"Publishers fear #AI #search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’": https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/12/publishers-fear-ai-search-summaries-and-chatbots-mean-end-of-traffic-era
-
"Publishers fear #AI #search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’": https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/12/publishers-fear-ai-search-summaries-and-chatbots-mean-end-of-traffic-era
It begins with harsh conditions for #media #publishers and free-lanced #journalists. But search summaries by #Google & Co. will infect *everybody* having a #website or #blog.
The question is: how do we form sustainable networks in increasing #invisibility? TikTok & Co won't be sustainable. It's time for new visions!
-
"Publishers fear #AI #search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’": https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/12/publishers-fear-ai-search-summaries-and-chatbots-mean-end-of-traffic-era
It begins with harsh conditions for #media #publishers and free-lanced #journalists. But search summaries by #Google & Co. will infect *everybody* having a #website or #blog.
The question is: how do we form sustainable networks in increasing #invisibility? TikTok & Co won't be sustainable. It's time for new visions!
@NatureMC The traffic era ended years ago, when enshittification took off & the gatekeepers - i.e. Google + social media - started chocking off reach in order to make publishers pay to get some of it back.
It's sad that this is what it takes to make the media world *maybe* realize that they're being played.
-
@NatureMC The traffic era ended years ago, when enshittification took off & the gatekeepers - i.e. Google + social media - started chocking off reach in order to make publishers pay to get some of it back.
It's sad that this is what it takes to make the media world *maybe* realize that they're being played.
@jwcph As a journalist, I can reassure you: the media, and especially the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, have been aware of this even for much longer. But if you read the article, you will see that it is about a *new* study. And its figures now tell a different story than studies from a few years ago.
And what helped years ago doesn't necessarily help today. The problem at the moment is that some publishers have quite good countermeasures, but freelancers, for example, can't
-
@jwcph As a journalist, I can reassure you: the media, and especially the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, have been aware of this even for much longer. But if you read the article, you will see that it is about a *new* study. And its figures now tell a different story than studies from a few years ago.
And what helped years ago doesn't necessarily help today. The problem at the moment is that some publishers have quite good countermeasures, but freelancers, for example, can't
@jwcph necessarily afford them because they don't have the money and don't always have the technical means.
If your livelihood has ever depended on generating enough readers or listeners to pay you, you know what I'm talking about.If you have clever solutions for monetising and making visible f.e. a podcast / a freelancer column under such circumstances, I'd be interested to hear them!
-
@jwcph necessarily afford them because they don't have the money and don't always have the technical means.
If your livelihood has ever depended on generating enough readers or listeners to pay you, you know what I'm talking about.If you have clever solutions for monetising and making visible f.e. a podcast / a freelancer column under such circumstances, I'd be interested to hear them!
@NatureMC Oh, it was just a general remark, or I would have had to comment on the "content creator" nonsense...
I don't have a silver bullet, but my general advice for a few years now has been to find out what people did before the internet - because while we may be able to fix the damage done to it by Big Tech, it isn't feasible to base business decisions on that hope, just as it's not feasible to hope Google et al won't suddenly turn off your revenue stream.
Yeah, I know, it's sad.
-
@NatureMC Oh, it was just a general remark, or I would have had to comment on the "content creator" nonsense...
I don't have a silver bullet, but my general advice for a few years now has been to find out what people did before the internet - because while we may be able to fix the damage done to it by Big Tech, it isn't feasible to base business decisions on that hope, just as it's not feasible to hope Google et al won't suddenly turn off your revenue stream.
Yeah, I know, it's sad.
@jwcph Ah, ‘the good old days,’ when people still used our articles to wrap fish and a one-hour radio programme required several people in a professional studio with huge tape machines and engineers. I experienced them, and I'm very glad that they are history.
-
@jwcph Ah, ‘the good old days,’ when people still used our articles to wrap fish and a one-hour radio programme required several people in a professional studio with huge tape machines and engineers. I experienced them, and I'm very glad that they are history.
@NatureMC I did NOT imply that those times were better. I was there, too & my first wish when I got my first computer some 45 years ago was that it could talk to other computers over the phone line.
- but we can't rely on the internet for business anymore, because it has been turned into someone else's business, the interests of which is at odds with what we need it to do; we need reach, they make money by limiting it.
That leaves us nowhere to go but back to the non-digital world.
-
@NatureMC I did NOT imply that those times were better. I was there, too & my first wish when I got my first computer some 45 years ago was that it could talk to other computers over the phone line.
- but we can't rely on the internet for business anymore, because it has been turned into someone else's business, the interests of which is at odds with what we need it to do; we need reach, they make money by limiting it.
That leaves us nowhere to go but back to the non-digital world.
@jwcph I understood you perfectly well. That was more of an ironic comment on my part.
There is no going back to analogue. When I produce a podcast, for example, it is 100% internet-based; it exists digitally, is distributed digitally, and listened to digitally. So I have to reach people on the internet; paper flyers are of no use to me.
And journalists can learn to develop new strategies by studies like that above in the article. -
@jwcph I understood you perfectly well. That was more of an ironic comment on my part.
There is no going back to analogue. When I produce a podcast, for example, it is 100% internet-based; it exists digitally, is distributed digitally, and listened to digitally. So I have to reach people on the internet; paper flyers are of no use to me.
And journalists can learn to develop new strategies by studies like that above in the article.@NatureMC I know - but the skills that lets you make a good podcast are usable for other things too, in the event that digital distribution is taken entirely off the table by powers beyond your control. The time to think about how is before that happens.
