tech
The machines are taking both the content and the readers at an industrial scale, too.
This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.
TL;DR
- The website TheNumbers.com, which provided film data for 30 years, has been destroyed by AI.
- AI is taking both content and readers at an industrial scale.
- Search engines no longer refer traffic to the site, and the site is being scraped.
- There is no defense against malicious actors who obtain data early to win bets on platforms like Polymarket.