In this episode of Surprise—It’s Not a Toaster, hosts Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer rant (just a little) about the ever-growing paywall problem—because apparently, reading an article online now requires a monthly subscription, your firstborn child, and a secret handshake. While they fully support paying for quality content, they debate whether the web’s overreliance on paywalls is actually helping or just locking great content behind digital fortresses.
Next up: a “tech tip” on AI Tar Pits—the sneaky tools and techniques websites use to block AI models from scraping their content for free. Should AI get a free lunch, or is this just another front in the content wars?
Finally, the hosts put GenAI to the test—can it take a confusing technical need (like a hob/docking station) and translate it into plain English with an actually useful recommendation? Spoiler alert: AI might just be the ultimate tech translator we never knew we needed.
Tune in for rants, revelations, and a little AI-fueled magic!
Mentions from the Show:
- Study: Paywalls influence newspaper coverage
- Journalism’s excessive paywalls are leaving out young people. It’s going to kill the industry
- AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt
- One rebel’s malicious ‘tar pit’ trap is driving AI web-scrapers insane
- Chris Boyer on LinkedIn
