hkystar35
Jen SorensenThis week's comic, inspired by a study showing that AI summaries on top of search results are dramatically cutting traffic to websites.
#internet #technology #tech #journalism #disinformation #socialmedia #oligarchy
Norman Wilson@jensorensen I hope I live long enough for the last panel.
Miles Offit... 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦@jensorensen Mmmmmm cheese. 🏆
Luke das maluca 🇧🇷@jensorensen Gotta rember most of those sites on the first results are shit. Most people weren't going to page two and clicking on small business or independent news sources before. I hope mostly spam and super seo optimized sites are the only ones losing visitors now
Bill, organizer of stuff@jensorensen Someone absolutely needs to make the Cheese Art site. cheeseart(dot)org is available.
Start with this woman: https://sarahcheeselady.com
EdgeMy gods, what a portfolio.
@czarbucks @jensorensen Takes me back to Illinois state and county fairs of the 80s. :wistful-look:
I liked the one that looked like a wedding cake. My kind of celebration...
@wcbdata She's good!
Dave Muth@jensorensen @wcbdata Butter cows are old-school.
@wcbdata @jensorensen She's really good. Thanks!
Peace is Not A Fable 
@jensorensen
Together ☀️
Together ☀️
cratermoon@jensorensen The Butlerian Jihad is looking better every day
Cecelia@cratermoon @jensorensen This has me thinking about a return to Ask Jeeves.
@helianthropy @cratermoon Fun fact: I have corresponded with the creator of Jeeves, and he is also a Sorensen.
｡ﾟ･\m\(＞Д＜＃)/m/･ﾟ｡@jensorensen I really miss that early Web 2.0 period, when the web was genuinely moving towards open data and interoperability according to standards not dictated by one company. Before the rot set in.
@jensorensen I was a designer and web developer since the early-mid 2000s and it's kind of crazy to think that that's gone now and probably not coming back ever. It just can't exist anymore under today's circumstances.
fabiosantoscode@dada78641 @jensorensen I now think the web 2.0 idea of users creating content in big platforms was a bit of a Trojan horse.
It could have gone better if social media was run by people and not capital. But I still believe we can create new spaces with more responsible ownership.
@fabiosantoscode @jensorensen I see what you're saying, but I don't think that's true. To start with I don't think "users submitting content" was really the key to Web 2.0 (I think this is a common misconception, actually). User generated content had existed for a long time. Web 2.0 is marked by the move towards open standards for data and interoperability that made the web not a black box.
But I also don't think that a few websites eating everything up was a foregone conclusion by any means.
@fabiosantoscode @jensorensen I think the reason why it happened is because massive amounts of capital was invested into making it happen, into social media sites that were totally unprofitable for decades. They basically had to boil the oceans to do it. There was a pretty stable ecosystem before that. But there's obviously more to it, and the rise of mobile users really fed into the centralization even more due to total erosion of the web's usability. It's complicated.
@dada78641 @jensorensen this is true, I didn't even think of the mobile aspect.
7heo@fabiosantoscode @dada78641 @jensorensen the entire enshittification process can be tracked back to the first iphone, when jobs took credit for the work of (dozen of) thousands of passionate hobbyists and professionals alike, and sold a fancy magic stone to the normies, for immense profits. Before this, every phone was different, in a striving ecosystem experimenting with pretty much everything at once in all directions. After this, every phone was essentially an iPhone clone.
@fabiosantoscode @dada78641 @jensorensen in doing so, jobs not only lied about the larger capabilities of the phone (touch input, that he sold as utter perfection, is imprecise AF), but also brought the vast majority of the population online, without training, understanding, experience, or culture of any kind. Those people stupidly fell into all the low effort traps ever since, and are setting the internet landscape for all of us.
@fabiosantoscode @dada78641 @jensorensen they introduced so much noise into the originally carefully crafted signal that they started the dead internet long before any "AI" was around.
Speaking of, those "AI" are nothing short of very expensive glorified autocorrect "markov bots" on steroids. They would not have been needed without those Verdammt touch screens jobs lied about, and very likely would have never existed in that form without, either.
RejZoR@jensorensen I've not used Google search for around a decade now. It was the first privacy improving thing I cut out of my life. And seeing what dumb trash Google's Ai summaries output now, I have even less need for it.
jcriecke@jensorensen did you see the video about the mmo from '99 that got revived? going back to a better model is an option in some cases.
So.. I kind of Revived a Dead Game..
Kenneth@jensorensen It’s good to have a message of hope. I ‘think’ that will happen and hope it happens before too much damage has been done.
Wulfy—Speaker to the machinesEver since the Internet manifesto was published
The oligarchs had a singular purpose
To destroy the internet while extracting maximum value.
leobardYes!
Alternative ending: "...until one day, I realized I need to pay the content authors for their great websites and content, independent how I found them"
Which we can do today.
...Just sent you 10$. You are sooo right.
@leobard Thanks so much!
Nyan Max@jensorensen hello. Sorry for that but I have taken the liberty of translate it to Spanish. I hope you don't mind.
@maxxcan That's completely fine. Thanks for the translation!
Leon P Smith@jensorensen This definitely has a Kuhnian vibe to it.
ManuX@jensorensen that day is today.
Clinton Anderson SwordForHireBut... But... But.... If I don't use "AI" how will I ever demolish the environment while churning out mountains of garbage based on stolen content and forgetting how to actually do anything?!?!?!
"I used AI to....", is nothing more than, "Listen I'm not an asshole but....", for the 21st Century.
dogtrax@jensorensen I hope that day in the last panel is sooner rather than later. Thanks for the comic.
@jensorensen I'm trying to find MonopoSearch. I mostly use Kagi, but it only leads to dead-ends like Yahoo and Google.
You'd better get MonopoSearch.com and .edu so you can flip 'em.
Craig Waterman@jensorensen I think the culprit here is enshittification (Cory Doctorow) and not AI. AI is just the current tool being used towards that end.
@jensorensen the last panel is unfortunately a wet dream. Abandoning tech as we know it would mean a return to the dark ages (we already, forever lost an immense amount of our pre-internet capabilities and knowledge, and our tech made our lives easier and cheaper in multiple non-negligible ways), and keeping it can only lead to a dystopian autocracy with "telescreens".
Corporations are legally persons since 2010, and can donate to politicians. Just wait until they can directly run for office.