Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model
Cloudflare CEO warns AI and zero-click internet are killing the web's business model
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/63572836
Holy shit dude, I actually think this is way more important than it might seem at first glance.
This is the endpoint of the whole process of turning the internet into a B2B SaaS value-generating machine. It was never sustainable from the very beginning of the transition, since from day one nobody had a better concept of how to make money on the internet than to convey advertising.
The whole process of turning the internet into a business was never to turn it into a business that actually makes something, it was never supposed to play the same role as Coca-Cola or ExxonMobil, but rather to serve as the world's most insidious yellow pages book. How could a project like that ever be sustainable? It's been a long time coming, but I think we're inching closer to a breaking point, where it spills over into the real world.
I've always had a very strong feeling that marketing in the shape of the ads we are served online is not nearly as valuable as the ad space providers have made it out to be. That graph in the article absolutely blew me away, because it's exactly what I would expect, judging from how most people I know use the internet. Just look at this shit:
People hate ads. People avoid clicking them because they're very often irrelevant, a shotgun blast of badly curated horseshit that'll grab your attention maybe one or two out of two hundred times. It's a numbers game, flooding your screen with ads in the hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll get your click.
I mean, take a look at the top recommended extensions I'm served on the Firefox page:
However you sort it, at least seven out of the top ten are going to be some sort of anti-tracking extension, an ad blocker, or something that allows us to take interesting media out of our web browsers so that we can consume it without all the clutter around it. I don't use Chrome, but I'm sure that, unless Google is putting its finger on the scale, the Chrome extension store will look the same. The point is, people fucking hate how the internet works, and they're willing to go a long way to avoid having their private data, time and attention hijacked from them... and you're trying to convince me that ads generate value? Citation fucking needed here, buddy.
This is also why we're getting sycophantic AI that gives people psychotic meltdowns. They're testing the waters, seeing just how much they can make people lower their guard against friendly AI, and trying to shove it down our throats if we don't. This is all in the name of making artificial friends that will worm their way into our lives, and then gently curate the products and services they think we need to consume. It feels like this is a new B2B SaaS gold rush, and they're going all in, banking on the success of this new venture. Capital is seeing the expiration date on their marketing-based business model approaching fast, and they're looking for ways to give it a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart.
And of course I'm not even talking about the other affordance the internet has given major businesses like Google, which is to act not just as ad peddlers, but also as information brokers, who sell your private data to the highest bidder. In fact, when click through rates are falling, and have been for several years now, how can they not encroach ever further into our personal lives? There's billions of dollars to be made, shareholders to appease, fiduciary duties to be upheld. Fuck your social fabric and your democracy, this is what your life is now and you will like it.
I think there's a watershed moment just around the corner, this hyper-inflated bubble will either burst and bring a whole world of bullshit crashing down with it, the bittersweet ending, or it'll spill over into real life through the mechanisms of violence provided by states captured by capital, and that's the bad one. I just don't think there's a good ending to all this.
People avoid clicking them
This point also amazes me. Nobody wants to click on ads. Too many viruses and other horrifying shit exist as ads. Nobody wants to click something they weren't looking for. Especially when it's to spend money. Why would I risk having my computer destroyed for the opportunity to buy something I don't need or want?
They really want people to mindlessly click and consume whatever is in front of them, not realizing people don't think that way.
If they'd actually supported some sort of legislative measures against malicious, fraudulent ads, people might have actually trusted ads enough to occasionally click on one. Capitalism done in by its own endless drive for deregulation.
Hoisted by their own petard. Poetic.
This. Why I use ad and script blockers religiously. You host the ads on your own site, it doesn't get blocked. But you won't. You know damn well that most of that shit is malware. None of these motherfuckers are going to host it on their own machines, not only because of the liability, but also because of the massive security risk. They're fine serving it to you though.
No thanks.
"But we rely on serving you malicious software to survive!"
