You don’t say

https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/16/iphone-apple-app-store-search...

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.

And of course they will start collecting more information about users, and build an entire intelligent data extraction system around it.

Come now, don't be evil!

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

Plenty of free users have lots of money. Not wanting to pay for something != not being able to pay for something.

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.

They will also appear to users paying $8/month, not just free.

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.

Sometimes it's a fallacy, but sometimes the slope really is slippery (see: cable TV, Netflix, etc)

we’re talking about different things. there’s meritocratic fairness where producers are paid fairly for their work, and there’s a functioning economy, where there are simply enough economic opportunities to sustain established norms of commercial participation by the broad population.

>In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT

I don't use any of these except YouTube (if only I could find the content elsewhere…) and I still pay for them when I purchase anything advertised on these properties because, of course, the companies advertising on Google makes all their customers pay for the free (lol) services. All advertising expenses are included in the price of the products, even if you never saw any ads.

We could easily charge for each of these services and still have them. Advertising is not necessary at all. It's just a way to make others pay for your services. It's a free riding problem to externalize costs on those who don't partake in the scheme.

Pay your share and don't call free what others will subsidize. Unless if a public service and we collectively agree on the split (vote and taxes, which we can debate publicly)

I'm not convinced that downvotes add much value. They should be a "this is irrelevant/spam" button but in practice they seem to be used as a "dislike" button to enforce groupthink.

>$200/mo subscribers won’t see them

Yet. Amazon Prime has ads despite it being a paid service.

Let the reader decide? I - incredibly rarely - downvote. It's either vote up, or move along.

Brawno, it's got what plants crave.

An interesting approach - start strong when everyone is running benchmarks, taper off through the life of the release, introduce new version that is no better than the last version but it magically seems much better by comparison to the degraded previous version. Rinse, repeat, grift.

My non-existent marketing instinct would tell me that they are trying to keep you inside the app to convince you that ChatGPT is the internet, the same way some people wouldn't know there's life outside Facebook.

My grumpy instinct tells me they know that they're poisoning the internet and they have given out on trying to weed out the fake websites from the real ones.

I downgraded to the $20 tier. I also have a $20/month subscription with Anthropic and another $20/month with Kimi. There was a time when $200/month for Pro made sense, but I don't think it's a good value right now.

Many of the advertising targets (you) will have confessed or indirectly revealed many of their aspirations, interests, hobbies, health, life and relationship problems and preferences in “chat”

In a way they can’t get due to increased use of ad blockers or tightening restrictions on data brokers (California and EU GPDR) etc.

So it’ll be very competitive for an advertiser to go with your ai “friend” who knows all about your hemmorhoids, booze and sex problems. All of which Google and Meta can infer or at least pin on you via guilt by association.

Meta screwed that one by breaking up known connections and communities and putting AI slop and promoted content front and center . They can infer less from who you know or interact with because they stopped caring about connecting you to real humans you actually know, years ago.

Banning all your friends and breaking up all those core groups for voting wrong or thinking wrong or whatever more closely suited their interests and agendas at the time.

It might know what I do for work or living based on what I ask for help with etc.