Comment by nicbou

I am a former software engineer. Now I run a website that helps people settle in Germany.

Google AI summaries and ChatGPT have almost halved my traffic. They are a scourge on informational websites, parasites.

It’s depressing to see the independent web being strangled like that. It’s only a matter of time before they become the entire internet for many, and then the enshittification will be more brutal than anything before it.

I will be fine, but I have to divert 6-10 months on my life to damage control[0] instead of working on what matters to my audience. That happened by chance; other websites won’t be so lucky.

So yeah, morale is low. It feels like a brazen consolidation play by big tech, in all aspects of our lives.

On the bright side, it does make coding a bit easier. It spits out small bits of code and saves me a lot of API docs round trips. I can focus on business logic instead of basic code. AI is also a phenomenal writing tool. I use it for trying different phrasing options, reverse word and express search, and translation nuances. It does enable me in that way.

[0] https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/health-insurance