How the Web Was Lost

James Gleick · 4 Dec 2025

The piece opens with

The rush to AI seems to be repeating the web's pathologies: devaluing workers and creators, closed standards, overheated marketing and concentrated power.

Their wordsSo far, the rush to AI seems to be embracing the same pathologies: deprecation of workers and creators; secretive closed standards; overheated marketing; and consolidation of power.

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
The rush to AI seems to be repeating the web's pathologies: devaluing workers and creators, closed standards, overheated marketing and concentrated power.

Their wordsSo far, the rush to AI seems to be embracing the same pathologies: deprecation of workers and creators; secretive closed standards; overheated marketing; and consolidation of power.
Our reading
The European Union's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act are a plausible blueprint for reining in the tech giants.

Their wordsThe European Union, whose governments are not in thrall to the mostly American tech giants, has provided a plausible blueprint with its Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.

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