Yes.

Data hoarders are going to really come into their own after the corporations start trying to paywall information - pretty much no matter what it is, there’s somebody out there who has it squirreled away on a drive.

On the first point, I’m not sure. I definitely agree that left to their own devices the AIbros would just keep expanding and battling each other and chasing ever more pie in the sky. But I don’t think they’ll be left to themselves. I think the MBAs will move in and take over, and it’ll shift to standard corporate tactics of buyouts and mergers and bankruptcies and liquidations, and inevitable consolidation.

On the second, I agree. I think the web is actually going to effectively split into a commercial system of monolithic corporations and subscriptions and fixed hardware and a much less formal true web of small servers and self hosting and ad hoc networks.

Amusingly enough, The Economist illustrates what I believe to be the new business model that’s already waiting in the wings for the internet.

With admittedly no direct evidence to support it, my theory at the moment is that the “AI” players plan to consolidate and to continue to expand their reach and continue to gain users who rely on the “AI” for information rather than following links to the originals, then, once the "AI"s have killed enough clicks to collapse the ad model and drive the websites out of business (and give them the opportunity to buy up the remains of the businesses, and more importantly, their databases), they’ll put all of the information of which they’re now in sole possession behind paywalls.

Broadly, the goal is to apply the most lucrative if least popular business model to information ,- to monopolize ownership of it in order to sit back and collect money as rent-seeking parasites.

And this is why DOGE gutted the Office for Vehicle Automation Safety at the NHTSA.

To the degree that fascism has a distinctive economic system, one of its most notable qualities is a combination of private ownership of the means of producton with government/corporate partnership and a “revolving door” by which powerful individuals pass back and forth between business and political leadership positions.

If only it was that simple…