Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

This tweet has gone viral and we all know why. No matter what Google claims, people don’t like AI Overviews. No matter what Meta claims, no one wants to watch an endless scroll of AI slop video. And no matter what X claims, only maladjusted creeps like its founder think anime girlfriends are cool.

Good point. My bad.

“The study, which looked at 14,000 web domains that are included in three commonly used A.I. training data sets, discovered an ‘emerging crisis in consent,’ as publishers and online platforms have taken steps to prevent their data from being harvested.” Oh boo hoo. Shouldn’t have screwed us over.

AI appeals to those looking for easy ways to make money with little effort on their part. The natural grifters. The lazy. The ones always on the prowl for a way to take advantage of situations and people. They’re fine with making a handful of fast bucks and having everything collapse — they’re used to it. They’re never built anything meaningful in which they’ve invested themselves and their dreams. The rest of us see it for what it is: a way the technocrats, corporations and governments can take our jobs, our creative products and our privacy without our say and against our will — and use them all for their profit.

Excited to use OpenAI’s browser? You should read this first.

OpenAI is asserting in court filings that AI has a “right to learn.” Ponder that for a moment: they are claiming that what’s ultimately a computer program *has rights.* 🧵 1/4

They steal our content. They wipe out our traffic. They penalize us for having affiliate links or ads to make up for that loss of income. They tell us to ditch thin content, then later admit that GSC was underreporting clicks. They tell us expertise and experience are important signals, then bury first-hand content under crap written by freelance generalists using AI. They tell people hit by HCU that recovery is possible in a couple weeks…months…maybe next update? They impose site-wide penalties on small sites which tend to be solo sites, but page-based penalties on big publishers who’ve got the staff to fix things. They elevate big brands that have scraped content from smaller ones without adding anything new, then punish small sites with original content for optimizing so they’re found in search. And literally overnight they rip established sites with good DA and excellent traffic out of the top 3 on a wide vertical and sink that site’s traffic and income. Avoiding Creator burnout? You caused it, Google. How stupid do you think we are that you’re still trying to pretend you’re helpful to creators in any way? You’re the single biggest threat to original, heartfelt and helpful content out there.

Tonight I end a 21-year blogging career. I wrote my very first blog post on 3 March 2003 on an old, long-dead blog in what seemed like another lifetime ago. In fact, it was. Blogging connected me to the world at a time my life was isolated and controlled in an increasingly abusive marriage. It gave me a way to learn and to share my knowledge with others, and when my husband died from brain cancer it gave me a way to support my family, to contribute to my oldest’s wedding, and to put my youngest through college. That was possible not just because I could reach readers through Google, but because I could turn my thoughts and knowledge into an ad-supported commodity that attracted others who wanted to know what I knew. That has been taken from me now. Google has claimed my work as theirs. They make it freely available without attribution. I can no longer turn my knowledge into an income — but Google has. And I had no say in it. I was not asked if I was fine with my personal insights or experience being paraphrased and turned into machine-regurgitated answers (which are often wrong because they fail to grasp the nuances involved). “It’s just info.” That’s what people who don’t actually create anything keep saying. They’re wrong. It was so much more than “just info.” It was knowledge acquired through personal experience. It was time spent writing that knowledge in a way that was accessible and understandable. It was all the weeks and months that went into building and maintaining a site to hold that knowledge in wait for someone who might need it. It was years spent learning to optimize that site, years spent learning and relearning with every algorithm change, every new technology, every new online fad. It was my creation. It was my accomplishment. It was my life. It was the food in my family’s mouths, the clothes on our backs, the medicine I need just to walk. It was mine and Google stole it. I am not feeding that evil beast again.

Debunking the lie AI frees up humans to be more creative is easy: look at how many artists, writers/bloggers, and programmers have had to find other work in the past year because AI took their jobs. Also easy: debunking promises of UBI by realizing that it wouldn’t be necessary if training AI started with honoring copyright and licensing access to intellectual property.

Brits: Why are Americans so fat? *Brits try biscuits and gravy.* Oh. *Brits try fried chicken and gravy.* Oh! *Brits try sweet iced tea.* OHHHHHHHHHHHH!

