Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster | Techdirt https://www.techdirt.com/ • • Sign In (https://www.techdirt.com/my-account/) • Register (https://www.techdirt.com/register/) • Preferences (https://www.techdirt.com/preferences/) Techdirt - [x] • TechDirt (https://www.techdirt.com/) • GreenHouse (https://www.techdirt.com/edition/greenhouse/) • Free Speech (https://www.techdirt.com/edition/freespeech/) • Error 402 (https://www.techdirt.com/edition/webmonetization/) • Ctrl-Alt-Speech (https://www.techdirt.com/edition/ctrlaltspeech/) • Deals (https://deals.techdirt.com/) • Jobs (https://jobs.techdirt.com/) • Support Techdirt (https://www.techdirt.com/support/) https://www.techdirt.com/blog/podcast/ Daily Deal: The Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/daily-deal-the-complete-photoshop-master-class-bundle-8/) Apparently One Dismissed Speech-Suppressing SLAPP Suit Wasn’t Enough For Matt Taibbi (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/apparently-one-dismissed-speech-suppressing-slapp-suit-wasnt-enough-for-matt-taibbi/) Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster https://www.techdirt.com/?s&topic=uses (Mis)Uses of Technology (https://www.techdirt.com/?s&topic=uses) from the the-end-of-ten-blue-links dept Thu, Jun 11th 2026 11:05am - Glyn Moody (https://www.techdirt.com/user/glynmoody/) Google didn’t invent full-text search of the Internet – that honor belongs to early pioneers such asWebCrawler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebCrawler),Lycos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycos)andAltaVista (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista). But for the last 25 years or so, Google has been synonymous with online searching, providing the quickest and most effective way to find things online (althoughits results may be getting worse (https://gizmodo.com/google-search-results-are-getting-worse-study-finds-1851172943).) More recently, it has been adding to its search engine more features based on generative AI, first with itsAI Overviews (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/)in 2024, and then a year later with itsAI Mode in Search (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-update/). Now it has announced the latest stage in that evolution with what it calls “A new era for AI Search (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/)”: It’s more intuitive than ever, dynamically expanding to give you space to describe exactly what you need. Designed to anticipate your intent, it also helps you formulate your question with AI-powered suggestions that go beyond autocomplete. And you can search across modalities, using text, images, files, videos or Chrome tabs as inputs. This new incarnation effectively turns search into a chatbot: You can easily ask a follow-up question right from an AI Overview, and flow into aconversational back and forth with AI Mode (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-ai-overviews-updates/). Your context stays with you, and as you explore more deeply, the links and supporting articles get even more relevant. This seamless experience is live today across desktop and mobile, worldwide. As thethe screenshot of the new interface (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/)above shows, the traditional search result links that are currently placed under the AI Overview have now been confined to a small panel on the right-hand side of the screen, which shows a cut-down version of today’s list. Users are encouraged to ask follow-up questions from the AI search chatbot, rather than exploring the links themselves. What this is likely to mean in practice is that even fewer people will follow links to sites,something that was already happening last year (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/); instead, they will engage with Google’s chatbot to gather information indirectly. This is terrible news for access to knowledge because it frames the Google AI search engine as the fount of all knowledge – one that will do all the hard work of finding information and combining it into an easily digested answer that can be interrogated further. It can do that because it has already ingested billions of Web pages and other information sources as part of the Large Language Model (LLM) training process. But search engine users will no longer know what some of those sources are unless they painstakingly click on the links in the new panel. Most people will not bother, because the AI-generated results will be good enough – or at least will appear to be good enough. Unless visitors to the site take the trouble to follow the links to the sources they won’t really know how reliable those results are. For example, it is possible that the sources are wrong, or misleading; moreover, Google’s LLM may itself introduce new errors and distortions. There is also the question of how Google will insert ads into this AI-generated information, and to what extent advertisers will be able to buy preferential treatment in results. This new mediated approach is clearly terrible news for Wikipedia –an issue already discussed on Walled Culture earlier this year (https://walledculture.org/wikipedia-at-25-grapples-with-new-challenges-arising-from-generative-ai/)– and for creators. Google will use the information found in their works, but will not actively encourage people to visit the originals. For many people, summaries will be good enough, and they will never discover the greater riches of the sites and creations that Google’s LLM is based on. Worse still, the original creators such as Wikipedia may not even be mentioned in answers that involve aggregating information from a large number of sources. Similarly, the new Google search is the publishing industry’s worst nightmare. Not only is Google drawing on material they have published, but it is pushing links to those sources into the background. It seems inevitable that the Web traffic to publishers will fall yet further, making already struggling business models based on advertising even more precarious. That will have knock-on consequences for the funding of many sites – particularly newspapers and magazines – and for the commissioning of work from journalists and other creative professionals. Users won’t even need to visit Google Search much in order to keep up-to-date with topics of interest thanks to Google Search’s new agentic capabilities that will do the work for them in advance: With information agents, you can stay updated on whatever matters most to you. Your agent will intelligently look across everything on the web, like blogs, news sites and social posts, plus our freshest data, such as real-time info on finance, shopping and sports, to monitor for changes related to your specific question. In this case, not only will people not visit sites, but the latter will be constantly bombarded by various AI bots seeking information on behalf of users – increasing site running costs, and making sites less usable by humans. Another key announcement from Google will lead to a further flood of agentic activities that will pose new challenges to businesses: We’re also expandingagentic booking capabilities (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/agentic-plans-booking-travel-canvas-ai-mode/)in Search to a wide range of new tasks, including local experiences and services.Just share your specific criteria — like finding a private karaoke room for six on a Friday night that serves food late — and Search brings together the latest pricing and availability with direct links to finish booking through the provider of your choice. And for select categories like home repair, beauty or pet care, you can ask Google tocall businesses on your behalf (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/how-to-agentic-calling-let-google-call/). What emerges from Google’s latest announcements is less of a search engine, and more of an immersive virtual environment that is designed to keep people engaging with Google’s services, asking them for information, advice and even delegating actions to them. There is no doubt that many users will find these new features attractive, not least because they can use “conversational voice features (https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/workspace/workspace-updates/)” in Gmail, Docs and elsewhere. These are the digital assistants that have been promised for many years, able to understand spoken commands, provide information verbally, and carry out complex operations on behalf of users without the need for any complex training. For many people, that will be a boon, and they will doubtless migrate from the traditional search page, which willstill be the default (https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/21/google-explains-how-it-will-infuse-ads-into-ai-answers/5244586)– at least for now – to the latest AI-infused version. But these impressive technical features come at a high price, even leaving aside issues such as the environmental impact of the huge server farms they require. With the latest incarnation of its search engine, Google is making the World Wide Web as we have known it for over 30 years invisible, and therefore increasingly irrelevant to most people, who will be happy to let Google become their universal user interface to everything. And yet Google still depends on the Internet to supply all the information it is analyzing and repackaging. It risks killing the very thing that sustains it. There’s another, more subtle issue. The new Google search features make finding information and carrying out actions very easy in many ways. Leaving aside the problem that this will require people to trust what is in effect a huge black box, where the internal workings cannot be examined, with all the loss of control this implies, there is another danger. People who use Google’s powerful new AI search services to offload many of their day-to-day actions may gradually lose the ability to understand the world and to act within it without that constant help. Such a dependence may be great for Google and its advertisers, but it surely cannot be a good thing for the future of society. Follow me @glynmoody onMastodon (https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody)and onBluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/glynmoody.bsky.social). Originally published to