The tl;dr bot that pops up on every link to an article on Lemmy is depriving those websites of clicks, which deprives them of ad revenue.

For me its the opposite. Without the summary bot I wouldn't even bother going to the site to read the whole article. Clickbait headlines are so ubiquitous I'm not going to go to sites without at least a decent change the content advertised is as described. The bot does that, and I click through to the site to read the whole article as the author intended it to be consumed.

Some bot summaries are blocked by a front end CDN. Usually skip those lemmy posts entirely.

I love the tl;dr; bot because it:

• doesn’t pop up a ‘read our newsletter’ prompt that receives an auto-close click anyway
• doesn’t pop up a separate prompt to subscribe to the news site using payment methods I simply don’t have because I’m not a credit card addicted American
• doesn’t throw a consent form at me in yet another popup, in which I need to manually click away 308 vendors to which I do not want to sell my soul
• doesn’t include useless Facebook-Like buttons that collect data about me even though I don’t even have a fucking Facebook account
• doesn’t need 8 seconds of JavaScript execution to render fucking text
• doesn’t load a 8000×6000px image that contains absolutely zero information, but only serves to make me to scroll by one screen to get to the information I actually want
• relieves me of the burden to follow a link just to find that that content isn’t available ‘because you’ve already met your quota.
• provides the information concisely instead of using a truck load of unnecessary fill words just to meet an arbitrary 4000 word minimum.

If these websites offered their articles in good faith I'd have no problem giving them a click, but the reality is that even just visiting these sites, users can get exposed to incredibly invasive trackers, data collectors, and an uncomfortable amount of stimuli (which some people are very sensitive to). I do sympathize with the points you bring up, but people don't prefer tl;dr bots for no reason.

If the articles didn't

A. Have to hit a minimum word count so they use weird language and spend a great deal talking about nothing and

B. Didn't wall more than the first paragraph off to subscribers

I wouldn't need or want the summarization. But also mostly because I use an ad blocker anyway so the page is readable. If I didn't have the adblocker, the page is usually so full of banners and full page ads that it's impossible to read.

You can blame the bot for decreased ad revenue all you’d like but it’s malarkey.

Websites have poisoned the well, so to say. It is simply not smart to browse these sites without ad blockers. Constant popups, cookie banners with 100s of toggles, flashing ads for random junk, and so on were driven by greed originally and are now driven by survival. If the greed could have subsided just a bit and website owners not tried to make all the money, people wouldn’t need to use tldr bots or adblockers.

Sorry not sorry, fuck your ad supported content.

Give me a site that is readable and I will read it on the site. But I haven't encountered a site that wasn't bloated with enshitified web 2.0 BS in years. The instant I click on a link and I have to click off 5 pop ups and have an autoplaying video following me as I scroll then I'm gone. And that's with an ad blocker. I can't imagine how much more nightmarish most modern sites would be without one. As it is typically when I click a link I a shown to a moist dumpster where if I hunt around it enough I might find all the pieces of an article someone wrote. Even then the article is usually written for SEO not to be readable by people.

Give me a site where I can just click the link and read the article and I will hapily do so. I don't care about your newsletter. I don't care obout your cookie policy (read my browser settings). I don't care about the 10 unrelated celebrity gossip articles you are sticking in the middle of the one I am trying to read. Don't make me "click to continue reading". And that stupid video you have following me around is only driving me away.

Sounds like your industry need to rethink it's monetization strategies.

I understand where you're coming from as a writer. A lot of Lemmy links, article links, article titles, are teasers they don't actually tell you what the actual subject matter is about.

I find the summarization TLDR posts invaluable, so I can figure out if I actually want to read the article. Rather than falling for clickbait

We rail against the enshitification of the internet, but when there's a legitimate way to fight back by giving these websites a page view/read/click etc... so that they can attract advertisers,

You used these terms "legitimate" and "fight back" but I'm not sure they're being used correctly. These websites would rather pump more ads into a single page than have a coherent user experience. If a bot saves us that trouble, then that's just Free Enterprise™ working again, just that it isn't in your favor this time. You're a frustrated member of the working class like most of us, and it's okay to be upset or angry and I'm glad you shared your opinion.

Upvoted for being an unpopular opinion.

But I won't lie, I love the TL;DR bot.

I don't think think online article writers are providing services of value anymore.

It's an extension of advertising, and the shitty journalist practices of today's writers means I don't fear losing their services.

Realistically, an AI can take a 1 sentence piece of news and generate a full page of fluff just as well as a human already.

Congrats on a truly unpopular opinion, seems like most people (me included) disagree with you.

Adapt or die off. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Same as it ever was.

You assume people would click the link if there wasn't a summary. I bet most people wouldn't.

They don't measure profit by counting the number of jobs they are providing for people, they measure it with dollars. If it's cheaper for them to replace a real human with AI, they are going to do regardless how many ad impressions they've made.

I find too often that the bot skips too much and then items don’t have proper context, as in starting quoting one person, the article switches to another but the bot doesn’t state that. Then it doesn’t make sense and you have to read the full story for the correct version anyway.

Yep. People will criticize it when rich people try to get others to do things for free "for exposure", but will ask that their media be given to them for free.