this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Amusingly enough, The Economist illustrates what I believe to be the new business model that's already waiting in the wings for the internet.
With admittedly no direct evidence to support it, my theory at the moment is that the "AI" players plan to consolidate and to continue to expand their reach and continue to gain users who rely on the "AI" for information rather than following links to the originals, then, once the "AI"s have killed enough clicks to collapse the ad model and drive the websites out of business (and give them the opportunity to buy up the remains of the businesses, and more importantly, their databases), they'll put all of the information of which they're now in sole possession behind paywalls.
Broadly, the goal is to apply the most lucrative if least popular business model to information ,- to monopolize ownership of it in order to sit back and collect money as rent-seeking parasites.
See, that's a reasonable take I agree with for the most part, but I think it'll play out a bit differently. Because these AIbro Technofascist dipshit Billionaires are so fucking stupid, instead of just pulling the plug on AI and sitting on the wealth of information like metaphorical dragons, they'll continue pumping billions into larger and more complex models to try and "automate everything", all the while fighting each other viciously, until they all run out of money when their AI-Powered techno-utopia where autonomous robots run everything never comes to pass.
Meanwhile, instead of paying for the information hoards of the TechnoFascist Elites, people will begin self-hosting again, like with the Fediverse, because it's just simply cheaper and more effective at letting people learn as groups and connect with each other.
Considering most of those technofascists are American's who cannot even have proper payment platforms and proper bank connections I doubt they will actually succeed.
If it is only just them doing this AI movement (spoiler they aren't), they would also stop at the US borders, because just like a huge part of the American businesses, they don't care about anybody else