Matthew Prince (Hacker News, Slashdot):
The problem is whether you create content to sell ads, sell subscriptions, or just to know that people value what you’ve created, an AI-driven web doesn’t reward content creators the way that the old search-driven web did. And that means the deal that Google made to take content in exchange for sending you traffic just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Instead of being a fair trade, the web is being stripmined by AI crawlers with content creators seeing almost no traffic and therefore almost no value.
That changes today, July 1, what we’re calling Content Independence Day. Cloudflare, along with a majority of the world’s leading publishers and AI companies, is changing the default to block AI crawlers unless they pay creators for their content. That content is the fuel that powers AI engines, and so it’s only fair that content creators are compensated directly for it.
thaddeus:
This is pretty cool, but we’re also dangerously close to Cloudflare basically being the whole internet.
Thomas Claburn:
In a separate post, Cloudflare’s David Belson, head of data insight, and Sam Rhea, VP of product, published data illustrating the disparity between what AI crawlers take and the referral traffic they send back to websites.
During the period between June 19 and 26, 2025, for example, “Anthropic’s AI platform Claude made nearly 71,000 HTML page requests for every HTML page referral,” observe Belson and Rhea. We must note that these measures only track traffic from the Claude website, not the app, as the app does not emit a Referer: header. The same goes for the other AI vendors.
Manton Reece:
I’m concerned that this default goes too far. Cloudflare has enormous power to intercept web traffic, because they’ve effectively re-centralized DNS for so many websites. While Matthew’s reasons for doing this are good, it should still be an opt-in feature. The open web should by default be open.
[…]
Cloudflare has a series of blog posts today with more details. In one post, they outline how AI crawlers can use HTTP Signatures (similar to what ActivityPub uses) to identify themselves if they have a relationship with Cloudflare for making payments to web publishers. When enabled, Cloudflare will return an HTTP 402 “payment required” response. There’s a mechanism for crawlers to say how much they will pay or to accept the listed price.
[…]
I can also imagine a harmless bot accidentally getting mislabelled as an AI crawler. Cloudflare has significant control even though they aren’t even the ones hosting your web site. According to a companion press release today, Cloudflare proxies traffic for 20% of the web.
Previously:
Artificial Intelligence Business Cloudflare Web Web Crawlers
Thomas Claburn (Figma, Hacker News):
The company prospectus mentions AI more than 150 times, characterizing it both as a creative accelerant and a potential threat.
[…]
Back to Figma, whose prospectus says that as of the first three months of 2025 it has 13 million monthly active users.
For the year that ended on December 31, 2024, Figma reported revenue of $749 million, up 48 percent year-on-year from the prior year. And for the three months that ended March 31, 2025, the company reported revenue of $228 million, up 46 percent year-on-year.
[…]
Figma cautions that its own use of AI could make its software more complicated to maintain.
Previously:
Artificial Intelligence Business Figma Graphics Web
Bryson Thill (via Hacker News):
Fakespot’s technology revealed some eye-opening statistics. About 43% of the best-selling Amazon products had reviews that were unreliable or fabricated, according to a study by app company Circuit. The problem was even worse in certain categories. Clothing and jewelry led the pack with a staggering 88% of reviews deemed unreliable.
[…]
As Fakespot gained traction, investors took notice. In November 2020, the company raised $4 million in Series A funding, bringing their total funding to $7 million and signaling strong confidence in their mission to combat fake reviews.
Three years later, Mozilla acquired Fakespot, bringing the startup’s 13-person team into the Firefox family. Mozilla integrated Fakespot’s technology directly into Firefox as the “Mozilla Review Checker” feature, making it easier than ever for users to verify product reviews without installing separate extensions.
[…]
Mozilla couldn’t find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity, choosing to redirect resources to core Firefox features and AI-powered browser tools.
Previously:
Amazon Business eBay Fakespot Firefox History Mozilla Shopping Sunset Walmart Web
Joe Rossignol:
The first macOS Tahoe developer beta does not support the legacy FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 data-transfer standards, according to @NekoMichi on X, and a Reddit post. As a result, the first few iPod models and old external storage drives that rely on FireWire cannot be synced with or mounted on a Mac running the macOS Tahoe beta.
Unlike on macOS Sequoia and earlier versions, the first macOS Tahoe beta does not include a FireWire section in the System Settings app.
I’ve seen reports that FireWire support has been partially broken since macOS 12.3, anyway.
Mark Sokolovsky:
Take a fine comb and look through the latest developer beta, tell me if you find any mention of FireWire anywhere – not even System Profiler has it anymore. They’re saying on AppleInsider that even with a Thunderbolt Dock, it won’t let you connect any FW device to macOS.
[…]
Macs started carrying FireWire as early as 1997 as a BTO/CTO option, however, was not included onboard on any model until 1999. Even then, not all models carried it. The mid-2012 13″ non-retina MacBook Pro was the last model Mac to carry any sort of FireWire port.
USB continues to improve, but I just don’t think it’s ever been as reliable as FireWire was.
Jack Wellborn:
In honor of FireWire support presumably going away in macOS Tahoe, here’s pictures from when I connected my original iPod to my M1 MacBook Pro.
MacBook Pro to
Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter to
Thunderbolt 2 cable to
Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 2 adapter to
Firewire 2 cable to
External HD with FireWire 2 and FireWire 1 ports to
FireWire 1 cable to
iPod
Previously:
Cable FireWire iPod Mac macOS 12 Monterey macOS Tahoe 26 Sunset Thunderbolt
