about now.
Once this rolls out, there will be epic memes and screenshots about it... :)
Rapid enshittification, people will just use on of the others on the long list of alternatives. I currently recommend either DeepSeek v3.2-Exp or Kimi K2 Thinking.
Why use AI at all? The environmental costs alone should be a dealbreaker.
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Those already contain ads for the CCP
True, if you ask about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and other things typically censored by the Chinese government they won't answer. But interestingly, there are variants that have been uncensored, and those models will answer openly if you use something like together.ai versus kimi.com. Because they are open source, they are easily uncensored.
Thanks, that’s nice to know.
First it was ignorantly stupid, now it'll be purposefully misleading towards ads. Who could have seen that coming?
Where's the end of work life as we know it that we were promised?
Companies have already been SEOing LLMs for a few months now. There are companies who have a panel of participants who are willing to share their data, and this is then used to estimate what people might be searching on LLMs and now to optimise content so that it shows up on responses across LLMs.
Ads was the logical direction for LLMs and has always been the only pathway to any substantial revenue.
"You want to know how to combat your depression? Sure, but what about a cold Pepsi first?"
Lol :)
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