AI’s Bandwidth Boom: How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Internet Usage

Thank you for explaining. Sounds like it would be wiser to go back to self hosting. Although perhaps stopping all bots would make sense. Or would we get dropped from the ineffective search engines?

The search engines are poor and inadequate. They are being choked.

Better and more complete searches in 2002 than today.

Look at utube. They hide content by forcing an exact url to find.

Similar for other engines.

All Grok does is scrape search engines.

You can be selective with what bots can access and what bots cannot. Just takes some homework to create that block/allow list. Probably just allow the biggest most popular search engine bots and block all the rest. But my whole complaint is that hosts are not helping with this issue when they absolutely should be. They should supply a filter to block AI as part of their service. It is also in their best interest too. While they might be making more money now from the AI issue, AI is going to put them completely out of business in the long run.

As for self hosting that is a double edged Sword. I don’t blame the FR for getting second party hosting. The server infrastructure maintenance hardware etc. is on the host. They can handle a lot more traffic capacity if needed. And they do have some tools they supply that are extremely helpful, especially security tools. So it has it’s advantages.

But at the same time it now looks like hosting is going to collaborate with the powers that be and start allowing backdoor access to databases and user details. I think Palantir is doing that right now by setting up total collection of everything from everywhere. That is when a private server would be an advantage. But you would still have to set up the bot controls and fight your own security problems.

I honestly can’t see an easy way to run from this mess as long as we continue to use the Top Level Domain and hosts do not help. Especially when it is a site that is open to the public out front. Ours is a closed private party and you have to log in to view it. This helps greatly because ALL access can be shut off to everyone including bots unless they are logged in as a trusted member.

The problem is you can block the bots but AI can still read and crawl the text on the public side. So it still ends up being a load. It would be just like massive human hits to the public side. If it is closed off from the public they cannot do this. See the situation they are putting us in? We have to pretty much shut down our own sites or sacrifice revenue, or give up the free advertising of normal search bots to get away from the AI. It is an extremely unfair business practice that needs to be addressed. And we haven’t even addressed the theft of copyrighted material AI is steal from domains yet.

I am now sure this is the plan. To destroy the open independent internet and independent hosting and make everyone dependent on their AI services. This will eliminate interaction and communication between humans. And it will give them complete control over information. They can literally alter reality and change history as they like. As you see they already are with search result control. The truth is, even though they advertise that they have AI available as an “option”, they have actually already implemented it as their main search protocol and are hiding this fact. They are not using regular old school webcrawlers anymore, it is all AI based collection and information control.

Like I say, it is a fun free toy now, but in the long run we are going to pay dearly. We are going to lose the open independent internet as we now know it. And if the hosting industry wants to continue to exist they better get on board now before it is too late. And it is time for domain owners to get proactive and put pressure on them.

This is probably one of the more important things that I have read about AI. I have not liked the way the internet has been acting with me. Now I know why.

Not a techie but have been around it and the net as a user since 1982 on apple2e.

Perhaps it is time for fr and others to close down access and go back to the old ring model?

“All Grok does is scrape search engines.”

Sorry, don’t know where you got that, but that is absolutely not true. It scrapes anything and everything on the net that is related to the query. THEY ALL DO. I see them hitting our domain directly all day long on my server analytics. They might claim that, but that is not true.

“Perhaps it is time for fr and others to close down access and go back to the old ring model?”

You are the first here who actually “gets it”! Absolutely! We are going to be forced to go underground and off the mainstream Top Level Domain layer (surface web). Back to similar to dialup days, the Ring and BBS days, when everyone hosted their own server. But it is much easier easier now.

Now days there are actually P2P local desktop clients that let you do this efficiently. They are both a secure browser and personal server both. So there is absolutely no need for any of the centralized TLD controls. They work directly client to client and do not even need a central server at all. You do not even have to get domain names or deal with any of that control current industry control.

But to build a secure trusted network would be no problem at all with one of these client protocols. I have been hollering for a couple years now. If we do not start looking into this option it is all going to be gone. No more human to human interaction at all.

And these have EXCELLENT military grade security. Everything is encrypted, they use TLS certificates, packages self destruct if they are tampered with in transit between end to end clients, connections are tunneled like a VPN by default, the IDs are so secure it would take a super computer ten years to hack an ID.

But here is the cool thing... They are modern and have modern features. They have email, personal display “walls” where you can post images and such as a profile page, file sharing, make group forums, personal blogs, group chat and private messaging with video and/or audio like a phone call, Etc. all from just a local desktop client.

