If you thought now was an interesting time

I used to work at a startup that was trying to replace ads as the funding source for news (we failed, obviously)

but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try

we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop

“I used to work at a startup … [1]”

If this is true, and this company didn't know how its own system worked, presumedly before the LLM crazy train, then things are going to get vastly more interesting, and not in the good way [2] …

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440536

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

Gemini Mention this post

Contact Sean Conner