Oct 5, 2026, 6:43 PMFor years, people found @cloudfour because the articles we shared or the talks we gave. Our peers would learn from what we wrote and then when a project came up at their company, they’d suggest working with us.
We liked sharing what we learned perhaps even more than we liked the project work that paid the bills. We’d write about whatever we were learning about. People would read it. We’d get more projects and then have more to write about. It was a virtuous cycle.
Oct 5, 2026, 6:44 PMBut AI has destroyed that. Inbound traffic has decreased. People don’t seem to be reading articles either because it is easier to ask AI for the answer or because it is impossible to find quality content on the web amongst all of the slop. Not to mention the death of many web conferences.
Oct 5, 2026, 6:45 PMI wonder if there is some space for education in the observations that @paul made about "the web inside the model is…now it is a year out of date and getting staler with every release" https://paul.kinlan.me/where-my-head-is-at-with-llms-and-the-web/
The way Google has attempted to address this is with Modern Web Guidance for LLMs (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/modern-web-guidance), but even if you use that, it is incumbent on the developer to know the latest web standards to make sure that the AI is _actually_ using them.
Oct 5, 2026, 6:45 PMIn the past, it was hard to convince the average web developer that there was an advantage to taking the time to stay on top of the latest web standards. Maybe that can change if the human in the loop is responsible for closing the gap between what a model knows and current browser capabilities.
Oct 5, 2026, 6:45 PMI don’t know for sure. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about as I try to find motivation to write about web technology again. I can’t tell if there is something real there or if I’m just trying to trick myself into doubling down on something that isn’t working because it is all I know.
Oct 5, 2026, 6:46 PMSpeaking of which, this should have probably been a blog post.