Can we take a moment to appreciate what kind of web experience we are building?
10 tomdesantis 7 5/30/2025, 1:04:56 AM
A web where most posts, images and videos are AI-generated with only SEO optimization, advertisement and manipulation in mind
A web controlled by scraping and crawling agents with advanced browser control designed to deceive paywalls, steal content and send spam
A web were creators that make genuinely interesting content are not rewarded for their work because of the things mentioned above
A web where digital identities are easily faked and weaponized with a simple prompt
I'm afraid that we are trading short term economic gains for a horrible web experience in the long term.
So it's essentially a web browser, but the initial wave of content found on it is pirated articles from commercial websites, unpaywalled, with ads and cruft stripped out.
And that's bolted atop a social graph for communal comments, maybe from Mastadon.
For years, I've been expecting this to show up. People hate ads, paywalls, and trolls so it scratches an itch, and there's a 'viral' spread from having existing users invite their friends by sharing article links.
It seems like a matter of time.
I suspect niche forums to be the 1st line of defence for a reintroduction of a human centric web and relink from those small enclaves. We’ll have to lose anonymity in the process as it’ll be the only way to guarantee authenticity and in all likelihood biometrics will be a necessity as content will need to be tagged with a pulse.
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