Here is an example of just one of these protocols. But there are several client protocol options available:

https://retroshare.cc/

Thing is they are not in the current internet control/spy system... They are completely legal and utilize a different layer of the internet. They use the open “deep web”. Absolutely not to be confused with the “dark web”. They are not the same at all. The “dark web” is only the network used by the TOR browser. To be dark web it has to have a .onion address. Here is an explanation of the different layers:

https://www.everound.com/insights/understanding-the-layers-of-the-internet

Anyhow you are absolutely on the right track. Pretty soon (if not now) we are going to be forced to options like this if humans want to stay connected and keep each other sane...

Is there a way you could start a thread about this issue for discussion? One that takes from this thread and also links to it?

As a conversation starter. Pinging to the tech ping list of dayglored? And others?

A discussion about how to reformat would be important. This is a small but significant website and there are many others

Have you thought of providing seminars on how to walk through the mindset and change protocols?

Thank you for the compliment and respect for my knowledge. All the tech guys here, dayglored, Shadowace, and several others are already hip to it. We have discussed it here several times over the last few years. We all saw it coming because we work with tech. I have been sharing it here when threads warrant it many many times over the last several years. And I have written quite a few articles about it and shared them around the net and on our own forum. I have copied and pasted a few of them in threads here with all the supporting links.

But what I have found is I am pretty much wasting my time trying to warn folks. There are some psychological firewalls that are hard to crack. Just as an example observe the situation with Windows. Folks have locked out “change”. They will let themselves be abused by a product rather than even consider “Change” and use Linux. Then there is the “never happen here, you are crazy” mindset. I have dumped link lists here to prove the direction it is going and still no one would even take a few minutes to go and check them out. I guess they think that if they ignore it then the problem will just go away.

And then there is the “show off” element. Folks like to say “look at me!” in a public square. Close it up to the public so that I can’t show off? No WAY! That is why many are even here. Quite a few could care less about the “causes”. They are only here to boast and show off to the world how more intelligent they are than everyone else. Well there is Artificial Intelligence and Actual intelligence... lol So if the FR closed up the front from the public these will be the first go. Their spotlight will be gone... Like I say owning a domain and site is a double edged Sword right now and hard decisions and changes are going to have to be made.

But if I see the opportunity to share concepts I will still keep trying as I always have. I like having online friends. And for a whole lot of folks here we are all they got. There are a whole bunch of single lonely folks here who really do not have much else in their lives. The FR is pretty much their only connection to the outside world. THAT I really do care about... :)

So here we are, we are down to the wire and no one seems to care and become proactive. Tomorrow support for windows 10 expires, and from what I am seeing the latest update is killing Windows machines. Just happened to Paul R. And probably some we don’t even know about because they can’t get online anymore. The OS is slowly self-destructing to force everyone onto Win 11 or buy another computer and still no one will make a “change” to help themselves. The FR is going to lose a bunch of folks pretty soon. So it will be the same with this new issue with AI and the internet. They will just let it dwindle away rather than make the effort to make a change before it does.

I am glad you are talking to people here. FR has been important to me. And frankly so is clear free communication and connections.

I have a website i keep going that is essentially derelict.

I own a small business that is mostly computer based.

I run win 11. Word. My guy put me on proton and couldn’t get it to work with outlook.which used to juggle my 8 addresses nicely in past. I have tried for my last two computers to find someone who could put me on Linux and install open source Word and outlook lookalikes. I run brave and they seem to think I am wrong. I try to back up locally and I can’t get it to work.

Sorry I am whinging.

The guys I have talked to think I am nuts. They think MS is the answer... unless of course I want to do whatever apple is selling.

I have been seeing this train coming for a long time. I have suggested backing up and going to some sort of ring system. I sm not tech, but I know what I know.

Today I went to perform a search for a small site I searched for yesterday. I used startpage. It couldn’t find it. I even used the site’s exact name. I pulled up Google and the site was second in the list. Odd. Again another option glitch in navigation. I do miss the Magellan Ask Jeeves dogpile days.

It’s still web-crawling and delivering a conclusion based on consensus.

“It’s still web-crawling and delivering a conclusion based on consensus.”

True, but it is overloading the whole system and it is going to break it... And it might break it or good. Do you like the FR? Choose between the FR and AI. We will not have both. They are not going to let us have both.

Yeah, I said to stop using Grok.