Our approach to advertising

Perceived mission drift and “enshittification”

• Many see ads as the predictable endgame of a VC‑funded, high‑burn company, incompatible with the original “benefit humanity / safety” framing.
• The blog’s language (“our pursuit of advertising is in support of our mission”) is widely mocked as corporate doublespeak.
• Several compare this moment to Google’s trajectory: start pure and user‑centric, then gradually optimize for ad revenue and degrade the product.

Distrust of assurances about ads

• The promise that “ads are always separate and clearly labeled” and won’t affect answers is widely disbelieved, citing past tech histories (e.g., search ads evolution).
• Many call out the line “we don’t sell your data” as a standard surveillance‑capitalism sleight of hand: they won’t sell raw chats, but will profile users and sell targeting.
• Some note the careful wording: current Plus/Pro/etc. tiers are ad‑free “for now,” and expect the scope of ads to creep over time.

Privacy, profiling, and behavioral manipulation

• Strong concern that chat data gives far richer behavioral signals than web search, enabling extremely granular targeting (e.g., relationship issues, health, pregnancy).
• Fear that future products could “gradually steer” users over months, with the AI acting like a trusted advisor that has secretly sold out to adtech.
• Some argue regulation and/or enforceable contracts are needed; otherwise promises are meaningless.

Impact on usefulness and product quality

• Worry that once ads exist, internal metrics will inevitably optimize for engagement/time‑on‑platform, not correctness or utility.
• Expect eventual “sponsored content” inside answers, making it impossible to tell if a recommendation is genuine or paid.
• Some think ads might push people toward alternatives (other models, OpenRouter, local LLMs), unlike Google Search where switching costs are higher.

Business model, timing, and competition

• Many think ads were inevitable given costs and debt; others see the timing as a sign of financial or IPO pressure, and as bearish for near‑term AGI.
• A minority argue that users historically choose ad‑supported free tiers over subscriptions and that this is the least‑bad monetization path.
• Several note that if ads are the main path to profitability, incumbents like Google—with a huge ad machine and default distribution—have a major advantage.

Ethics and broader cultural effects

• Ethical unease that models trained on unpaid public content are now wrapped in an ad product without compensating original creators.
• Some foresee new “AEO/LTO” industries (optimizing content for LLM answers) and even LLM‑based adblockers that scrub outputs.
• One late comment points out that nobody has yet seriously addressed the implications of political advertising in this setting.