🇨🇦 Google ate the web, now AI is licking the plate

The funniest part is watching the gatekeepers discover monopolies are bad only after their own traffic gets vaporized. Google rolled out AI Mode, now topping one billion monthly users, while human traffic to some sites has dropped by up to 40 per cent, as reported. Translation: creators do the work, Silicon Valley scrapes it, repackages it, and keeps the money. The liberal fantasy of a free and open digital commons was always a toll road owned by California.

And Canada, as usual, is just cargo strapped to someone else’s empire. While Ottawa obsesses over DEI compliance and policing speech, the actual sovereignty issue is that our information ecosystem, ad revenue, search access and public discourse are being funneled through foreign platforms training machines on everyone’s labour for free. The web is no longer built for citizens or readers. It is being rebuilt for bots, monopolists and narrative managers. Trudeau-era Canada outsourced industry, borders and now cognition itself, then calls it innovation.

🍁 Maple Chronicles