Google and Meta et al are as American as are insatiable corporate and oligarchic greed and superfluous profit/wealth. They'll claim that best business practices, including what’s best for consumers, are best decided by business decision-makers.
However, while there must be a point at which greed thus practice will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests, can the unlimited-profit objective/nature be somehow irresistible? It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
I sometimes wonder whether some morbidly and self-mortally greedy corporate officers may know their big businesses will inevitably, if not imminently, collapse due to a great lack of consumers who can afford those big businesses’ products — perhaps including some would-be consumers who’d lost their jobs to employer-profit-maximizing Artificial Intelligence or other forms of non-human automation; yet, the corporate officers will nonetheless continue ardently politically supporting (via covert lobbying of governments, of course) the very economic system, especially its below-poverty-line minimum wage, that is basically going to ruin their big businesses.
As strange as it likely sounds, perhaps those corporate officers cannot help themselves, and even they realize an intervention by a truly-independent body/entity may be needed, one completely untouchable by the morally- and/or ethically-corrupt corporate/oligarchic lobbyists. ‘We scorpions simply cannot help ourselves. We know there needs to be external and independent intervention in our superfluous-profit greed, but we will still resist such intervention. It's in our nature.’ Perhaps it's like an irresistible obsession or compulsion.
Instead, corporate officers continue shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying their job is solely to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. And shareholders also go on shrugging their shoulders while stating or thinking they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones who make the decisions involving ethics/morals or lack thereof.
The corporate news-media, meanwhile, ignores this.
Thank you for posting about this, but I fear the internet has changed, and dark times are coming for those of us who create valuable content.
From my perspective, Google isn't developing these features primarily for the benefit of users or publishers, but for its own long-term control of the ecosystem.
The idea of "preferred sources" or "loyalty" sounds good in theory, but it presupposes that humans will continue to be the primary consumers of content. I think that assumption is already becoming obsolete.
The future of the internet is driven by agents, not humans. Humans won't browse, read, or search the web the way we do today (or yesterday). Agents are already doing all of that.
In my case, I already foresee a near future where my AI agent will be able to read, interpret, and respond on my behalf, adapting to my tone, style, and even my writing quirks. We are very close to having completely "cloned" digital identities (through structured prompts, memory layers, etc.). If that's the direction we're heading, then "user loyalty" takes on a very different meaning. The real consumers will be AI agents, not the humans clicking on the sources.
At the same time, a growing contradiction is emerging: Google demands higher-quality original content and experience-based posts, but increasingly appropriates all the value without redistributing traffic or revenue to the creators.
In the pre-AI era, at least there was an implicit exchange: content → traffic → monetization.
Today, that cycle is breaking down. Fewer clicks, fewer readers, less revenue.
Meanwhile, content production itself is becoming trivial. Agents generate enormous volumes of content every minute. That's why platforms now emphasize "trusted sources," but still expect them to produce high-quality content practically for free.
That model won't last.
We'll likely see more paywalls, registration barriers, and even the active blocking of AI trackers as creators try to protect their work from being commodified.
The internet has already changed. We need to adapt, but not blindly accept a model where platforms extract all the value (without giving anything in return).
I think that Google built these loyalty features so they keep users on THEIR platform, why would you use an RSS news reader if you can do it straight in Google? Building high quality content/news is not viable anymore, why bother creating high quality content if Google will use it to create AI summaries and your site will get nothing in terms of clicks/impressions/revenue? I think that this is a major shift and it's not about adapting and surviving in the AI era, it's about using it at all (from publisher's perspective). I don't think that small/medium publishers will keep producing content, it's just not viable anymore, AI will replace them. There will be no more bloggers sharing their recipes, travel stories, pictures, etc. - it's going to be AI agents doing stuff for real users and AI creating multimedia like images/videos/apps for users to consume. Real content created by humans is going to be very exclusive and rare, like collection cars or like handmade shoes.