WalledCulture (https://walledculture.org/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/). Filed Under: ai (https://www.techdirt.com/tag/ai/), links (https://www.techdirt.com/tag/links/), open web (https://www.techdirt.com/tag/open-web/), search (https://www.techdirt.com/tag/search/) Companies: google (https://www.techdirt.com/company/google/) https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/https://reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2F2026%2F06%2F11%2Fwhy-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster%2F&title=Why%20Google%E2%80%99s%20New%20AI-Saturated%20Search%20Page%20Will%20Be%20A%20Disasterhttps://twitter.com/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2F2026%2F06%2F11%2Fwhy-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster%2F&text=Why%20Google%E2%80%99s%20New%20AI-Saturated%20Search%20Page%20Will%20Be%20A%20Disaster&via=Techdirthttps://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2F2026%2F06%2F11%2Fwhy-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster%2F&t=Why%20Google%E2%80%99s%20New%20AI-Saturated%20Search%20Page%20Will%20Be%20A%20Disasterhttps://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&ro=false&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2F2026%2F06%2F11%2Fwhy-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster%2F&title=Why%20Google%E2%80%99s%20New%20AI-Saturated%20Search%20Page%20Will%20Be%20A%20Disaster 14 Comments (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comments)Leave a Comment (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comments) If you liked this post, you may also be interested in... • California’s AB 412 Still Demands AI Developers Do The Impossible (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/10/californias-ab-412-still-demands-ai-developers-do-the-impossible/) • CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/09/ceos-who-think-ai-replaces-their-employees-are-just-bad-ceos/) • Meta Admits Its 'AI' Helped Hackers Compromise 20,000 Instagram Accounts (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/09/meta-admits-its-ai-helped-hackers-compromise-20000-instagram-accounts/) • 'Tomb Raider' Remake Developed Using Some AI, Everyone Freaks, Crystal Dynamics Responds, And I'm Confused (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/05/tomb-raider-remake-developed-using-some-ai-everyone-freaks-crystal-dynamics-responds-and-im-confused/) • Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Generous To A Default (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/05/ctrl-alt-speech-generous-to-a-default/) Click to toggle (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/)https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/ Rate this comment as insightful Rate this comment as funny You have rated this comment as insightful You have rated this comment as funny Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam You have flagged this comment The first word has already been claimed The last word has already been claimed Comments on “Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster” Subscribe: RSS (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/comments/feed/)Leave a comment (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#respond) • Filter comments in by Time • Filter comments as Threaded • Filter only comments rated Insightful • Filter only comments rated funny LOL • Filter only comments that are Unread 14 Comments Collapse all replies This comment is new since your last visit. Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 11:18 am (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391135) “It can do that because it has already ingested billions of Web pages and other information sources as part of the Large Language Model (LLM) training process.” It can do that because it has already stolen billions of web pages of copyrighted content. There is a fundamental and obvious difference between crawling web pages to build a search index (fair use) and crawling web pages to incorporate them wholly in an LLM (a clear copyright violation). Google, like the other AI/LLM companies, has engaged in massive and deliberate copyright violation, vastly in excess of anything ever done by all music/video pirates, and it should be punished with 12-figure fines and lengthy prison sentences for all personnel involved. This comment is new since your last visit. Steven(profile) (https://www.techdirt.com/user/smbell/)says: June 11, 2026 at 11:46 am (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391167) Disaster in more ways than one. Given a German court just ruled that Google can be held responsible for the hallucinations of their AI search summary, this might not last long. This comment is new since your last visit. Threaded [2] Heart of Dawn(profile) (https://www.techdirt.com/user/heartofdawn/)says: June 11, 2026 at 12:37 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391249) Re: A great article on the ruling (https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/) This comment is new since your last visit. Threaded [3] terribly tired(profile) (https://www.techdirt.com/user/verymeh/)says: June 11, 2026 at 12:40 