@nolan @simon

Even if we can get past the prompt injection issue, which as of today, it doesn't really seem to be possible...

A lot of things in this talk are wildly optimistic. The talk does not acknowledge that technology is designed and built only for the benefit of the large and wealthy organizations building it, all of the benefit for users is incidental.

I think the entire talk kind of hinges on this one central point which she made that "People wanting information to be free" are to blame for a lot of the issues with the web today (lack of micropayments). But wait. I thought it was the other way around where "the information wants to be free."

It doesn't really matter what I want. I get reality every time. And the reality is that there's no cost to copy information on a computer. As a matter of fact, there's no way to access information on a computer without copying it.

So I think this idea that we're going to replace all the tarpit crawler blockers with micropayments is incredibly optimistic.

Edit: oops hit the post button by accident before I was done typing.

Any system that can tell the difference between a web crawler that's going to copy your content and repeat it back without paying you, And a personal agent that's going to read your content once and present it to a human, It's going to fall to the same power dynamics of platforms that she rails against. (It sounded like she was talking about different prices for human users vs crawlers)

I like my proof of work bot deterrent because it seems like the price is acceptable for individuals but not acceptable for crawlers, even though it's always the same price, because I have no way to differentiate.

And this whole idea that you can own your data by having a local agent running on your phone... Don't make me laugh. Who on this planet can really say that they own their phone? That it does their bidding and no one else's? I don't really think of my phone as something that I "own", that I can store my sensitive data on, even though I use third-party Android ROMs to try to de-Google it.

I think she's missing the massive erosion of trust in technology and changing relationship that young people have with the internet.

Maybe the reason web traffic is declining is because young people just don't like the internet, Because it's become so toxic in ways that are practically hegemonic and unavoidable.