For the past 30 years, surviving as an internet business meant getting people to click on your website. But AI is now making that thousands of times harder, says Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest internet networks. He makes the provocative case for a different deal — whereby tech companies actually pay people for creating content that feeds their AI models. (Recorded at TED2026 on April 16, 2026)
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#TED #TEDTalks #AI #Internet
@8PurpleSquirrels
September 3, 2026 at 11:24 am
Act unintelligent and we will be treated like it.
@francesbernard2445
September 3, 2026 at 11:24 am
People working in I.T. cannot always be the careful one when it comes to whom all the word we means there when it comes to caring. Like for example high school students too invited to see students at booths sometimes presenting their research efforts at their school open house when then they invite those students one at a time to help fix or maybe ‘fix’ his new fangled night club lighting system special effect equipment for disk jockeys to buy in addition to a sound system or whatever while she is wanting to mayvbw break into the computer engineering field too during her own studies in Occupational Therapy aspirations. How many more kinds of carreers are people going to come up with that isn’t allegedly too challenging when it comes to logic and math any time women apply for the job at entry level without them too having to sign up with the military.
@weswest8666
September 3, 2026 at 12:56 pm
Wut
@kim-ys2fs
September 3, 2026 at 5:34 pm
perfect example of nonsensical wordsalad!
@felipesuarez5041
September 3, 2026 at 11:31 am
Currently I do not watch these kind of videos of more than 5 minutes. I just ask Gemini to summarize it for me. Don’t even need to click it.
@partymarty6969
September 3, 2026 at 11:59 am
Wow 👎👍🤔 10:35
@partymarty6969
September 3, 2026 at 11:37 am
7:25 On this topic, when you got an iPod … you were still easily able to import your burnt/pirated CDs into your iPod for FREE. So in the end, it didn’t matter because I can still pirate music and import them into the iPod through iTunes. That’s why this business model “didn’t win”. On that note, video game consoles have strict backwards compatibility features and still to this day, gamers end up buying the same game more than once to keep playing the game on newer consoles. 7:45
@partymarty6969
September 3, 2026 at 11:52 am
And yes, gamers pay for the new console and the new versions of the game because of the better graphics, etc. HOWEVER, people who were buying iPods were not paying for better quality audio … they were paying for *portability.* The struggle of carrying your binder of CDs around everywhere was rough lol! And back then the market was flooded with generic/glitchy MP3 players. The iPod was beautiful and worked great! I’m writing this on an iPhone SE 2 … the foundation of this design dates back to the iPod Touch (the spirit of the iPod is still here to this day).
@AdvantestInc
September 3, 2026 at 11:43 am
The knock-on effect is what makes this urgent, because if creating content stops paying, the supply of good material that these models depend on eventually dries up too.
@mbcc-chief
September 3, 2026 at 11:51 am
AI companies should stop AI-scraping websites without consent – website owners should attract users on their own terms, not through AI
@Revilokab
September 3, 2026 at 11:53 am
Human nature = more more more.
@Aries-509
September 3, 2026 at 12:02 pm
6:33 this is why people don’t follow the footnotes and go beyond the AI answer. Cookies, pop up ads, sign up now to finish the article, navigation of a site that was built like an obstacle course… you just acknowledged it.
While I agree with the message, I think that the current e-commerce marketing strategy is also driving people away from clicking.
@krkaWR
September 3, 2026 at 12:45 pm
Yep, many of them deserve going out of business. If it wasn’t for AI it would gradually continue to get worse for many decades to come, we can only imagine what a website would be like in 2050. It’s amazing what people will accept as long as it is introduced gradually enough.
Not to say it won’t still happen, but at least there is hope now.
@amblinalong
September 3, 2026 at 12:50 pm
I only go to the search results beyond the AI answer if there is an indication I need to, which is often enough. I also enter my queries more than once, rephrasing, this can be an eye-opener. But if it is a complicated topic, I will love the AI input, then I will look over the sources for that input. The Google AI will always use the internet sources, not other sources we don’t know about, and it will always list the links to those sources, so I have absolutely no problem at all with the Google search engine AI.
@amzarnacht6710
September 3, 2026 at 7:00 pm
Drove me away two decades ago, a decade after I gave up on television of any sort – because commercials had become far too obnoxious.
I use every tool I can find to wipe out cookies, use numerous ad-blockers, simply block pages that give a mere snippet before asking for a sign-up – as well as sites that just lead you from one click to the next a snippet at a time.
I’ve even blocked youtube creators who _embed_ ads and sponsor blocks into their videos, no matter how much I like their stuff (unless they provide chapter breaks so I can bounce past the spamvert).
@aegisx1617
September 3, 2026 at 12:16 pm
I’m not sure I really agree with what Mathew, who even uses these social media sites anymore, wired, pcmag, cnet. All these articles and publishers just generate slop anyways with clickbaity tittles to pull us in. To be fair I think AI has taken a lot away from us, but things that we don’t want to do and given us something so precious that is.. Time. We don’t speed an hour searching for something anymore we spend 5 minutes. We saved 55 minutes of our time and day and suddenly we want to go back to longer searches? Makes no sense to me.
@AndogaSpock
September 3, 2026 at 12:25 pm
Hopefully AI can help everyone will be able to create their own custom apps with no ads or subscriptions.
@rebeccalouisewillson
September 3, 2026 at 12:33 pm
Lots of good and interesting points but Spotify is not a success story in supporting artists in the music industry.
@MisoNyah
September 3, 2026 at 12:44 pm
The holes are the most delicious parts! 🧀
@amblinalong
September 3, 2026 at 12:51 pm
If we continue insisting that all content must be paid for, there will not be any free information anywhere on the internet which was supposed to be a vast free library, if anyone is old enough to remember.
@askadia
September 3, 2026 at 1:56 pm
8:52 I don’t really think a guy making songs fulfilling unanswered Spotify queries is “amazing”. That’s consumism prostitution.
@user-kq2tc5hy5g
September 3, 2026 at 2:02 pm
why so angry? chill man
@makemoneyonlineaffiliatelink
September 3, 2026 at 2:08 pm
What happens when AI doesn’t just change the internet—but completely changes how we find information, create content, and decide what to trust? This TED talk raises some seriously important questions. 👀
@KevTheWiz11
September 3, 2026 at 2:57 pm
1. Musicians don’t make much off of music… Mentioning one goofball in Europe who sells crappy ideas from a Spotify search isn’t art and doesn’t prove anything
2. just because Google is winning the race doesn’t mean the other companies are more ethical. It just means they aren’t winning or wouldn’t be doing the same thing.
@alex-boke
September 3, 2026 at 3:14 pm
AI? Never heard of them
@doubleuenbeeeh
September 3, 2026 at 3:48 pm
“all you can eat music” 🤔
@chasmenear7130
September 3, 2026 at 4:57 pm
No. Ai companies should be BANNED.
@RadicalTrivia
September 3, 2026 at 6:14 pm
You lost me at Spotify. What is going on with these TED Talks nowadays..? Disappointing.
@erinhhhh
September 3, 2026 at 8:50 pm
AI sucks
@vinsanitynelson4943
September 3, 2026 at 8:53 pm
SATAN!!!