maybe their business model. trust me. they’ll find a way to monetize the zero click internet too. then it’s back to square one
Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model
Submitted 10 months ago by abobla@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.techspot.com/news/107859-cloudflare-ceo-warns-ai-zero-click-internet-killing.html
Comments
AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
e461h@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I believe this is why tech execs and investors are so hot on pushing AI into everything. They’ll control everyone’s digital experience and you can 100% count on being force fed ads and paid propaganda. Embrace, extend, extinguish
futatorius@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Yeah, so much for all those promises of disintermediation being a benefit of the web.
gradual@lemmings.world 10 months ago
Yep. They have direct control over the flow of information.
Honestly, Metal Gear Solid 2 was on fucking point.
And so was 4.
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Letting Google break the law for years with illegal anti-competitive practices is now hurting everyone else’s ability to earn money.
I wonder if we have the combined will to do anything about it, or if we will wait and hope the invisible hand of the market will fix it…
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 10 months ago
if we will wait and hope the invisible hand of the market will fix it…
Have we lost faith in our handsome businessman? /s
ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Can someone check in with the inventor of the web and ask him what the web’s business model is?
aidan@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Anyone know Al Gore’s email?
PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Manbearpigisreal@hotmail.com
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I didn’t come here for heartwarming stories; yet here I am.
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Don’t take this the wrong way, but fuck your business model. The internet was supposed to be open and be ours, and you stole it for profit.
sfled@lemm.ee 10 months ago
The first spam email was sent in 1978. It’s been downhill.
aidan@lemmy.world 10 months ago
To be honest: you can still make your own website, and in many ways big companies are actually making it easier through open-source projects and stuff like Let’s Encrypt. The web industry is remarkably open compared to what big companies do in other industries. A lot of the standards meetings and stuff you can just go to and give your opinion. Or ignore the standards and fork it yourself. This alarmism I fear will make people not take the actually alarming things like encryption bans or ID requirements seriously.
T156@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Only for some things, though. If you host your own e-mail these days, chances are, you’re going to have a very difficult time sending them anywhere without risking them being deleted, or automatically thrown into spam folders.
pyre@lemmy.world 10 months ago
also independent of that, fuck cloudflare
futatorius@lemm.ee 10 months ago
And fuck the region-blocking that often comes with cloudflare.
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 10 months ago
Lol. Yup 100%
7rokhym@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Everyone is too busy doomscrolling TikTok to notice.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m not buying whatever a billionaire nepo baby CEO monopoly owner is pedaling. Let’s hear what some labor leaders have to say about it for a change.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
i’d like to be a labor leader, but i’m not (yet). Yet here’s my opinion:
Knowledge was meant to be free since the beginning. I look at ideas as human-cultivated, carefully cultured viruses. They’re packages of information that live within a host.
They’re a lot less aggressive than their feral counterparts, but they’re still individual beings who want to spread. Holding back knowledge is unnatural, and the internet should be free.
gradual@lemmings.world 10 months ago
Yeah, the odds are really stacked against businesses when it comes to sharing information.
The fact they’ve been able to keep such a stranglehold on it for so long is really a testament to how much excess power they have over our societies.
Future generations are laughing at us, and rightfully so.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
But it’s felony contempt of busoness model!!
hopesdead@startrek.website 10 months ago
Are they still defending the fact they host Stormfront?
loweffortname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
Host_ed_, right? They did drop them at some point, I thought.
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Good. Maybe we can go back to paying for our services instead of getting tracked everywhere we go.
gradual@lemmings.world 10 months ago
Err… you think you’re not being tracked when you spend money?
Wow.
cardfire@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The internet was founded on the sponsorship model where content was free and ads were ubiquitous. while I completely agree with you that I would rather pay for the product instead of being the product, at this informs every single sign up I make on the internet, I think it’s self deluding to think there’s any great again to go back to. The philosophy was always there, the execution just wasn’t possible until they had finished building their walled gardens
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 10 months ago
When Orwell predicted universal surveillance he never anticipated that the people themselves would install the cameras.
CalipherJones@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This sounds more like “everyone is on TikTok and Instagram and will only ever be using TikTok and Instagram”.
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 10 months ago
That’s not what will happen. We will have to pay AND be tracked. They are not going to give anything up.
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Time to look for other services then.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Trying to comment in this thread and it tells me “Toastify is awesome”? wth?
abobla@lemm.ee 10 months ago
lmao, I’m laughing so hard at this! It’s probably displaying the wrong text for an error.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml do you have more information on this?
wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
This is all extrapolated from google’s self published survey of how their users interact with their search results. Approximately 60% of users don’t click anything after a search. Personally I think that is because users have found their results to be seo garbage and not worth clicking on… but that’s just my opinion.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Of course they don’t click anything. Google search has just become a front-end for Gemini, the answer is “served” up right at the top and most people will just take that for Gospel.
jj4211@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Even without Gemini, many of my searches are covered by the few word snippets from the top few results. Most of my searches are quick queries with quick answers, usually not me embarking on some huge research effort.
