Many folks, especially if they are into getting things free, don't really care much about privacy narrative.
So yes, it is free.
Many folks, especially if they are into getting things free, don't really care much about privacy narrative.
So yes, it is free.
> So yes, it is free.
This sounds pedantic, but I think it's important to spell this out: this sort of stuff is only free if you consider what you're producing/exchanging for it to have 0 value.
If you consider what you're producing as valuable, you're giving it away to companies with an incentive to extract as much value from your thing as possible, with little regard towards your preferences.
If an idiot is convinced to trade his house for some magic beans, would you still be saying "the beans were free"?
I should add a section to the site/guide about privacy, just letting people know they have somewhat of a choice with that.
As for sharing code, most of the parts of a project/app/whatever have already been done and if an experienced developer hears what your idea is, they could just make it and figure it out without any code. The code itself doesn't really seem that valuable (well.. sometimes). Someone can just look at a screenshot of my aicodeprep app and just make one and make it look the same too.
Not all the time of course - If I had some really unique sophisticated algorithms that I knew almost no one else would or has figured out, I would be more careful.
Speaking of privacy.. a while back a thought popped into my head about Slack, and all these unencrypted chat's businesses use. It kinda does seem crazy to do all your business operations over unencrypted chat, Slack rooms.. I personally would not trust Zuckerberg to not look in there and run lots of LLMs through all the conversations to find anything 'good'! Microsoft.. kinda doubt would do that on purpose but what's to stop a rogue employee from finding out some trade secrets etc.. I'd be suprised if it hasn't been done. Security is not usually a priority in tech. They half-ass care about your personal info.
>Someone can just look at a screenshot of my aicodeprep app and just make one and make it look the same too.
To some extent. But without your codebase they will make different decisions in the back which will affect a myriad of factors. Some may actually be better than your app, others will end up adding tech debt or have performance impacts. And this isn't even to get into truly novel algorithms; sometimes just having the experience to make a scalable app with best practices can make all the difference.
Or the audience doesn't care and they take the cheaper app anyway. It's not always a happy ending.
I don't think that's true. It's not that has zero value, it's that it has zero monetizable value.
Hackernews is free. The posts are valuable to me and I guess my posts are valuable to me, but I wouldn't pay for it and I definitely don't expect to get paid.
For YC, you are producing content that is "valuable" that brings people to their site, which they monetize through people signing up for their program. They do this with no regard for what your preferences are when they choose companies to invest in.
They sell ads (Launch, Hire, etc.) against the attention that you create. You ARE the product on HackerNews, and you're OK with it. As am I.
Same as OpenAI, I dont need to monetize them training on my data, and I am happy for you to as I would like to use the services for free.
>Hackernews is free. The posts are valuable to me and I guess my posts are valuable to me, but I wouldn't pay for it and I definitely don't expect to get paid.
at this point, we may need future forums to be premium so we can avoid the deluge of AI bots plauging the internet. a small, one time cost is a guaranteed way to make such strategies untenable. SomethingAwful had a point decades ago.
But like any other business, you need to follow the money and understand the incentives. Hackernews has ads, but ads for companies with us as the audience. It's also indirectly an ad for YCombinator itself as bringing awareness of the accelerator (note what "hackernews.com" redirects to).
I'm fine with a company advertising itself; if I wasn't the idea of a company ceases to really function. And in this structure for companies, I can also get benefits by potentially getting jobs from here. So I don't mind that either. Everything aligns. I agree and support the structure. I can't say that about many other "free" websites.
As for me. I do want to monetize my data one day. I can't stop the scraping the entire internet over (that's for the courts), but I sure as heck won't hand it to them on a silver platter.
Definitely to each their own. I will never have a job at a YC company and I will also never apply to YC, so the ads are completely useless. I did discover some of my favorite shoes from an IG ad, though.
It wouldn't ever be worth me getting $.0001431 dollars for my data and individual data will always be worthless on it's own because 1. taking away one individuals data from a model does not make the model worse. 2. the price of an individuals data will always be zero because you have people like me who are willing to give it away for free in exchange for a free service (aka hackernews or IG)
One user's LTV on IG may be $34, but one user's data is worth $0. Which I think a lot of people struggle with.
From a more moral standpoint, the best part about the advertising business model is that it makes the internet open to everyone, not just those who can pay for every site they use.
I'm not sure if I'd ever have a job at YC (my industry isn't very "investor friendly"). But I like the idea of having a bunch of opportunities with such companies. It also encourages an environment of people I want to be around as well. So that indirectly serves my interests.
I will even use an ad example with conventions and festivals. You can argue an event like Comic-con is simply a huge ad. And it is. But I'm there "for the ad" in that case. It gathers other people "for the ad". It collectively benefits all of us to gather and socialize among one another.
Ads aren't bad, but many ads primarily exist to distract, not to facilitate an experience. And as a hot take, maybe we do need to gatekeep a bit more in this day and age. I don't want a "free intent" if it means 99% of my interactions are with bots instead of humans. If it means that corporations determine what is "worthy" of seeing instead of peers. If credit cards get to determine what I can spend my money on instead of my own personal (and legal) taste.
>It wouldn't ever be worth me getting $.0001431 dollars for my data and individual data will always be worthless on it's own
On top of being a software engineers who's contributed to millions on value with my data, I also strive to be an artist. An industry that has spent decades being extracted from but not as fortunate to be compensated a living wage most often. People can argue that "art is worthless" , yet it also props up multiple billion dollar industries on top of societal cultured. An artisan these days can even sustain themselves as a individual, with much faster turnaround than trying to program a website or app.
By all metrics, its hard to argue this sector's value is zero. Maybe having that lens only strengthened my stance, as a precursor to what software can become if you don't push against abuse early on.
I understand the point people are trying to make with this argument, but we are so far into a nearly universal scam economy where corporations see small (relative to their costs of business) fines as just part of normal expenses that I also think anyone who really believes the AI companies aren't using their data to train models, even if it is against their terms, is wildly naive.
> is wildly naive.
I do know the way of the world, I just disagree with it and would like it to be different, so I make a point of taking opportunities to try and do that. It's possible to understand the world whilst also not accepting it, and encouraging it to be better.
You can call me naive, I will call you defeatist:)
This is not only a privacy concern (in fact, that might be a tiny part since the code might end up public anyway?). There is an element of disclosure of personal data, there are ownership issues in case that code was not - in fact - going to be public and more.
In any case, not caring about the cost (at a specific time) doesn't make the cost disappear.
The point they are making is, that some people know that, and are not as concerned as others about it.
Not being concerned doesn't make the statement "it's free" more true.
I understand. I get the point. I disagree
Privacy absolutely does not matter, until it does, and then it is too late
It's a transaction—a trade. You give them your personal data, and you get their services in exchange.
So no, it's not free.
if you consider watching a hour of Youtube and 30 minutes of ads to be "free videos", then be my guest. Not everything can be measured in a dollar value.
Tech companies are making untold fortunes from unsophisticated people like you.
Sophistry. "many" according to which statistic? And just because some people consider that a trade is very favorable for them, doesn't it is not a trade and it doesn't mean they are correct - who's so naïve they can beat business people at their own game?
they +think they+ can beat business people
Plenty of people can also afford to subscribe to these without any issue. They don’t even know the price, they probably won’t even cancel it when they stop using it as they might not even realize they have a subscription.
By your logic, are the paid plans not sometimes free?
While it is true that sometimes you are the product even if you're paying, I don't think anyone is trying to argue that obviously paid plans are free.