Conversation

Watching how delicate our internet stack is, in terms of implicit agreements about how websites interoperate and what happens when someone breaks one, is fascinating.

That is, OpenAI and Google start massive text scraping and want to charge for their services; Reddit, in anger and mismanagement, respond to breaking this "gentlemen's agreement" by announcing highly restrictive and expensive API to make sure their website isn't used as a content farm for other companies to profit from. This breaks the "gentlemen's agreement" that Reddit has with its users, which is that they'll plant your walled garden if you're not such a huge dick about it, and go dark in protest. This then breaks Google's search.

One (or two) bad actors, ignoring the actually-in-play rules and instead taking advantage for personal gain, has managed to deal a serious blow to the house of cards.