It seems like every year we’re doing less to support independent content creators beyond the big platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Written media is slowly disappearing, while a 30-second TikTok rakes in cash. I can’t imagine it leading to anything good in any social aspect. Are we to rely on heavily engineered algorithms for honest permissions? Are we shaping up ideas and ideals based on what we see on huge platforms versus hearing an opinion you might not like from an independent site but still pursues authenticity?

Artificial Intelligence is changing the open web, and not for the better. Now, everything flows through chatbots that use the content you’ve created. If your site relies on ads, those ads may never get a single view. If your goal is to create a casual influx of people visiting your site, that’s unlikely to happen either. AI is consuming all the content and repackaging it as if it were something new.

Still, I feel surprisingly calm about this. Corporations will drain the open web without giving anything in return, and eventually, independent sites will disappear, which makes me sad. What will happen to human knowledge? We are very, very far away from any dystopian future… and yet I worry about the direction we are heading.