OpenAI, long indifferent to intellectual property, now howls that China has swiped their code. For years, they quietly trained their models on others’ work—books, blogs, forums, news—without consent, then preached that individual rights must yield to their grander vision. When confronted over the theft, Sam Altman has said that individual rights need to give way to the greater good. That they’re building God. That the social contract is changing and people need to accept that. But now that China’s doing unto them what they’ve done to others, OpenAI is shocked and outraged. And no one cares. In fact, we’re gleeful. Welcome to the Find Out phase.

They’re weird.

The camera didn’t steal peoples’ intellectual property then use it to put them out of work while making billionaires richer.

I have never in my life had as good a hair day as all four of these children are having.

Let’s review: Epstein’s federal arrest and imprisonment for sex trafficking was in 2019 under President… *checks notes* …Trump. And when Epstein died in prison, the President was also …*checks notes*… Trump. Finally, the administration that has sought to block access to the files and alleged client list related to those charges is … *checks notes*… President Trump. FFS.

Important precedent set here: training AI on creative work isn’t “fair use” when the intent is to compete with or replace the original content. So stick that in your AIO and cite it, Google.

Your short-sightedness and financial tunnel vision are showing. The cost of creating quality content is not, never has been, and never will be zero. The cost is every penny, moment of time, and ounce of sweat the content creator spent learning and improving their skills long before that content existed, on top of that same investment in creating it. Pay the creator fairly instead of living as a parasite downplaying the true cost.

Remind me why AI is worth burning up the planet and putting humans out of work? So far, its main achievements are programmatically generating content slop and “erasing” the clothes of people in Instagram pics or videos. Oh yeah, and ruining Google search.

If you’re not paying attention to the actual applications of AI — beyond skanky anime AI girlfriends for incels and dancing cat videos for Boomers — then you’ll have only yourself to blame for living in a police state after democracy does.

A classic Google move is to make the avoidance of something difficult and then claim that when people use the thing it’s proof they like it — when actually it’s just proof we’re all in a hurry. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why they disabled the ability to avoid AI Overviews by adding -ai to the end of your search or peppering it with swear words. And why they haven’t moved AIOs to their own tab, so they could have actual, measurable proof of people wanting to use it?

This is how Google intends to win the AI race. Searching will not produce 10 blue links — you’ll see only Gemini results. You won’t be able to avoid it by remaining logged out, or by using a different browser. Minors will begin seeing AIOs for the first time, too. Do you create content? If Google can crawl your site, it can (and will) lift your content to show in the Gemini results. But don’t expect traffic from it — their goal is to answer the question fully on page. I can’t begin to count the ways this will be bad for users, bad for creators, bad for businesses, and bad for accuracy. Plus, it’s morally reprehensible. arstechnica.com/google/2025/…

Oh don’t worry, Google's not ignoring your blog. They read every word of it, used it to train their AI, and now they're scraping and paragraphing your answers to the people who used to be your audience. But hey, thanks for your free labor! Aren't you tired of it yet? It's time to topple giants. effthealgorithm.com/p/google…

No wonder we are no longer talking about a cookieless future.

OpenAI continues to defend its disregard of copyright by saying those whose content was stolen (in this case, the New York Times) should’ve known and objected 5 years ago when AI research was first announced.

Google: We’re going to put AI in everything! Also Google: And we’re going to train it on your data! Yep, still Google: And also charge you more!

The AI hype cycle is starting to mirror the krypto grifter playbook: claim amazing things, rake in money, back off of claims. Repeat. And now it has the full approval of the U.S. government, with no safety restrictions protecting the working class. Anyone surprised? (Really? Why???)

This is outright content theft. Google isn’t even hiding it anymore. They are displaying recipes AND comments ON SEARCH. I hope every engineer and exec involved chokes on their next free Google-provided meal while the rest of the open web struggles to put food on the table. Via @rustybrick

When the bubble bursts, the ones who will recover first are those who continued thinking for themselves and didn’t believe the snake oil sellers. They’ll remember how to find information, think critically, and do the work. Everyone else will be wondering how they got taken for such a ride…and if they can ever trust themselves again.

Fuchsia, you say? I’ve been calling it Dog Weiner Pink.

