While (in general) I agree with arguments against “copywriting hell”, in particular this case it is not about copywriting itself, but about the consequences of GenAI to entire industry.
Journalists exist not without a reason, yes they work with facts and very often — open facts, but they still assemble those facts in certain way to construct a narrative, connect dots and tell us some story (not counting cases when journalist works with their sources and produce a unique inside information). Then OpenAI comes, says “thank you very much” and assemble all of journalists work into one Uber Knowledgeable Journalist who can answer all of your questions.
So far so good, we create a public good service, and copywriters are in shambles.
Until you start making money on it.
That’s where the problem.
If OpenAI would be a non profit organization like Wiki Foundation, who just wants to make internet as better place — not much arguments you can find to support NYT lawsuit. But monetization changes everything.
Basically NYT is not worried about re using its text as itself, it is worried that no one will want to visit NYT no more and will pay Microsoft/Google and get all answers from them.
Let’s put an example. There were a famous story when FT journalist discover a massive fraud in Wirecard accounting and essentially lead to a death of this organization. That articles were a result of multi-year reporting work when journalist piece by piece and step by step collect facts, meet people, and eventually spot the gap. Now, in age of Bard/Bing/ChatGPT, you don’t need to read original article to know all of this. You can ask search engine or Chatbot and get essential re phrasing of an original reporter work. You don’t need no more to go to FT, pay them for paywall, watch their ads, etc. Effectively FT make a huge investment into their people to allow them spend 2 years on this issue and report it and now have a 0 leads to their website because all of them are eaten by Google and Microsoft who will sell you their ads and retain you in their monetized products.
Imagine that you built a for-profit paid library for some task. You make a code available through paywall and ask people to pay you to get to it and solve their problems. Then Microsoft comes, sneak beyond paywall, scrap your code and publish it recompiled and slightly optimized version in open access, so no one longer ever need to go on your website but ask Microsoft to show them your code.
Would you be happy?
All of this cases for me make this case not such easy and straightforward as it seems to be “bad copywriters against progress of humanity”.
At the end of the day, if NYT/FT/New Yorker and others will stop publishing their work and fire all journalists, will ChatGPT tell us same depth level stories as we read there?
But surprise for you — I have. And I know that it is more than possible to develop your young ones without engaging them to electronics until they reach at least 2 years old.
I am a parent myself and I know very good the cost of it, and yes - I think if you enable cartoons on YouTube for your few months old kid - that’s the laziness. You always can find a way to attract and engage your baby without electronics.
I would bet on the growth of notepads and smartphone usage by children 0-2 age. There are evidences that electronics and smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents.
Click on some YTube show and baby won’t bother you for the next hour or two.
They created a very elegant scheme when through a fictional Arabic investment fund they put russian government money (Government fund invests into Arabic fund which invests into bonds). It is kind of Russian classic and they did it a lot in the last.
Nowadays Telegram Bonds are traded at Saint-Petersburg stock exchange and there are a lot of rumors that Durov attends a lot of private parties in Russia for kids of oligarchs.
There is no law in Russia which forces him to ban that channel, and no concept of “silent days” anymore.
Russian authorities has NEVER asked Telegram to remove anything. They pushed Google and Apple to remove links to Navalny application from search and from Apple Store (and Apple removes it only for Russia users, btw, unlike Telegram removes it for everyone), and Telegram was absolutely never in the picture and never asked to do a thing publicly. Just search Russian authorities speakers. They never bring Telegram into the picture.
Durov shamelessly lies. He pretends his application is a speech freedom, but it is not.
When there was a Telegram channel posting information about Belarus policemen who torture their own people — they ban it. When there is still a channel where white men posting personal details of women and attack them — no action.
Why Durov lies?
Because after SEC issued a claim that TON is a security and killed TON as a project, he owed ton of money to investors, including American. He had a real risk of being sued.
Where did he find money to pay investors back? He found them in Dubai, Qatar and Russia. He issued Telegram bonds and buyers of those bonds are affiliated with Russia structures like VTB Capital bank or Russian Government investment fund named “Russian Fund of Direct Investments”.
Moreover, few years ago, Russian authorities tried to ban Telegram. There was a massive campaign against the application, but then all things I mentioned happened, and SURPRISE Russia officially removed Telegram from the list of inappropriate applications and stoped attempts to ban it. Even now after the election, Russia published a list of websites whom they are going to ban because they didn’t stop spread of Navalny information. There WhatsApp and Viber in the list. But no Telegram.
For me it sounds very very directly: Durov lies. He takes money from Russia government to cover his costs from TON failure and in return he, for example, bans Navalny Telegram Bot even while he a) wasn’t asked; b) Apple and Google wasn’t asked to ask Telegram; c) law he mentioned doesn’t exist anymore.
There is no more free Telegram. Remove it now and stay safe