I publish my content "for free" because I want to spread knowledge and information, or promote a topic or interest I enjoy, and monetization has never been a priority for me. I know that I am not alone. The urge to create does not depend on a need for money. I am happy for my websites to be picked up by Perplexity or ChatGPT because I want more people to see/learn/hear about the things I care about.
If someone only creates for money, only publishes on the web to get people to look at advertisements, well... I think there are plenty of other people who don't feel that way that will fill the void left behind in their departure.
To me it seems weird so many people think the internet only exists because advertising props it up. The internet existed and was a wonderful place before advertising became widespread, and most services and websites will continue to exist after advertising is gone (if that ever happens). What encourages people to believe in some sort of great collapse?
I said "or any other reasons" because I was in a hurry. Internet existed way before ads, I agree, but even then you wanted people to visit your site to see what you wrote. Maybe to become an expert in a topic, maybe to feel better, but you want people to know who did it. That's why websites used to have a webmaster and info about that particular person.
If people stop visiting websites because LLM give them what they want, websites will stop existing. Don't believe me? Check how many "fansites" exist now about topics compared to ten years ago, when there weren't social networks. They have been replaced by influecners with huge followers on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and more. The same will happen.
What you describe in your last paragraph is still an evolution, not an extinction or disappearance. Fan/stan culture is absolutely huge on social media, where it has thrived, with single-person-ran stan accounts becoming as big or bigger than the heyday of blogging or fansites. So I just think we disagree on some foundational level.
The first is taxation. Academia uses this. So we'll be fine there.
The second is donations and altruism. This includes Wikipedia, people who just want to share their ideas (like I'm doing now), Stack Exchange, etc. So we'll be fine there too, though this only works for low-budget stuff. Note that credit isn't necessary here; Wikipedia editors are rarely acknowledged, for example. But I do think credit is good, when possible (i.e. not for every single training source the LLM uses; ChatGPT Search is a good and practical way to give credit).
The third is to privatize the goods, for example, by creating copyright. LLMs won't get rid of this. They're not allowed to fully replicate a piece of text, since that is copyright infringement. So if you're getting people to pay for an exact or almost exact piece of text (e.g. a full book, a full newspaper article), you won't be affected there.
But if your business model would be affected by people summarizing your stuff, then yeah you won't be protected there. For example, if people would rather read a summary of your article or book rather than pay you for the full version. But this isn't new to LLMs. How many people jump straight to the comments to read the summaries instead of reading the article? How many people absolutely refuse to pay for paywalls? How many people block ads (I'm treating ads as a form of payment here)? It's possible to expand copyright to also cover things like summarization (i.e. copyrighting facts), but this is rather dangerous.
If someone only creates for money, only publishes on the web to get people to look at advertisements, well... I think there are plenty of other people who don't feel that way that will fill the void left behind in their departure.
To me it seems weird so many people think the internet only exists because advertising props it up. The internet existed and was a wonderful place before advertising became widespread, and most services and websites will continue to exist after advertising is gone (if that ever happens). What encourages people to believe in some sort of great collapse?