Dear @Google , As long as you continue using SGE and no-click search results, you are normalizing content theft and SEO manipulation. Furthermore, as long as you load search results with ads and sponsored results, you imply that the primary purpose of search is sales. This leads to sites stuffed with affiliate products and ads. If you’re as tired of that as you claim, try following your own advice to “create the web you want to see.” To wit: 1. Stop putting SGE at the top of results. Put it on a tab, or move it further down the page. (After 10 blue links is a good spot: people will be glad to see it then.) This will stop the screams of content theft while making the info still available to lazy users who, in time, will train themselves where to look for it. 2. Get rid of featured snippets, PAA and other excerpts that encourage people to target their content for those features at the expense of helpfulness. See above for why. 3. Stop shoving shopping results down our throats. Every time that you get it wrong, you blur the distinction between commercial and informational search intent. This leads to millions of pages loaded with affiliate links and products for sale because “if Google’s doing it, why shouldn’t we?” TL;DR Google: you created this mess. Stop digging in your heels defending it. Look back to where you started going wrong* and redo your work from there. *Might I suggest the day you removed “don’t be evil” as your motto? cc: @searchliaison

“We absolutely cannot hinder AI development because of some outdated laws and hurt feelings.” The second you believe advancing AI is more important than human creativity, morality, and property rights, you reveal what a lousy job you’re doing at being human.

“Whah, I can’t scrape the intellectual property of others and deprive them of the income from their labor. How inconvenient. Woe is me.” Grifter.

.@JohnMu .@dannysullivan Sorry for the noob question, but is this a consensus snippet or the standard featured snippet designed to provide helpful info so users don’t have to click through?

AI disciples don’t respect people or even AI itself. What drives them is power and profit. The fact that they frame following the law and respecting rights as “holding back progress” reveals just how little regard they have for humanity. They just want freedom to grift.

Google is no longer hiding its contempt for site owners and war on them. In other news, I recently read a forum suggestion that reputable site owners close off AI crawling on their sites and then launch second, crawlable (but unpublicized) sites filled with misinformation. Think about the effect. 🤔 🤣

This is why creators matter, and why you need to get your story out if you’re among those affected by AI. Despite what you see on this platform, most people don’t use AI. Those who do aren’t all that impressed with it. They don’t know that it’s costing jobs — ours for now, theirs before long. Tell them. Tell your story. Make the impact of tech companies force-feeding us AI something everyone is aware of. And make sure they know if they don’t speak up now it’ll be too late much sooner than they think.

Taylor Swift always gets the sweetest revenge.

Guess you forgot to read that part of your Bible about not bearing false witness. Typical.

Even the normies are laughing at how bad Google search results are now.

Google’s U.S. search market share dipping from 90% to 87% might seem small, but cracks are showing in their monopoly. Years of unhelpful results and shady tactics are pushing users to explore alternatives. The Google era may end sooner rather than later if they keep destroying the publishers on whom they prey.

Christmas 2022: Google tanked my site’s 10-year average of 250K sessions/month to less than half. Spent the holidays scrambling. Christmas 2023: Another update, even less traffic. Scrambled again. Christmas 2024: Now scrambling to pack up and sell my home of 20 years. Feels like I’m giving myself a gift, because without a mortgage and home upkeep hanging over my head, I don’t have to dance to Google’s tune ever again. So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and joyous Kwanza to all who celebrate! Except Google, who I hope has the new year it deserves.

"I find it very scary, very troubling, very sad, and I find it terrible, horrifying, bizarre, baffling, be-wildering, that people are rushing ahead blindly and deliriously in creating these things." - Douglas Hofstadter to a room of Google engineers working on AI. In May 2014. I keep telling you people, Google has been stealing our IP and planning to push us off the web for over a decade. This bell won’t get unrung because that would undo their empire — and all of the other tech platforms, too. The best defense we have? Poison the data.

AI isn’t the Industrial or Computer Revolution — it’s replacing human *thinking,* not just tasks. And while UBI gets tossed around as the fix, the U.S. just elected politicians dead set on killing ‘handouts’ and gutting programs, proving UBI is a fantasy. The real goal of the AI race? Boosting shareholder profits by slashing labor costs. This isn’t about progress, it’s about profits.

A platform that bans AI? Imagine how popular it would be!

Ironically, OpenAI makes those claims while ignoring the copyright and intellectual property rights of the content creators, artists, scientists, journalists and others whose work it trained AI on without the owners’ consent. 2/4

Well, “inability to bend far enough to assume the position by grabbing their ankles” might rankle some of their readers, I guess. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes! No more flat control panels, either. So tired of turning off the slow cooker because I accidentally touched it, or starting the dishwasher because my fat ass bumped it.

