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Maybe AI is killing some people's corners of the web. The web itself is just fine. From what I can tell, it's mostly hitting the ad-sponsored parts. Online stor

Maybe AI is killing some people's corners of the web. The web itself is just fine. From what I can tell, it's mostly hitting the ad-sponsored parts. Online stores now actually need to focus on creating good content for their products rather than forcing themselves into people’s browsing. Now you need to be matched to consumers based on how relevant you are to what they want as expressed to their AI agent. I actually see it wiping out the big content gatekeepers. While the AI agents will in themselves be gatekeepers, they seem really replaceable. But they have a fantastic ability to aggregate content, such that eventually, we won't need gateway content platforms like youtube etc because you don't need that front end anymore.

inferiorhuman 1y ago
it's mostly hitting the ad-sponsored parts Nah. AI means that everything is getting put behind anti-bot captchas and other nonsense. Everything from retail sites like DigiKey and Mouser to issue trackers for Wine. Search (both Google and DDG) has gotten comically bad with largely irrelevant AI slop at the top. I use Sourcehut for code hosting and AI means that Drew and crew are combating AI DDOS bots instead of filling out features for the site. Youtube now promotes foreign language videos with terrible auto-dubs. Even Wikipedia and Github are suffering. Forums get peppered with answers along the lines of "here I asked AI for you, this is what I got." I can't think of a single part of the internet that AI isn't enshittifying. I actually see it wiping out the big content gatekeepers. Nah. With everything behind anti-bot crap now, control has been handed over to companies like CloudFlare.
- Roark66 1y ago
  >Nah. With everything behind anti-bot crap now, control has been handed over to companies like CloudFlare. It's impossible for the "anti bot crap" to work. And why would we want it anyway? Why does a website owner care if I'm clicking on his link or is it my bot searching for me on my behalf. We're very close to having our own personal bots deal with the shit part of the experience for us. For example take this query "I need to paint a bare steel railing using RAL 7016 color, buy me some paint and brushes". The bot already knows my price preferences and my location because it's my bot. Likewise my shipping preferences. So he just asks "How big is the railing?" and you answer "Tiny, 6m long and 4cm wide", the bot asks "any special instructions?" and you say "yes, no hammerite, I want the brushes to be cleaned with water, I also want a paint I can use when it might be raining soon". And the bot goes and finds you exactly what you need. It shows you the product page and asks, should I buy a small 250ml can of this?" you say yes, and the transaction is made. Contrast this with the usual user story today. Type "water resistant, straight on rust paint" in Google. You get inundated with products unavailable in your local market. You find something that might be what you need, but it's not in stock or the only seller has 2 week lead time. Eventually you find it after wasting 2h of your life. Tell me this AI use is not an improvement of the Web.
  - inferiorhuman 1y ago
    It's impossible for the "anti bot crap" to work. And why would we want it anyway? Even if that were true LLMs have created an arms race and externalized the costs. That is killing far more than ad supported content. Here's an example: https://status.sr.ht/issues/2025-03-17-git.sr.ht-llms/ https://status.sr.ht/issues/2025-03-17-git.sr.ht-llms/ Why does a website owner care if I'm clicking on his link or is it my bot searching for me on my behalf. Because the amount of traffic that AI DDOS bots generate is abusive and expensive. If retail sites and paid services are struggling to cope with the load, what chance do smaller not-for-profit sites have? Tell me this AI use is not an improvement of the Web. It's not. Quality search engines existed long before they got rebranded as LLMs. Used to be you could get relevant results from Google. More to the point any perceived improvement is not worth driving up the cost of operating sites like Wikipedia. Quite frankly I find this whole idea that it's worth turning the internet into a tragedy of the commons to avoid having to ask an actual human for advice on… paint rather ghoulish.
weitendorf 1y ago
I don't want to just stick to one or two little corners of the web, I want to peruse and find corners that interest me or have information/something that's useful to me. When too much of what I find is AI slop or part of some SEO-maxxed marketing funnel, I become less likely to search for stuff or take a chance on reading something in general. Conversely, web operators generally feel differently about freely and openly serving actual human readers vs robots, both because of their differing motives (the robot might index me or just be learning from me, the human might actually talk to me or share me) and scale (I can afford to host a website serving all my real human readers but not all the robots on the Internet). I actually think that gatekeepers benefit a lot from the erosion of trust in the web. They handle all the hard parts of keeping your shit up and accessible by real people without bots taking it down, and can actually verify that people are who they say they are. Personally, to me the whole point of "the web" is that it's way bigger and more open than a little cozy corner of people I already trust, or a handful of walled gardens. And I think this problem is really quite hard to solve without just creating another walled garden.

