AI Is Killing the Old Web, and the New Web Struggles to Be Born

Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an “AI editor” expects “output of 200 to 250 articles per week.” ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites. Etsy i... See more

Does this have to be a bad thing, though? If the web as we know it changes in the face of artificial abundance? Some will say it’s just the way of the world, noting that the web itself killed what came before it, and often for the better. Printed encyclopedias are all but extinct, for example, but I prefer the breadth and accessibility of Wikipedia... See more

Really, the changes AI is currently causing are just the latest in a long struggle in the web’s history. Essentially, this is a battle over information — over who makes it, how you access it, and who gets paid. But just because the fight is familiar doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, nor does it guarantee the system that follows will be better than wh... See more