Our approach to advertising - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577 - Jan 2026 (227 comments)
If they're not labeled, or are shown even to paying users, I think that's a problem.
It's unfortunate because user experience was a core differentiating advantage for Apple that got them to where they are now.
OK, maybe not all shareholders are playing the short game, but I feel like a lot of them are.
That sounds like a great way to get booted out of the CEO position.
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.
Why would advertisers prefer people without money to people with money?
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
Btw, the end game is probably having ads in the llm context .... or directly in the llm training set.
Also, everyone gets a free pony.
Ideally, they’ll introduce a whole new level of targeting relevance, which will be good for both advertisers and prospects.
I just canceled my $200/month GPT-Pro subscription. 5.2-Pro is in decline -- it has been getting noticeably worse at a steady rate since introduction. At this point, it's not appreciably better for most queries than Claude 4.5 Opus, and Opus is roughly 10x faster.
The smoking gun is the time. If I ask it a question that's subtle in "thinking" mode and it starts replying in a few seconds, the answer will probably be trash. I'm almost sure they degrade the models over time.
Could it be that they are trying to save traffic?
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.
> In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!
But I think it makes a lot of sense for very popular consumer products. In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT etc exist for free, but with ads, rather than not exist at all. Preferably with an option to pay and remove ads
Nowadays I'm happy to pay for Youtube premium or LLM, but back during my student days I could not really afford it - and I'm glad there was a free tier (with ads)
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)
Nowadays I'm happy to pay, but that wasn't always the case. And I personally think that having an ad tier and fee tier is fine. Serves everyone
The online media I support as subscribers don't display any ad. And it's fine. I don't pay for the content, I pay for journalism.
I struggle to understand people getting butt hurt about a free service showing its users adverts, that will keep the service free.
They should have done this earlier, so their adds would be better by now, and they have a better chance against Google.
The two problems were the horrible UI and that at some points evaluators used te negative tags just to punish views they didn't agree with.
But maybe an AI evaluator would be less biased?
Sure Sam Altman and his $200/mo subscribers won’t see them, but it was clear they were coming for free users.
Yet. Amazon Prime has ads despite it being a paid service.
Or to put it another way, I'll be interested to see how long before the ads become inseparable from the actual content of the response.
I see it as the responses eventually mimicking all of the marketing spam posts, where company Y compares it's competitors poorly or does a thought leadership piece on how you can do X by hand or have their product do X for you.
By the way don't sleep on this detail:
> The banner ads will appear in the coming weeks for logged-in users of the free version of ChatGPT *as well as the new $8 per month ChatGPT Go plan*
Even if you pay for the product, you're still the product. If we don't own our software, our software will own us.
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.