huh. Interesting. Thanks for bringing this to us. I did not expect to see myself quoted here lol but I suppose that’s what I get for posting.
This does answer some questions, and it’s good to hear there’s an announcement planned, so, given the givens, not the worst possible outcome here I suppose. I’m glad that Ben apologized and seems invested in addressing some of the criticism.
With that said, this exchange leaves me with more questions.
The context that Ben provided here for the original decision was that it was quick. But why would it need to be quick? What’s the rush? And even then, why resort to Anthropic about it? Was Ben simply unaware that Anthropic is controversial and why…?
Even setting the LLMs aside though, I remain confused at the original reception to the premise. I’ve seen multiple indie web blogposts enthusing about Bubbles at this point, such as I Love Bubbles (shared to This Week In The Indie Web), and I’m like… what am I missing here? This kind of thing seems tailor made to exacerbate the kind of thought patterns that @candycanearter07 expressed – concerns that their posts won’t rank highly in this mass cross-topic ranking contest. I don’t know what to expect for sure, but I would generally expect this system to risk burying the blogposts with more niche appeal, including some of the topics that I’m actively interested in, such as perfume blogging.