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." — Eric Schmidt In retrospect, we should’ve been paying closer attention to the psychopaths running the show.

You cannot imagine how it feels losing your income to this crap because Google tries to say people like it.

Dear Google, I believe I speak for many of us looking at our site traffic since Feb. 11-23: Fuck. You.

More alarmingly, their legal argument treats AI as a presumptive entity in and of itself. They are NOT claiming OpenAI has a right to train its AI on the data. They are claiming THAT AI HAS A RIGHT ON ITS OWN . 3/4

Two and a half years ago, Google wiped out my website overnight. I went from earning a comfortable six figures to barely getting by. At the time (September 2022), lots of bloggers and devs assured me I’d done something wrong. That somehow my content — which had been earning 250,000-500,000 monthly pageviews for years — became “low quality” overnight. I knew better. So I waited. The following year, most of them got kneecapped by Google through either the HCU or draconian core updates. Or both. I have not forgotten what Google did to us. I am not one to keep my mouth shut when I see unfairness. I’m also not one to accept things as they are, or to fear those in power. Because every giant can fall. You just need to find the right leverage. So, I spent the last 2.5 years learning everything I could about algorithms, AI, and how platforms profit from manipulating us. Now I’m pulling back the curtain. If you’ve felt like the internet turned against you… you’re not imagining it. It’s time to say the quiet part out loud: EffTheAlgorithm.com Subscribe and let’s topple the giants.

You are doing nothing while he and his goons use the Constitution like toilet paper. Your inaction puts us ALL at risk and amounts to dereliction of duty on your part. Stop the hand-wringing and performative posting. DO. SOMETHING. NOW.

“For the benefit of humanity” = After we’ve all made a fortune, changed laws in our favor, and put millions out of work.

I am hoping for once to prove you wrong.

AI often doesn’t teach us—it spoon-feeds us. Without AI: You learn how to find, evaluate, and integrate information. Gaps in your knowledge become part of the process, helping you truly understand and retain what you learn. With AI: You get a prepackaged “consensus” that feels like learning but doesn’t stick. You rely on it, instead of really absorbing the subject. It’s the difference between weaving new info into your existing knowledge and ingraining it for future recall and cramming for an exam overnight. One becomes part of you. One satisfies the immediate need but leaves you reliant on AI because you don’t actually learn anything.

Are we such a sick society that we can’t see how wrong this is?

Dear Google, As you go into another Code Red, remember: people began preferring AI because you destroyed your search engine. Not the creators. Not the SEO agencies. Not the publishers. You. You did that. Good job. 👍🏽

This is how you get a dead internet. 🪦 Meta is now repurposing content from food bloggers and summarizing articles across various platforms using AI. Coupled with SGE and the prioritization of large brands and sites like Reddit and Quora in top search results, it’s now pointless for small publishers and non-commercial site owners to produce or share original content. What 𝘆𝗼𝘂 platforms and even the big media sites 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 seem to grasp is the logic bomb you’re writing into your business plan by destroying small creators through stealing their work. Yes, users may find the oatmeal blandness of regurgitated, AI-groomed content satisfying. For a while. But eventually, they’ll lose interest, even if they (and you) can’t 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻 why. Dopamine deprivation is why — 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 need dopamine, especially when they’re losing jobs and businesses for reasons beyond their control (but within yours). If anything, using AI summaries turns people off, and trying to solve it 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵 to surface “hidden gems” is polymorphic: it just introduced more of the same blandness via content theft and spam. Meanwhile, you’re alienating the dopamine creators: millions of small sites you’re destroying through exploitation of their work in your greed to keep audiences to yourselves. Will you lose users overnight? No. For now, AI is novel to everyone and you’re so drunk on the newness of adding it to your platform to 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 and anticipate what happens when you don’t factor in all the other things making people weary. Or that you’ve become one of those wearying things by destroying the creators who supplied you with the novelty your users want. TL;DR Dear platforms, your math is flawed. When you do implode, look back and you’ll see the reason you were too greedy and dismissive to grasp.

Imagine being so full of unexamined self-loathing and suspicions of personal inferiority that you’d project that into everyone else and believe the solution is replacing humanity altogether.

This is the argument content creators need to stick with: the tech companies, including Google, have reached licensing deals with some publishers and media outlets. That acknowledges the creator owns copyright and deserves compensation for training use and access. The size of the creator, the depth of their pockets, or whether they have a legal team is irrelevant. Tech companies need to compensate copyright owners big and small. Turn THAT into the new revenue model for content creators and there will be a wave of new, excellent content and people welcoming its use.