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391252) Re: Re: Yep. Read it; was good. Thanks! This comment is new since your last visit. Threaded [3] Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 1:45 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391339) Re: Re: It’s a very good article. One thing it doesn’t mention — and probably shouldn’t, because it’s outside the scope of the present case — is that this garbage product from Google is easily manipulated (a) because there are no humans in the loop (b) the crawlers behind it are vacuuming up anything and everything and (c) attackers (such as SEO scammers, phishers, etc.) have developed working, scalable methods for exploiting (b). (I trust everyone is aware that some of these people run custom web servers that serve up different content to different crawlers/networks/operations. You visit a web page, you see one thing; Google’s crawler visits the same page and gets something else entirely.) Which means if, for example, I wanted to cause this mechanism to say that Heart of Dawn wears Crocs with glitter (thanks, Weird Al) I could probably do that rather easily and inexpensively. And until it surfaced, and until it was noticed, and until it was observed to be completely fabricated, nobody would detect it. Google has built a machine not just for telling lies, but for telling any lie that anyone can trick it into telling. This comment is new since your last visit. Threaded [4] Bilateralrope(profile) (https://www.techdirt.com/user/bilateralrope/)says: June 11, 2026 at 5:23 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391689) Re: Re: Re: But it’s something Google needs to be worried about. Imagine that you someone an AI to spread a lie about you, so they could then use this ruling to sue an AI company. Could any of the AI companies even detect who was responsible ? Could they prove it in court ? This comment is new since your last visit. Threaded [2] Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 2:28 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391416) Re: You were right to call that out! Germany, business-killing anti-freedom socialist hellhole that it is, presently makes it much more difficult to recommend ingesting hydrochloric acid than do some other states. This comment is new since your last visit. Drew Wilson(user link) (https://www.freezenet.ca/)says: June 11, 2026 at 12:31 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391238) I covered this back in May (https://www.freezenet.ca/google-is-shoving-more-unwanted-ai-into-your-face/ ), but this has long been a worrying threat to my site. I’ve already seen my traffic take a considerable hit when AI Overview was first introduced. Went from having 500 – 750 views a day to 75-100 clicks per day when that hit. In the months since, the site has gradually recovered and getting anywhere between 800-1200 clicks per day likely thanks to several projects and experiments. If this rolls out fully, I’m probably going to see another massive hit to my site’s traffic. I’m hoping that this doesn’t actually roll out, but if it does, I’m terrified just how much traffic I’ll lose after all the hard work I went through to bring that traffic back. This comment is new since your last visit. Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 12:34 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391242) Anything to get around the link taxes This comment is new since your last visit. Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 1:25 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391311) Weakens their fair use argument This seems to significantly weaken their fair use argument for the unauthorized copying of information used to train their language models. I have thought that the companies training language models using others’ data have had a pretty decent fair use argument so far as they are certainly engaged in transformative uses of the data similar to what was successfully argued in the Google books case. But now that the same company that engaged in the copyright violations is changing some of their other practices to more directly compete with and undermine many of the copyright holders it seems like Google is undermining their fair use argument with respect to their impact on the market, one of the other traditional tests of a fair use argument. This comment is new since your last visit. Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 2:23 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391407) And this crap just reinforced why I stopped using google five plus years ago. This comment is new since your last visit. Arianity(profile) (https://www.techdirt.com/user/arianity/)says: June 11, 2026 at 2:42 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391436) This is really well written. Just wanted to say thanks, I think this is the best article I’ve read on TD covering one of the downsides of AI, and it does it front on and fully fleshed out, rather than as a side note. One other small downside I would add: because it’s used so much, there’s a huge cost pressure to use a cheap to serve model. This is why the existing Google search AI seems so bad compared to something