alt Hacker News> Do you really believe ChatGPT will lose significant users?
I didn't say I believed that, I said that the reasons provided (for people to stick with it) were, to me, insufficient reasons.
The examples of people sticking with a product undergoing enshittification are not representative of the type of product that ChatGPT is. Those other products you mentioned had a strong moat - network effects.
Users had to stick with them, or lose their network.
AI Chat is, almost by definition, a non-network product. When you switch you don't lose updates from your friends, you don't lose subscribers to your channel, you don't lose your followers.
So, what exactly does someone lose when switching from AI Chat $FOO to AI Chat $BAR? Those saved conversations aren't exactly worth much, those "memories" that the Chat AI stored about you aren't worth much either (I was surprised at how many people thought those saved chats didn't contribute to the responses they get in the current chat).
I just can’t imagine anyone really bothering to switch, tbh. Even for a less enshittified product. For a better product, sure. Like if Google hadn’t rolled out Gemini in Search, ChatGPT would’ve crushed them. But not because of lack of ads in ChatGPT, because it was a better search product.
Google Search doesn’t have a network effect right? And people still tolerate their ads… they have 90% marketshare.
People still tolerate Netflix and Hulu ads right?
I think the only people that really care about enshittificafion are a few HN commenters and not broadly represented in the population.
Even at my company, our testing shows no drop in usage as we roll out ads.