Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
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@cwebber I think he has some good points but in the end it’s IMO a fallacious argument because he thinks that everyone wants to build websites and apps and whatever; when 99% of people will never care about creating anything.
The best way to encourage people to take back the web would be (I know I’m an optimist) to destroy the monopolies of big tech and work relentlessly on making programming languages easier to use.
Just like with art, the only barrier to learning how to program, is the learning part. Almost every language is free to use, so it doesn't cost anything except effort (and a basic computer, but then you need that for AI too.)
The “agentic AI” in this story, didn't do anything he couldn't have done himself.
AI advocates don't want to learn how to program, they want someone else to do it for them. For free, or a cheaply as possible...
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Just like with art, the only barrier to learning how to program, is the learning part. Almost every language is free to use, so it doesn't cost anything except effort (and a basic computer, but then you need that for AI too.)
The “agentic AI” in this story, didn't do anything he couldn't have done himself.
AI advocates don't want to learn how to program, they want someone else to do it for them. For free, or a cheaply as possible...
@thomasfuchs @cwebber And I get that the “democratisation“ that people talk about is lowering the technical knowledge needed to program. And that is a noble goal, but I agree with you that we should be focusing on that directly, not hiding that complexity behind an LLM.
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@rickpelletier I’m unfamiliar with how Cursor works. Do they provide their own LLM or do you have to provide e.g. a Claude API key or something? Or is it using a local model?
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Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
this is just slopaganda
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@thomasfuchs @cwebber And I get that the “democratisation“ that people talk about is lowering the technical knowledge needed to program. And that is a noble goal, but I agree with you that we should be focusing on that directly, not hiding that complexity behind an LLM.
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@cwebber I don't understand people claiming they can self-host an independent "AI agent". It doesn't square with how I understand they work. It doesn't square with the immense data centers being built.
And while at first I'm sympathetic to his complaint about losing the open Web, he goes off the rails. You can still create web pages. It's just text. HTML tags are optional. He's fantasizing about singlehandedly competing with Microsoft or something.
@foolishowl I disagree with much of his analysis, but he mentions Ollama for running local models. I’ve found it easy to setup as well, though any models you can run locally currently aren’t as “capable” as the cloud-hosted models. But the gap is narrowing for sure
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this is just slopaganda
slopaganda (n): promoting using AI generated tools to worsen your life and everyone's life around you
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this is just slopaganda
@cwebber it irks me when this is done by people who usually have Good Takes
but get really, well, sloppy opinions when it comes to LLMs. -
Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
@cwebber I'm personally optimistic about highly focused locally run and trained models.
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this is just slopaganda
I'll take your word for it, won't bother to click. But there is exactly one way I could imagine that headline working out without being slopaganda... and that's to argue that a coming backlash against AI and big tech will open a window where we can get people to care about technological autonomy. If that's not what he's arguing then... he's on my shit list.
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slopaganda (n): promoting using AI generated tools to worsen your life and everyone's life around you
@cwebber But is it that, though?
Or are people still looking at it from a reactionary point of view?
Are people using this technology in ways that it shouldn’t have been intended because it was sold to them by people who wanted to maximize profit by any means necessary.
This is like saying that HTML is the devel because Palantir uses it to code their websites.
It’s like saying the compass is evil because that’s how the slave ships navigated the Atlantic Ocean.
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@cwebber I don't understand people claiming they can self-host an independent "AI agent". It doesn't square with how I understand they work. It doesn't square with the immense data centers being built.
And while at first I'm sympathetic to his complaint about losing the open Web, he goes off the rails. You can still create web pages. It's just text. HTML tags are optional. He's fantasizing about singlehandedly competing with Microsoft or something.
@foolishowl @cwebber His description of CSS makes it sound like it is inscrutable, when browser dev tools like Inspect Element (the successor to "view source") have never been better...
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@cwebber But is it that, though?
Or are people still looking at it from a reactionary point of view?
Are people using this technology in ways that it shouldn’t have been intended because it was sold to them by people who wanted to maximize profit by any means necessary.
This is like saying that HTML is the devel because Palantir uses it to code their websites.