Facebook (Zuck) did not want it known they used the LibGen dataset to train their AI. Why? Because LibGen knowingly uses copyrighted info and scrubs the copyright from it. So, they used torrents and non-corporate devices to access the data in secret. Less secretly, they performative checked that the data didn’t harm national security interests which might get them on investigators’ radar. But someone screwed up. Someone always screws up. That’s going to be a recurring theme as AI becomes more sentient.

Good to see bigger sites picking up on how Google is wiping out small publishers. Your internet is at stake.

I don’t think people who aren’t running sites understand we’re caught between two monopolies: you need either traffic from Google or from Meta. Neither want users leaving the platform. Both want to use AI to scrape content to keep them there (and are doing so). Also, one of them controls billions of email InBoxes, adding another layer of difficulty reaching non-search audiences. Meanwhile, there are costs to keeping sites online that people don’t seem to grasp, either. Fast hosting, a good CDN and all the plugins needed to deliver compressed images, create graphics, schedule content, track analytics and send out newsletters — none of that is free. (And the low cost options look/are so janky that they’ll ultimately work against you.) So suggestions of “just pivot to something new” assume you’ve got the financial ability to do so and have lost enough hope you’re ready to completely cut your losses. And I am so damn sorry to see this happening to another great site. It’s so wrong.

Gaslighting: Master Level Unlocked. Hot on the heels of HCU, which Google said was punishing sites over-optimized for search, Google is now encouraging people to use their AI to optimize for search. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, GOOGLE?

Dear Google: Stop fucking changing my titles and meta then penalizing me for a low click through rate, you gaslighters.

So, if you haven’t been paying attention to the whispers and innuendos about reaching superintelligence that the AI tech insiders have been making recently, 👏🏽 pay attention. 👏🏽 Because this argument doesn’t just support that notion — it’s laying the groundwork for a new species with recognized legal rights. 4/4

Google’s latest way to steal your traffic: they’re inserting links in your content displayed in the Google App browser. The links go to their properties. Don’t want that? You can opt out BUT must to do it every. 30. days. Predatory doesn’t begin to describe this company now.

Visiting websites these days: First close the cookie banner. Then the lead magnet pop up. Then disable the Slickstream roll at the top promoting other posts. Click the “continue reading” box that falsely increases engagement signals. Scroll past the bloated TOC designed to get additional links in the SERPS, and finally get past the subscribe box just to find two sentences of value. Using the web sucks these days! Don’t blame the site. Blame Google. First they pulled the whole “we’re killing cookies” lie. They intentionally complicated GA4 to hide what they’re doing so small site owners have no idea how to fix things. Then they gutted traffic to those small sites and shunted it to the big brands who pay for ads. Once those brands made hiring decisions based on the increased traffic, they cut them off, too. Now they have to pay to stay at the top. And for the latest blow? Google rolled out AIOs that link to… more AIOs. A perfect loop keeping traffic in Google’s claws. No exits. Those popups and cluttered pages? That’s what struggling to survive looks like when Google eats the web. Don’t hate the site owners, hate the monopoly.

Exact same boat. There’s no point in writing anything for my blog or for its social media pages — AI will just steal it and platforms will bury it. She’s thinking of a print newsletter and I’m over here filling notebooks with longhand. Welcome to the beginning of the end of art.

This is not a summary, it’s a blog post. And regardless of how they label it, it is also NOT a search result. It’s content theft.

This world where the reposters make the money but the original creators don’t? We call it being a small publisher in 2025 with Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI taking your life’s work. And it sucks.

All that groveling, all that begging and yet nothing’s changed: the government still wants Google broken up. I’d ask what it feels like to get your hopes up then nothing comes of it, but I know. So do thousands of other content creators whose livelihoods got wiped out by Google. Enjoy your just desserts, Sundar.

Can we just take a moment to love that The Dude is calling in from a sofa in his garage?

This is what I meant when I warned: “We’re more emotionally intimate with our devices than with the people around us, and that didn’t just happen. It was engineered. These platforms thrive on isolation. The less we connect with each other, the more we turn to them…. And that, too, makes this AI therapy an illusion, because we’re not working through our problems with people. We’re just rehearsing them. We’re stripping the people around us of agency while we talk in circles with a machine.”

