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Again, this is just an "Evil Incorporated Inc." comic-book style made-up story that in no way has to be true (nor in any way I am claiming it is). Yet, the sole fact that many users would consider this bleach scenario even plausible should really ring some big alarm bells in your heads.

Again, this is just an "Evil Incorporated Inc." comic-book style made-up story that in no way has to be true (nor in any way I am claiming it is). Yet, the sole fact that many users would consider this bleak scenario even plausible should really ring some big alarm bells in your heads.

Prosus bought the Stack Exchange network with the only purpose to use its data to train its proprietary LLM. For this reason they are pushing everything in the AI direction, researching more way to use the available data to develop other products. At the same time they are trying to find way to ensure the exclusivity of their "market advantage", for example by trying to render competitors unable to use the same data (see: data dump, how can we kill the Creative Commons). The network is seen as a cost to pay to obtain more data. The focus is therefore to reduce that cost at much as possible while still obtaining that data, not to further develop the community. Depending on how things progress the network will be kept open and slowly converted to an advertisement for the core product (integrating Prosus LLM in the site to showcase its abilities) or shut down as soon at it won't produce any more useful data.

Prosus bought the Stack Exchange network with the only purpose to use its data to train its proprietary LLM. For this reason they are pushing everything in the AI direction, researching more ways to use the available data to develop other products. At the same time they are trying to find way to ensure the exclusivity of their "market advantage", for example by trying to render competitors unable to use the same data (see: data dump, how can we kill the Creative Commons). The network is seen as a cost to pay to obtain more data. The focus is therefore to reduce that cost at much as possible while still obtaining that data, not to further develop the community. Depending on how things progress, the network will be kept open and slowly converted to an advertisement for the core product (integrating Prosus LLM in the site to showcase its abilities) or shut down as soon at it won't produce any more useful data.

The comment on Zoe's answer avoided this issue completely. I am therefore posting this more direct question in hope to get some insight on that. Some attempts to tell us why this is just pessimistic thinking. Something that should make us change our wrong interpretation an be more trustful.

I'll leave you with this "artistic interpretation" of what is happening that I saw many users rant about in the last few months. Mind you, it is just an half-parody that hopefully isn't true at all, but I am posting it in hope this pushes some triggers and causes an epiphany to what a growing part of the community is thinking about the company right now.

Prosus bought the Stack Exchange network with the only purpose to use its data to train its proprietary LLM. For this reason they are pushing everything in the AI direction, researching more way to use the available data to develop other products. At the same time they are trying to find way to ensure the exclusivity of their "market advantage", for example by trying to render competitors unable to use the same data (see: data dump, how can we kill the Creative Commons).
  The network is seen as a cost to pay to obtain more data. The focus is therefore to reduce that cost at much as possible while still obtaining that data, not to further develop the community. Depending on how things progress the network will be kept open and slowly converted to an advertisement for the core product (integrating Prosus LLM in the site to showcase its abilities) or shut down as soon at it won't produce any more useful data.

Again, this is just an "Evil Incorporated Inc." comic-book style made up story that in no way has to be true (nor in any way I am claiming it is). Yet, the sole fact that many user would consider this bleach scenario even plausible should really ring some big alarm bells in your heads.

The comment on Zoe's answer avoided this issue completely. I am therefore posting this more direct question in hope to get some insight on that. Some attempts to tell us why this is just pessimistic thinking. Something that should make us change our wrong interpretation and be more trustful.

I'll leave you with this "artistic interpretation" of what is happening that I saw many users rant about in the last few months. Mind you, it is just a half-parody that hopefully isn't true at all, but I am posting it in hope this pushes some triggers and causes an epiphany to what a growing part of the community is thinking about the company right now.

Prosus bought the Stack Exchange network with the only purpose to use its data to train its proprietary LLM. For this reason they are pushing everything in the AI direction, researching more way to use the available data to develop other products. At the same time they are trying to find way to ensure the exclusivity of their "market advantage", for example by trying to render competitors unable to use the same data (see: data dump, how can we kill the Creative Commons). The network is seen as a cost to pay to obtain more data. The focus is therefore to reduce that cost at much as possible while still obtaining that data, not to further develop the community. Depending on how things progress the network will be kept open and slowly converted to an advertisement for the core product (integrating Prosus LLM in the site to showcase its abilities) or shut down as soon at it won't produce any more useful data.

Again, this is just an "Evil Incorporated Inc." comic-book style made-up story that in no way has to be true (nor in any way I am claiming it is). Yet, the sole fact that many users would consider this bleach scenario even plausible should really ring some big alarm bells in your heads.