It’s like saying the compass is evil because that’s how the slave ships navigated the Atlantic Ocean.
@majorlinux @cwebber I don't think so...
Some love AI and yes, I see people sing 'use AI against itself!' but frankly that still makes AI users dependent on it and less intelligent and critically-minded.
I just don't think you can build an activist rights-reclamation on the bones of grift, stolen rights and climate destruction.
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@foolishowl @cwebber His description of CSS makes it sound like it is inscrutable, when browser dev tools like Inspect Element (the successor to "view source") have never been better...
@foolishowl @cwebber the more i think about this article the angrier i get. when i was a kid doing "view source" there was no integrated web IDE that would help you understand the DOM and even edit it in real time. what exists today is light years ahead of that. it's never been easier to learn about how websites work!
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@majorlinux @cwebber I don't think so...
Some love AI and yes, I see people sing 'use AI against itself!' but frankly that still makes AI users dependent on it and less intelligent and critically-minded.
I just don't think you can build an activist rights-reclamation on the bones of grift, stolen rights and climate destruction.
@john Does it, though?
For some, you can’t lose what you didn’t have in the first place.
Now, I’m not saying (as I have mentioned before) that all of a sudden everyone is an artist. If you can’t draw, you can’t draw. Accept it!
But what I’m saying is that some people do have executive function or other cognitive function issues that have been solved through AI tools.
I use it to help take notes, document work I’ve done, and for reference of said notes.
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@john Does it, though?
For some, you can’t lose what you didn’t have in the first place.
Now, I’m not saying (as I have mentioned before) that all of a sudden everyone is an artist. If you can’t draw, you can’t draw. Accept it!
But what I’m saying is that some people do have executive function or other cognitive function issues that have been solved through AI tools.
I use it to help take notes, document work I’ve done, and for reference of said notes.
@john I’ve used it to automate complex tasks that n8n or Ansible can’t really do reliably based on copious amounts of notes that I have.
There are tools out there that can help people and I feel that gets swept under the rug thanks to reactionary forces at play.
Nobody stops to think critically about the tools and what a future with them could look like that doesn’t involve the exploitative nature of capitalism.
That’s because we’re all too busy to stop and imagine a better world, period.
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@cwebber But is it that, though?
Or are people still looking at it from a reactionary point of view?
Are people using this technology in ways that it shouldn’t have been intended because it was sold to them by people who wanted to maximize profit by any means necessary.
This is like saying that HTML is the devel because Palantir uses it to code their websites.
It’s like saying the compass is evil because that’s how the slave ships navigated the Atlantic Ocean.
@majorlinux @cwebber But it's not anything like your analogies.
It's getting pissed at the use of textiles made from slave labor, not the compasses navigating slave ships.
It's getting pissed at using frameworks directly integrated with Palantir's ecosystem, not HTML
It's getting pissed at asbestos being put in the walls despite indications it might not be all that safe. Except the asbestos exacerbates fires rather than retarding them.
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@foolishowl @cwebber the more i think about this article the angrier i get. when i was a kid doing "view source" there was no integrated web IDE that would help you understand the DOM and even edit it in real time. what exists today is light years ahead of that. it's never been easier to learn about how websites work!
@vv @foolishowl @cwebber one of my favorite js packages is this, which brings inspection to mobile too!
On silly appending debug=true to any query string will pop it
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Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
@cwebber of course a Bluesky board member is convinced AI is the answer to a problem that only exists if you’ve never looked outside the corporate web walled garden lol
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@cwebber But is it that, though?
Or are people still looking at it from a reactionary point of view?
Are people using this technology in ways that it shouldn’t have been intended because it was sold to them by people who wanted to maximize profit by any means necessary.
This is like saying that HTML is the devel because Palantir uses it to code their websites.
It’s like saying the compass is evil because that’s how the slave ships navigated the Atlantic Ocean.
@majorlinux sidenote, "reactionary" is not a good word to describe disliking 1 new thing (regardless of the fact we have good reasons to dislike GenAI as it currently stands).
It means either:
- in a political sense: one who defends the current structures of power and the current socioeconomic system
- in a general sense: one who tends to act negatively towards new things in general by virtue of them being new