Okay, “hey smooth brain” has taken the #1 spot on my list of favorite insults.

Translation: “If we’ve stolen your knowledge and personal experience from your site or those which we’ve allowed to scrape you, we see no need to send you traffic.”

Who knew he meant “Creators don’t realize we have already scraped their content for free”?

I’m honestly baffled by how many people are atheists who view others’ belief in a higher power with contempt…yet are eager to believe humans can create one through computing.

Good. Call a creep a creep.

People in the comments keep asking “was this a small site? A personal blog?” But it doesn’t matter. Google’s unaccountable changes wipe out both independent voices and small businesses so Google can choose what people see, hear, learn and — eventually — think. In the process, they are ruining lives. There is no warning. There is no useful explanation — pointing an affected business owner to generic guidelines is decidedly not helpful. There is no appeal. That exercise of unilateral power is the essence of being an illegal monopoly. But what makes this even more appalling: when Google’s actions affect big businesses, they provide all those things: warning, a method of appeal, even personalized help solving the problem. The difference? Big businesses can and will sue them. So, it’s time for some hungry law firm to step up and launch a class action. Combine it with a massive PR blitz that reaches the average person. Let them know how Google is using its algorithms and AI to control information so users see only what Google wants them to see. But get on it. Because time is running out.

Dealing with online customer service lately is a waste of time. They’ve turned it over to AI which can’t solve unscripted problems and even claims to be human, but never escalates the request to someone who can help.

Martin nails it: Google’s intentionally wiping out any informational site by (a) Stealing your content for its AIOs; (b) Often, as @lilyraynyc has shown, not even linking to your site. On purpose. Every single Googler should be disgusted with themselves for treating people this way. Every. One.

Every search engine and social media platform should provide easily accessible ways for users to decline AI assistants, answers, and images like @DuckDuckGo does. That’s the difference between providing AI as a useful tool and forcing people to adopt it so you can train on their use. *cough* Google *cough*

"With respect to content that is already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like," said Suleyman. What fucking internet were you using, man? Because the one that I’ve been contributing content to since the 90s was based on linking sources, blockquotes, and respecting copyright. Revisionists justifying their content theft do not change reality, Suleyman, and attitudes like yours are why people like me don’t trust you, Microsoft, OpenAI, or any of the other tech giants. You’re thieves.

Gen X reading this.

We can no longer buy most software, we subscribe to it. Our data is no longer on our hard drives, it’s in the cloud — and we have to rent that space, too. And now that we’re all dependent on various programs and too overworked to find alternatives, everything from Adobe to Zapier are injecting AI and asserting a right to review the content we create whenever they want — NDAs, HIIPA and confidentiality laws be damned. I swear, every day the tech companies are making me reevaluate whether I really need them in my life. “You’ll own nothing and be happy,” Ida Auken has said. She got it half right.

Just tried ChatGPT Search and I am shooketh. ☑️ No ads. ☑️ Clearly sourced. ☑️ Reinforces source recognition by using their actual names, so they’re not trying to cut out the creator. (Plus, that can lead to future branded searches.) ☑️ Nice mix of large and small sites on the searches I’ve run so far. That’s two — TWO! — kind things I’ve said about Sam Altman today. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. 🧙🏽‍♀️🪞

Google’s strategy to offset the cost of AI: ruin search. Why? Bad search means more queries, letting them charge advertisers more. Ironically, those advertisers include publishers who once thrived on free traffic—before Google killed it.

Oh hey, I wrote a thing: Google’s Own Algorithms Are Driving Users Toward ChatGPT and Bing.

So, when Google has stolen everyone’s content and stops sending traffic to sites, and AI puts everyone else out of work, whom do the politicians who sat by and let it happen think will pay taxes?

You’ve betrayed everything you used to believe.

I will never understand the mentality of being stingy with things like social security or benefits because a small group might get more than their share then electing a billionaire who plans to reward contracts and jobs to his billionaire pals while cutting their taxes, too.

I prefer the right. The lapel rolls on the left sit and the pockets both sit too high, and the vest is cut too low so it exposes too much shirt. But the loden green is a classic color and I very much like that choice.

Dear SEOs: 1. “Write for your audience” requires understanding the audience. If you know nothing about a niche, you don’t routinely read it or any of the sites within it, and aren’t a regular part of the audience, your opinion is worthless. 🧵