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/

[thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io]

@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.

[deech@mastodon.social]

@cwebber I'm personally optimistic about highly focused locally run and trained models.

[dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org]

@cwebber

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.

[majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com]

@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.

[vv@solarpunk.moe]

@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...

[john@vyrse.social]

@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.

[vv@solarpunk.moe]

@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!

[majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com]

@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.

[majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com]

@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.

[kwazekwaze@mastodon.social]

@majorlinux @cwebber

@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.

[tychi@merveilles.town]

@vv @foolishowl @cwebber one of my favorite js packages is this, which brings inspection to mobile too!

Eruda - Console for Mobile Browsers | Eruda

Eruda Documentation

(eruda.liriliri.io)

On silly appending debug=true to any query string will pop it

[eramdam@social.erambert.me]

@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

[lainz@snug.moe]

@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

[vv@solarpunk.moe]

@tychi @foolishowl @cwebber this is amazing! Thanks

[ragman@jawns.club]

@vv @cwebber what really gets me is the article author's response to this comment.

He gets defensive, makes it about him and his feelings. He seems to think that Derek's anger is because of some insinuation in the article that Derek himself supports AI -- instead of being horrified that the legacy of his art is being twisted to these ends.

The AI boosters take criticism of their beliefs as a personal attack. Because the idea that people have different beliefs about AI is unimaginable to them.

[foolishowl@social.coop]

@vv @cwebber Yes.

Like, there are real difficulties with the open web. But, it's not that hard to self-host a website. An SBC or a used computer is less expensive than a computer capable of web hosting was in the 90s.

But, he's the Techdirt guy. He already has a website. So what's he complaining about? Not being able to create new, more complicated applications, apparently.

He's complaining about the loss of an open web the way some USonian writers complained about the closing of the frontier in the early 1900s. It's probably easier to go horseback riding in Wyoming now than it was then. But that's not what he's missing.