like Claude- it’s effectively been lobotomized to keep costs down. I also wonder how we go about starting to try to fix this, it seems like the incentives are aligned against it. This comment is new since your last visit. Captain Spicy says: June 11, 2026 at 3:17 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391499) Maybe because I’m old or maybe because I’m autistic or both, but I loathe “natural language” interfaces. With the old Google search you could type “Streisand effect” inurl:Techdirt.com -“beach house” and get the exact results you were looking for. I very much do not want to have to type (or say) “Google, give me a list of articles about the Streisand effect on the techdirt website but don’t include the articles about Streisand’s beach house”. Jesus Christ, I got bored about halfway through typing that. This comment is new since your last visit. Anonymous Coward says: June 11, 2026 at 3:29 pm (https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/11/why-googles-new-ai-saturated-search-page-will-be-a-disaster/#comment-5391531) Most people will not bother, because the AI-generated results will be good enough Most people will not bother only because the answer is faster than clicking on the first link, skipping ads and newsletter popup, muting autoplay and scrolling to the start of the content. What’s great will good webpages is that there is a lot of information about any subject, it’s not just few sentences summarizing what people could naively ask but the whole introduction, chapters and conclusion filled with many things people visiting the website wouldn’t asked but will still find very interesting. AI chatbots are more the introduction in any Wikipedia article, answering when and why, but then there is also many chapters explaining how. For many questions, chatbots are neat since it give pretty relevance answers (sometimes wrong), but never tries to hint there is much more to learn about it. As my grandpa used to say: Don’t ask “why” but “how”. 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I think that’s a horrifying possibility but something we must prepare for. • BentFranklin:They will not be stopped. They flout all laws and regulations. • aabsurdity:They will be stopped. • They're simply choosing to escalate rather than retreat. It will not end well for them. • Leah Abram:In lighter stories • I just found out that there's fan-fiction of The Maltese Falcon that actually resolves the story with closure: https://www.amazon.com/Return-Ma...https://www.amazon.com/Return-Maltese-Falcon-Allan-Collins/ (https://www.amazon.com/Return-Maltese-Falcon-Allan-Collins/) • I The Public Domain! • BentFranklin:If Trump runs for a third term let's nominate Obama to run against him. • Leah Abram:[[gifv]https://tenor.com/view/do-it-star-wars-emperor-palpatine-palpatine-gif-7523581979863470761](https://tenor.com/view/do-it-star-wars-emperor-palpatine-palpatine-gif-7523581979863470761) • BentFranklin:Trump Tower Tehran: you heard it here first • tomacamot:I wish I hadn't • candescence:So the judge for that $10b IRS Trump case agreed to reopen it. • https://thehill.com/regulation/c...https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5902065-trump-irs-lawsuit-reopened/ (https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5902065-trump-irs-lawsuit-reopened/) • imatool13:I imagined all roads would lead to this anyway, just didn't assume this quickly. • John Roddy:Not quite • More like dragging the plaintiff back into court to explain • aabsurdity:Bluesky's new moderation system silencing entire accounts for posting adult content is pretty bleak. :( • https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc...https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:34ydeurdtukrpzjjelklch4y/post/3mn5p4mttas22 (https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:34ydeurdtukrpzjjelklch4y/post/3mn5p4mttas22)https://bsky.app/profile/teethgr...https://bsky.app/profile/teethgrip.bsky.social/post/3mn4kej3ctk2q (https://bsky.app/profile/teethgrip.bsky.social/post/3mn4kej3ctk2q) • John Roddy:All right, so who's going to be the one to write about Clarence Thomas's blog post in today's order list? • That last paragraph is just too perfect • intelati:What. What a cursed sentence/timeline • https://bsky.app/profile/mjsdc.b...https://bsky.app/profile/mjsdc.bsky.social/post/3mna7cn7lpc2j (https://bsky.app/profile/mjsdc.bsky.social/post/3mna7cn7lpc2j) • Oh. • aabsurdity:Thomas evidently spending so much time wearing his klan hood, nobody's had the heart to tell him he's black... • Mike Masnick:there was that biographer of thomas who says he's actually never given up his black radical past, but believes that the only way for Black radicalism to succeed is to remove any and all attempts to help the Black community so that they have to do it entirely on their own. A kind of accelerationist argument • John Roddy:This is why I tell people they're missing the point when they suggest that he's reaching for another Plessy v Fergusson • Nah. More like Prigg v Pennsylvania. • candescence:https://bsky.app/profile/justinb...https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mnaqomeegc26 (https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mnaqomeegc26) • Yeah, ngl this is legitimately an ass-backwards change that defeats the point of putting content filters in the hands of users and kinda punishes users for correctly marking posts as NSFW https://bsky.app/profile/chocomi...https://bsky.app/profile/chocomingo.bsky.social/post/3mmz2dycdjk2v (https://bsky.app/profile/chocomingo.bsky.social/post/3mmz2dycdjk2v) • Leah Abram:Agreed. Bluesky enshittified itself. • (I don't know if Mr. C. Doctorow would agree with my usage of that term, though) • John Roddy:They already started rolling it back • Leah Abram:Wait, what? BlueSky disenshittified themselves? • John Roddy:They seemed to be genuinely shocked by the backlash. • I don't understand how • Leah Abram:So Trumpy rolled back his $1.8B IRS scam and BlueSky walked back their enshittifying changes? • Am I feeling…pride? • [[gifv]https://klipy.com/gifs/what-nani-1](https://klipy.com/gifs/what-nani-1) • John Roddy:Mamdani suspended bedtimes • candescence:Must've been a well-intentioned change that the staff really did not think through • But they really should stop with these sudden changes without community input • John Roddy:That's what gets me. BlueSky is one of the very few startups that genuinely took moderation and trust& safety serious from day one • How did they walk into such an obvious backlash like this? • aabsurdity:There were reports that one of the people affected was given a 22 day timer, shown on posts. Because your entire post history dissolves into chastity after 22 days somehow, I guess? • Bluesky moderation has stepped on a few rakes, but this really scared the whole artist community, given all the NSFW and SFW creators whose lives and livelihoods were decimated by PayPal in recent months. • https://bsky.app/profile/safety....https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3mnb7cza5yc2g (https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3mnb7cza5yc2g) I really could do without the idea that the concept of humans having bodies is inherently harmful to people until they turn 18. • Generations of kids have been taught how to deal with being on fire, but nobody wants to have a talk with their kids about other people because it's icky. • benv0727:Today, I joined @IJM to call for the Senate to immediately hold a vote on my STOP CSAM Act—which advanced unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Children need protections from predators on the internet, and this bill is an essential first step. There is no more time for delay. • https://x.com/i/status/206185715...https://x.com/i/status/2061857154957468115 (https://x.com/i/status/2061857154957468115) • aabsurdity:If you're quoting someone, it's generally accepted that you will use quote marks to indicate this. • BentFranklin:Microsoft CEO: We’re moving from OS and apps to agents instead • https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/02/m...https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/02/microsoft-ceo-were-moving-from-os-and-apps-to-agents-instead/ (https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/02/microsoft-ceo-were-moving-from-os-and-apps-to-agents-instead/) • . • Mike Masnick:at some point i'm going to write something about this, but an agentic-first computing paradigm really would fuck up all the efforts to age gate the internet... so I get why people don't like it for the AI of it all, but there are some interesting side effects • John Roddy:I know it usually misses the point to investigate how it would break once it's been established that the break is inevitable. But hey, that's still fascinating to weirdos like me. • Also, Matt Taibbi is appealing his defamation loss to the 2nd Circus. • Get in, losers. We're going losing! • candescence:https://bsky.app/profile/yashara...https://bsky.app/profile/yasharali.bsky.social/post/3mndxlp273d2g (https://bsky.app/profile/yasharali.bsky.social/post/3mndxlp273d2g) • https://bsky.app/profile/justinb...https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mndxll2mvk2l (https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3mndxll2mvk2l) • Nick Bilton is a thin-skinned stooge. • Mike Masnick:meanwhile... [[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36jxNeV5L1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36jxNeV5L1Q) • aabsurdity:https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3...https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3fS5NyKzygU (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3fS5NyKzygU) • Seems to be a decent summary. • Leah Abram:I concur. • imatool13:@Mike Masnick with the prolifieration of Agents is MCP (mixed with skills) protocol above platform? Seems a whole lot of companies open themselves up to AI Agents more than just integrations, curious your thoughts. • BentFranklin:I didn't think we were ever going to get the Musk versus Zuckerberg slapfight we were promised, but now that we will have a cage right there, it would be wasteful not to use it at least a few more times before dismantling it. • aabsurdity:Especially now that Trump wants to keep it forever as a commemoration of his bestest and happiest birthday, like the Eiffel Tower. • intelati:What the [[article]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/03/trump-ufc-arena-white-house-claw-permanent/90387950007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/03/trump-ufc-arena-white-house-claw-permanent/90387950007/) I hate this timeline • aabsurdity:It's amazing how Trump does not, and never has, and never will, have any class whatsoever. He genuinely cannot see the difference between the engineering marvel of the Eiffel Tower, and a commonplace (though still a significant technical achievement in its way) lighting scaffold. They're both made of metal. • BentFranklin:How long until his ballroom guests mosey over after dinner to watch gladiators fight to the death with Trump having the final say with or ? • aabsurdity:I can't imagine he'd be interested. He'd have to be able to care if people other than himself are alive or dead. • intelati:Not this bout. The next one is a 50/50 shot. And increasing therein • BentFranklin:You know how mobsters will make you do a crime before they can trust you? So they will always have something on you? I think about that whenever someone says "I was just Epstein's lawyer," or broker, or anything significant. • John Roddy:I someone describe the BAM article as "climbing Mount Masnick" • And my brain immediately did the movie trailer guy voice for "from the makers of Driving Ms Daisy" • Leah Abram:Maybe it’s because of where I live but when I see “BAM” I think “Brooklyn Academy of Music” • aabsurdity:[[link]https://fxbsky.app/profile/presidentkelly.blacksky.app/post/3mnkf25iyjs2s](https://fxbsky.app/profile/presidentkelly.blacksky.app/post/3mnkf25iyjs2s)[[article]https://fxbsky.app/profile/yeti-detective.bsky.social/post/3mnkhrida222h](https://fxbsky.app/profile/yeti-detective.bsky.social/post/3mnkhrida222h) AI hiring screeners apparently retaining their rejection score for applicants across multiple different jobs, at all the companies they service, for nearly a year. So, get rejected for one job, basically you're unhireable by any company that also uses that tool, for any position, for the next 330 days. That's... Pretty dang bad if true... • BentFranklin:The Smart TV in Your Living Room Is a Node in the AI Scraping Economy • [[article]https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/](https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/) • Leah Abram:This is why Dumb TVs are a smart option! • I want a TV dumber than Pete Hegseth! • tomacamot:Or simply don't connect your TV to the Internet • candescence:Scott Pelley is now free to shit on his former bosses and tell the world how much of a propaganda rag CBS is becoming: https://youtu.be/ePqdmbgQ4BI?si=...https://youtu.be/ePqdmbgQ4BI?si=DZq7rY81Ur9IcKUt (https://youtu.be/ePqdmbgQ4BI?si=DZq7rY81Ur9IcKUt) • Quotes include "Bari Weiss Emailed my Boss and asked 'Can you make the protestors look more violent?'" and "Can you describe Renee Good as 'driving at the officer'?" • This is why you don't fire people who know where the bodies are buried. • aabsurdity:Someone said something today that I genuinely hadn't considered, which was the idea that this isn't an anti-journalism conservative deliberately torching a journalistic institution because the money they're spending doesn't mean anything any more, or that the death of CBS is simply advantageous, and instead that this is a project someone believes in and thinks it's going to work. And I have to admit that I didn't even see that as a possibility, but now that I have, that might make it worse. • Mike Masnick:Oh, they absolutely believe it's going to work. The Bari Weisses of the world believe fully that their view of the world has a silent majority behind them who were just waiting to have what The Free Press was delivering to the world... • aabsurdity:Genuinely baffling. • intelati:https://bsky.app/profile/cdelawa...https://bsky.app/profile/cdelawalla.bsky.social/post/3mnrigweehc2t (https://bsky.app/profile/cdelawalla.bsky.social/post/3mnrigweehc2t) • candescence:It looks like Microsoft and Sony's gaming divisions have almost entirely reverted back to exclusivity • Leah Abram:The golden age is over. This is like when Comedy Specials went from DRM-free video files to being included with streaming services • candescence:Sony's pulling back from single-player PC releases is a bit more questionable since low sales there are kinda self-inflicted due to late but overpriced releases, but the Xbox division has a new boss and it seems she's decided that multiplatform releases simply aren't working and are hurting the brand • timothygeigner:Trust me, the exclusivity thing is on my radar. I definitely have things to say about it. • Though why Microsoft won't just admit that they lost the console wars is beyond me. • John Roddy:My favorite was the clarification that the new Gears of War would be exclusive to Xbox. • And PC. • The ol' Ubisoft-style definition of exclusive. • aabsurdity:As a PC gamer... • BentFranklin:Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers • [[article]https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/](https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/) Become an Insider! 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