CubeOfCheese@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
I’ve watched a lot of students do a search after I tell them to research something, look through a few of the summaries, then look at me in defeat. I have to tell them to actually click some links to try and find an answer
Glitterbomb@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I went to college for networking but the most productive class I’ve ever had where I learned the most about the internet was instead back in high school. This teacher would make 20 page packets with the most obscure questions like what’s the weight of model number 62xRG4 (some obscure car part or something) and he told us to google it. We would spend entire classes just searching for information we would never use, but it drilled into me how to go about finding the information I need. It’s been utterly invaluable. Thank you Mr Ward.
wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I mourn for humanity.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
yes but cloudflare defending garbage people who dox trans people is also killing the web
doodledup@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I didn’t even know about that until now. But how does that affect AI and websites?
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 10 months ago
Yeah well maybe the web shouldn’t be a business
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 10 months ago
America: “No money = no purpose”
the o’l capitalist shalamalama ding-dong…
doodledup@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You can’t say something like that without bringing forth some arguments…
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
That’s not gonna happen, and I even disagree with the statement but I can see the merit in it.
That being said the new business model will be the old business model, where everything is paid for. And I do not think that’s so bad, for example I’d pay for a browser if it respects my privacy.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
god what I wouldnt give to go back to the days of the mid 90s, when the internet was nothing more than a collection of tech weirdos, with websites being nothing more than passion projects with no advertising, no SEO, no search engines, etc etc.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
there was plenty of advertising on america online though almost ever keyword was to a business that was an advertisement.
i do agree that web 1.0 and the 90s internet was superior
qyron@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Can’t we go back? What’s stopping you?
drmoose@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Cloudflare already ruined the web way before AI was even a thing.
CalipherJones@lemmy.world 10 months ago
In what way?
kibiz0r@midwest.social 10 months ago
For a glorious second, the entire world was able to communicate as one.
Then we catalogued every accessible reservoir of culture and knowledge, mined them bare, and refilled them with slop.
A global collective consciousness, hollowed out, replaced with static. No signal. Only noise.
gradual@lemmings.world 10 months ago
You know, lemmy feels a lot like the old internet at least in the quality of its users and discussion.
The only problem is the censorship, but that should be ironed out over time as the abusive mods get their communities replaced with better ones.
ChillCapybara@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Great prose and truthful. My brain heard it in James Earl Jones’ voice.
kadup@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I really non ironically miss the friction of the old internet.
I prefer how it took time to find some bare HTML university website, slowly browse through an index as if it was a book, and then find one non-SEO optimized page with all the information you needed on a topic for your research.
The time to browse, being exposed to other terms, having to select the pages yourself, being skeptical by nature, and then having to copy it by hand… This is a much more positive scenario than having a gigantic company learn everything about you and everybody else and then make these decisions for you, using some hidden algorithm, and with the ultimate goal of pushing their newest process. And of course, the content has been rendered virtually useless to appeal to that algorithm.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That’s because real information looks like that. If you can find a shortcut, then it’s fake.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
when the internet was a wild and unexplored frontier, and we were adventurers charting the unknown.
isaakengineer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sorry for beginner reaction, can I use this in a website for an open source XHTML-extension I am developing? do I need to credit you somehow or lemmy link is enough or what is the best practice here?
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The Web was much better and more useful back before it had a business model. Good riddance.
Khrux@ttrpg.network 10 months ago
I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.
People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).
Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.
AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I generally agree. My focus was on the “business model” side, where people act like the web exists only to serve business interests. The Web will be just fine, possibly even better, if some of these companies monetizing everything were to fail.
xylogx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
So you’re saying the ad driven internet will die? And we will be left with what? Wikipedia and Lemmy? I for one welcome our AI overlords!
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
republicans and oligarchs are already going after wikipedia
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 10 months ago
When Google itself is the one stopping you from clicking on a website you’ve got a problem.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 10 months ago
It needs to get even nastier so that it affects all the big players in a huge way so they get to do something about it. While it only affects the indie web we are all just gonna keep suffering.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Yeah I think we’re going to be grappling with this issue for at least the next decade. The traditional web model falls apart under AI
db2@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The web doesn’t have a business model, cloudflair, you do. And nobody cares because you suck.
PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 10 months ago
Hey Siri, insert the Donald Glover “GOOD.” meme.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
i like to publish content so that bots can scrape it and serve it to people without attribution i think it’s good