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I would be interested in retention stats for these companionship chatbots. The novelty factor is powerful and addictive, but it fades fast. There is a reason all of these bots gamify everything. The most concerning thing is all these bots are already trying to be as addictive as possible. They are built to exploit the users loneliness. They don’t cause it, they devour it.

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I'm a little confused why there aren't better, non-exploitative chatbots.

There's not a big technical moat here. Seems like anyone could build a modest business with a better chatbot, built for conversation and companionship instead of the purely utilitarian veneer of chatgpt or Gemini (Claude natively gets pretty close without special prompting).

If you can make an ok profit you don't need to exploit folks, and in some kind of perfect market theory those good actors could actually win. But it doesn't seem like a real category at the moment

I tried making one, but it’s hard to get it to feel natural enough. For me anyway, if you are already looking for a virtual therapist it might be fine.

Sounds similar but not the same as social media.

Social media with the last small vestige of real human interaction stripped away.

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