Business Insiders profile on OpenAI’s Simons

The difference, I expect, is that Facebook is free to let product quality (and experience quality) fall by the wayside because their social platforms have such powerful network effects. People stay on Facebook and Instagram even as the experiences worsen because everyone they know is also still on those apps. There’s no network effect like that for ChatGPT. Claude is already rising to near-equal status in popularity, and Gemini isn’t far behind, and Simo hasn’t even started enshittifying ChatGPT yet. People will just switch.

Why does it feel like they can’t run a product without enshittifying it? And Gruber is right, there is no stickiness with these chatbots.

‘Your Frustration Is the Product’ by John Gruber

The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it. As Bose notes, “A lot of websites actively interfere the reader from accessing them by pestering them with their ‘apps’ these days. I don’t know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from.” It comes from people who literally do not understand, and do not enjoy, the web, but yet find themselves running large websites.

I had an interaction with a reader sometime back on a blog I had written about in the problem with read-it-later apps. They had mentioned then that I write what I want and don’t shove ads in your face as you tried to read - which was obvious to me. Reading is the thing you’re here to do.

But I myself don’t read on the web anymore. I use RSS to read. And that provides a great ad-free uniform experience to read.