Big Tech May Have Fielded a New Weapon Against the Small Internet: AI

Well, yes. CORPORATE BEHEMOTHS do not appreciate small players getting top search results, for one.

The article raises a valid point about indifference and lack of responsibility and authority being weaponized. "What are you gonna do about it?" When Microsoft Defender calls your site.com "bad" for no explicable reason .

We have no levers to affect megacorps, and they feel entitled to eat the entire internet and subvert its founding principles. What ARE we going to do about it?

None of this is new. "AI" has been doing antivirus, spam detection, search rankings, bot detection, DDoS protection and everything else they have mentioned for at least 20 years now, probably longer. AI didn't suddenly show up and start blocking your website. In fact the "AI" you see in the news these days (LLMs) has nothing to do with any of this.

I mean, maybe.

But these folks living on the smolweb can tend to over-estimate their importance/influence. I say this after spending a decent amount of time there, even building Gopher and Gemini (as in the protocol, not Google) clients of my own.

Some Gemini protocol enthusiasts actually think Google renamed Bard out of fear of being subverted by them, as a play to intentionally destroy any name recognition.

TBH, these folks are likely not even a blip on Big Tech's radar.

That scene from Endgame comes to mind:

"You took everything from me!"

"I don't even know who you are."