Christine Lemmer-Webber6d ago
Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

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Show threadHuman Brain Enthusiast6d ago

@cwebber I think he has some good points but in the end it’s IMO a fallacious argument because he thinks that everyone wants to build websites and apps and whatever; when 99% of people will never care about creating anything.

The best way to encourage people to take back the web would be (I know I’m an optimist) to destroy the monopolies of big tech and work relentlessly on making programming languages easier to use.

Show threadAaron Caskey-Demaret

@thomasfuchs @cwebber

Just like with art, the only barrier to learning how to program, is the learning part. Almost every language is free to use, so it doesn't cost anything except effort (and a basic computer, but then you need that for AI too.)

The “agentic AI” in this story, didn't do anything he couldn't have done himself.

AI advocates don't want to learn how to program, they want someone else to do it for them. For free, or a cheaply as possible...

Mar 26 at 2:09pmWeb
Show threadAaron Caskey-Demaret6d ago
@thomasfuchs @cwebber And I get that the “democratisation“ that people talk about is lowering the technical knowledge needed to program. And that is a noble goal, but I agree with you that we should be focusing on that directly, not hiding that complexity behind an LLM.
Show threadHuman Brain Enthusiast6d ago
@aaron @cwebber They’re not understanding that people will learn how to ask a chatbot to make a website and not how to make a website