inferiorhuman 1y ago

it's mostly hitting the ad-sponsored parts Nah. AI means that everything is getting put behind anti-bot captchas and other nonsense. Everything from retail sites like DigiKey and Mouser to issue trackers for Wine. Search (both Google and DDG) has gotten comically bad with largely irrelevant AI slop at the top. I use Sourcehut for code hosting and AI means that Drew and crew are combating AI DDOS bots instead of filling out features for the site. Youtube now promotes foreign language videos with terrible auto-dubs. Even Wikipedia and Github are suffering. Forums get peppered with answers along the lines of "here I asked AI for you, this is what I got." I can't think of a single part of the internet that AI isn't enshittifying. I actually see it wiping out the big content gatekeepers. Nah. With everything behind anti-bot crap now, control has been handed over to companies like CloudFlare.

Roark66 1y ago
>Nah. With everything behind anti-bot crap now, control has been handed over to companies like CloudFlare. It's impossible for the "anti bot crap" to work. And why would we want it anyway? Why does a website owner care if I'm clicking on his link or is it my bot searching for me on my behalf. We're very close to having our own personal bots deal with the shit part of the experience for us. For example take this query "I need to paint a bare steel railing using RAL 7016 color, buy me some paint and brushes". The bot already knows my price preferences and my location because it's my bot. Likewise my shipping preferences. So he just asks "How big is the railing?" and you answer "Tiny, 6m long and 4cm wide", the bot asks "any special instructions?" and you say "yes, no hammerite, I want the brushes to be cleaned with water, I also want a paint I can use when it might be raining soon". And the bot goes and finds you exactly what you need. It shows you the product page and asks, should I buy a small 250ml can of this?" you say yes, and the transaction is made. Contrast this with the usual user story today. Type "water resistant, straight on rust paint" in Google. You get inundated with products unavailable in your local market. You find something that might be what you need, but it's not in stock or the only seller has 2 week lead time. Eventually you find it after wasting 2h of your life. Tell me this AI use is not an improvement of the Web.
- inferiorhuman 1y ago
  It's impossible for the "anti bot crap" to work. And why would we want it anyway? Even if that were true LLMs have created an arms race and externalized the costs. That is killing far more than ad supported content. Here's an example: https://status.sr.ht/issues/2025-03-17-git.sr.ht-llms/ https://status.sr.ht/issues/2025-03-17-git.sr.ht-llms/ Why does a website owner care if I'm clicking on his link or is it my bot searching for me on my behalf. Because the amount of traffic that AI DDOS bots generate is abusive and expensive. If retail sites and paid services are struggling to cope with the load, what chance do smaller not-for-profit sites have? Tell me this AI use is not an improvement of the Web. It's not. Quality search engines existed long before they got rebranded as LLMs. Used to be you could get relevant results from Google. More to the point any perceived improvement is not worth driving up the cost of operating sites like Wikipedia. Quite frankly I find this whole idea that it's worth turning the internet into a tragedy of the commons to avoid having to ask an actual human for advice on… paint rather ghoulish.

weitendorf 1y ago

I don't want to just stick to one or two little corners of the web, I want to peruse and find corners that interest me or have information/something that's useful to me. When too much of what I find is AI slop or part of some SEO-maxxed marketing funnel, I become less likely to search for stuff or take a chance on reading something in general. Conversely, web operators generally feel differently about freely and openly serving actual human readers vs robots, both because of their differing motives (the robot might index me or just be learning from me, the human might actually talk to me or share me) and scale (I can afford to host a website serving all my real human readers but not all the robots on the Internet). I actually think that gatekeepers benefit a lot from the erosion of trust in the web. They handle all the hard parts of keeping your shit up and accessible by real people without bots taking it down, and can actually verify that people are who they say they are. Personally, to me the whole point of "the web" is that it's way bigger and more open than a little cozy corner of people I already trust, or a handful of walled gardens. And I think this problem is really quite hard to solve without just creating another walled garden.