IDK. Get a better business model. Be a fucking communist. WTF do you want from me? I'm not letting you infect my hardware with your affiliate's garbage. Not my problem.
But we rely on serving you malicious software to survive!
Something tells me that as an individual I can't use this excuse.
Nah... Exemption only applies to corpo scum. "We didn't directly host it, our affiliate's serve the ads through their own servers. We can't possibly be held responsible for our affiliate links! That would be unfair!"
This just isn't true, though. Obviously it's true of more savvy users and old internet fogeys, but cost-per-click on ads just is not all that high.
Billions of people do click ads. These clicks are worth in the realm of hundreds of billions of dollars. There's a big demographic gap here where half of users happily click ads all day long, and half actively avoid them. A lot of advertising is sneaky, too, it's not all a big banner with a legally required disclaimer, a lot of it the algorithm being 'adjusted'. So we probably all click a lot more ads than we care to realise
Just do any ad campaign on Facebook or Google, and with very little effort you can absolutely generate a lot of traffic.
People demonstrably do think that way, young and old alike.
People hate ads. People avoid clicking them because they're very often irrelevant,
A lot of people (if they're anything like me) avoid clicking them even if they are relevant. If I see an ad for exactly the thing I am searching for, I am still clicking on one of the normal un-sponsored search results every single time. Maybe more naive people will click these things, but anybody who's been using the internet for a while has seen plenty "ads" which promise to do exactly the thing they want, such as a big fat (fake) "download" button which doesn't actually download the thing they are trying to get.
I don't use Chrome, but I'm sure that, unless Google is putting its finger on the scale, the Chrome extension store will look the same
This is what I understood manifest V3 was, Google changing Chrome to prevent adblockers etc from working unless you did it on a DNS level which is beyond most user's proficiencies (though detailed guides exist).
Holy effort post! Saving to read later.
Idk why you're mentioning B2B SaaS here when that's basically the opposite of ad based internet and is definitely here to stay.
Ad based internet has been well known to be a waste since its inception but keep kept pushing it for decades. The question is when will the floor actually get pulled out and why hasn't it already?
If I can get a little tinfoil here: I suspect that advertising and consumer tracking businesses kept getting investors because those investors would eat a loss to acquire the surveillance, analytics, technology and infrastructure produced by those companies.
Idk why you're mentioning B2B SaaS here when that's basically the opposite of ad based internet and is definitely here to stay.
Well, half of it is as a catch-all term for bullshit business that generates money without actually adding value to society. The kind of vague money making you get from Salesforce and that kind of business. The other half is that it's businesses selling eyes and clicks to other businesses, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on what makes that model the opposite of B2B!
I suspect that advertising and consumer tracking businesses kept getting investors because those investors would eat a loss to acquire the surveillance, analytics, technology and infrastructure produced by those companies.
100% agreed, and I don't even think there's anything tinfoily about that theory. I think early on the people responsible for these platforms must have caught on and understood this unspoken aspect of the attention economy. It's like a straight line that connects AdSense to Palantir.
Well, half of it is as a catch-all term for bullshit business that generates money without actually adding value to society.
It makes sense if you're deliberately using it as mystical buzzword that you're not supposed to understand.
The kind of vague money making you get from Salesforce and that kind of business The other half is that it's businesses selling eyes and clicks to other businesses
You straight up just don't know what Business to Business Software as a Service actually is. Salesforce itself is B2B SaaS. Its when you actually deliver a service to another company in the form of access to your website. This includes giants like Google Suite, AWS, GitHub. But the classic example is when you have a "pricing" that will usually have 3-4 tiers:
See an example here. There's such a myriad of these with made up names, and look alike websites that they all blur together but they are by definition not ad based because they make money by having another business pay them for their service. Hence B2B.
Selling and buying ad space would be offered through a market that's B2B SaaS. However a place that where the ads are is consumer facing and not B2B by definition. Social Media and SEO slop are consumer facing and make money via ads.
Very useful info, thanks!