This is great Barry!
Google and Meta et al are as American as are insatiable corporate and oligarchic greed and superfluous profit/wealth. They'll claim that best business practices, including what’s best for consumers, are best decided by business decision-makers.
However, while there must be a point at which greed thus practice will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests, can the unlimited-profit objective/nature be somehow irresistible? It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
I sometimes wonder whether some morbidly and self-mortally greedy corporate officers may know their big businesses will inevitably, if not imminently, collapse due to a great lack of consumers who can afford those big businesses’ products — perhaps including some would-be consumers who’d lost their jobs to employer-profit-maximizing Artificial Intelligence or other forms of non-human automation; yet, the corporate officers will nonetheless continue ardently politically supporting (via covert lobbying of governments, of course) the very economic system, especially its below-poverty-line minimum wage, that is basically going to ruin their big businesses.
As strange as it likely sounds, perhaps those corporate officers cannot help themselves, and even they realize an intervention by a truly-independent body/entity may be needed, one completely untouchable by the morally- and/or ethically-corrupt corporate/oligarchic lobbyists. ‘We scorpions simply cannot help ourselves. We know there needs to be external and independent intervention in our superfluous-profit greed, but we will still resist such intervention. It's in our nature.’ Perhaps it's like an irresistible obsession or compulsion.
Instead, corporate officers continue shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying their job is solely to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. And shareholders also go on shrugging their shoulders while stating or thinking they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones who make the decisions involving ethics/morals or lack thereof.
The corporate news-media, meanwhile, ignores this.
Thank you for posting about this, but I fear the internet has changed, and dark times are coming for those of us who create valuable content.
From my perspective, Google isn't developing these features primarily for the benefit of users or publishers, but for its own long-term control of the ecosystem.
The idea of "preferred sources" or "loyalty" sounds good in theory, but it presupposes that humans will continue to be the primary consumers of content. I think that assumption is already becoming obsolete.
The future of the internet is driven by agents, not humans. Humans won't browse, read, or search the web the way we do today (or yesterday). Agents are already doing all of that.
In my case, I already foresee a near future where my AI agent will be able to read, interpret, and respond on my behalf, adapting to my tone, style, and even my writing quirks. We are very close to having completely "cloned" digital identities (through structured prompts, memory layers, etc.). If that's the direction we're heading, then "user loyalty" takes on a very different meaning. The real consumers will be AI agents, not the humans clicking on the sources.
At the same time, a growing contradiction is emerging: Google demands higher-quality original content and experience-based posts, but increasingly appropriates all the value without redistributing traffic or revenue to the creators.
In the pre-AI era, at least there was an implicit exchange: content → traffic → monetization.
Today, that cycle is breaking down. Fewer clicks, fewer readers, less revenue.
Meanwhile, content production itself is becoming trivial. Agents generate enormous volumes of content every minute. That's why platforms now emphasize "trusted sources," but still expect them to produce high-quality content practically for free.
That model won't last.
We'll likely see more paywalls, registration barriers, and even the active blocking of AI trackers as creators try to protect their work from being commodified.
The internet has already changed. We need to adapt, but not blindly accept a model where platforms extract all the value (without giving anything in return).
I think that Google built these loyalty features so they keep users on THEIR platform, why would you use an RSS news reader if you can do it straight in Google? Building high quality content/news is not viable anymore, why bother creating high quality content if Google will use it to create AI summaries and your site will get nothing in terms of clicks/impressions/revenue? I think that this is a major shift and it's not about adapting and surviving in the AI era, it's about using it at all (from publisher's perspective). I don't think that small/medium publishers will keep producing content, it's just not viable anymore, AI will replace them. There will be no more bloggers sharing their recipes, travel stories, pictures, etc. - it's going to be AI agents doing stuff for real users and AI creating multimedia like images/videos/apps for users to consume. Real content created by humans is going to be very exclusive and rare, like collection cars or like handmade shoes.