91–100 of 218 posts
I wonder how well this will play out when we look back in 10 years.
So, same as it is today.
Everyone seems to be dismissing this without reading it. As a content publisher, I am very interested in any proposal that results in me getting residual payments from AI scrapers. That would indeed be a new internet business model. This is also being attempted by RSL with their “Crawler Authentication Protocol” ( https://rslstandard.org/guide/web-crawlers ) for demanding proof of licensing from scrapers and RSL Coll…
Imagine trying to create and distribute a movie without the backing of your local distributor/broadcasting cartel. Only instead of gating the movie theatre, Cloudflare is the single access to all things web. Also, based in the US, so good luck producing content their government doesn’t like.
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…
> Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare. Nothing in their idea challenges the underlying tech behind the internet. Anyone is free to compete in constructing a reverse proxy service with LLM-centric content controls similar to cloudflare, whether that’s AWS WAF or akamai or some new startup.
From the stats I've seen, Cloudflare has an 80% market share for reverse proxy services. 20% of all websites use Cloudflare, 50% of the most popular websites globally. That's a dangerous amount of concentration, and it's the only reason Cloudflare can propose this new business model for the internet and be taken seriously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a content publisher, I am very interested in any proposal that results in me getting residual payments from AI scrapers. So you use a public resource and presumably like the upside that comes with sharing on it, but you want to limit uses now that someone has found one that you don't like, so you're fine with degrading that public resource? You could always share things privately or behind a paywall if you don't…
> So you use a public resource and presumably like the upside that comes with sharing on it, but you want to limit uses now that someone has found one that you don't like, so you're fine with degrading that public resource? Can you say more? what is the "public resource" I'm using as a content publisher? In that role I see myself more as the provider of a public resource (my content), not a user.
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…
> Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the internet, Cloudflare. I don't get it. Can you point out where Cloudflare gains the power to prevent Google or any other company from doing the same?
It's not impossible. But it's hard.
> Unless you believe that content creators should work for free, or that they are somehow not needed anymore — both of which are naive assumptions Realistically, what was the benefit of the ad-driven model? From my point of view, most of the highly-valuable information came from the various forums, wikis and personal sites, on all of which people would publish the information for free. Ads were largely used to cover…
They are proposing a scheme by which AI scrapers would have to pay for the content they scrape, which could replace the ad-driven model and be viable for more creators.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see what you mean, and I am divided on the issue. On one hand, I don't think it's fair to have AI companies to freely scrape the world without fairly compensating content producers. On the other hand, adding more gatekeepers to the web ends up killing it. This feels like a lose-lose situation.
That feels like a bog basic false choice fallacy.
Only if you somehow believe you have a choice, or even a say.
(Note that everything CloudFlare talked about in this blog post also applies to adblock users, not just AI agents.)
The golden age of the Internet is not where people do it for money, or for views. That way lies clickbait and content farms. The golden age of the Internet is one where people share information because they want to.
Source: https://1gn15.com/cloudflare
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a content publisher, I am very interested in any proposal that results in me getting residual payments from AI scrapers. So you use a public resource and presumably like the upside that comes with sharing on it, but you want to limit uses now that someone has found one that you don't like, so you're fine with degrading that public resource? You could always share things privately or behind a paywall if you don't…
You can put images up on a public website, but you still retain copyright & can control the images' use. This is no different from any kind of digital content...
The bigger problem I see coming down the line, given the current business model for the internet, is what happens when investors need a return. When the LLM only provides one “correct” answer, the only way to make money from advertisers is to influence that answer. At least just now we are presented with information which we evaluate ourselves, though even this is subject to manipulation.