AI is killing the web – can anything save it?

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

What “killed the web” (before AI)

  • Many argue the web was already dying: ad-driven models, SEO sludge, cookie banners, dark patterns, autoplaying junk, and hostile UX made browsing miserable.
  • Social networks as walled gardens, growth-hacked feeds, and algorithmic engagement optimization are seen as the real culprits, not AI.
  • Centralization around a few platforms and “cloud feudalism” (platform fiefdoms) plus the lack of simple micropayments pushed everything toward clickbait and surveillance ads.

AI’s real impact: search, Q&A, and spam

  • Thread consensus: AI is primarily disrupting search and question‑answering, not “deleting” the web.
  • Search quality (especially Google) was declining for years; LLMs feel like a better front-end over a web already buried in SEO spam.
  • Stack Overflow’s decline is blamed as much on its hostile culture and captchas as on AI; people like LLMs’ infinite patience despite hallucinations.
  • Heavy AI scraping is forcing more sites behind captchas, JavaScript walls, and Cloudflare, raising costs for small/open projects and degrading access even for humans.

Content, incentives, and authenticity

  • Publishers respond to AI and bad ads by moving behind paywalls; some see this as saving quality, others say paywalls “killed the web” by blocking casual discovery.
  • Several predict more access-controlled communities and signed/verified content so humans can distinguish authentic work from AI sludge.
  • Others worry: if AI eats open content and gives nothing back, why would individuals keep publishing high-effort blogs, docs, and tutorials?

Nostalgia vs the current web

  • Strong nostalgia for earlier eras: quirky personal sites, forums, Usenet, MySpace-era individuality, and niche communities.
  • Today’s web is described as homogenized, professionalized, and “a shopping mall”; community features optimized away in favor of monetization.
  • Some note that small, “locals-only” corners still exist (self-hosted sites, obscure chats, federated platforms), but they’re harder to find.

Does AI save or finish off the web?

  • Optimistic views:
    • AI agents could bypass SEO sludge, help people self-host or build custom tools, and maybe revive a “weird web” beneath corporate platforms.
    • AI might kill the worst ad/SEO content and push people back toward curated communities and paid, higher-quality work.
  • Pessimistic views:
    • AI will be monetized like everything else—ad‑injected answers, subtle steering, and even more opaque manipulation of users.
    • As AI saturates the net with synthetic content and forces more anti-bot defenses, the open, human-centered web shrinks further.

Underlying diagnosis

  • Repeated theme: AI is just the latest “sharp tool.” The true driver is profit‑maximizing, advertising-led, winner‑take‑all economics—AI simply accelerates trends that were already killing the web’s communal and exploratory spirit.