The technology behind LLMs is a 1000000x force multiplier for scammers, spammers, astroturfers. For your average person, it's like Spell Check 2.0.
A lot of companies are taking their existing AI-less SaaS products and are looking to upcharge $10-$50/month for reselling you a handful of "Open"AI API calls.
The free and open web is closing shop because they don't want to be scraped by LLM trainers. Or because Google algorithms allow a rando to buy a domain, put a "reword this article" LLM proxy over your website to steal all your organic traffic.
Can you recommend any directories/webrings in particular? I'm obviously looking back on things with rose-tinted glasses--I wish Google would just work properly like it used to--but I think it's a good way to break out of the big tech bubble.
I've seen a couple of them out there. Discoverability is utter trash but I think that's what you'd expect from super niche "welcome to my intersite!" type microcommunities