Google is sure to tell us that the web is healthier than ever next week at IO, but out here on the streets everyone knows search traffic is collapsing — a phenomenon we’ve been calling Google Zero for years now. Well, here’s Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch on TBPN saying they are assuming all search traffic will be zero from now on. I’m just saying — give us credit for naming the concept, bro.
Web

The new features include AI podcasts, summaries, and quizzes based on what you’re browsing.

This new standard will allow people to set terms for how AI systems can use their likenesses and creative works.
Latest In Web
I’m Not a Robot has a simple premise: Finish a series of CAPTCHA to prove your humanity. But quickly, your usual click-a-box or identify-the-stop-sign gives way to Where’s Waldo, Tic-Tac-Toe, and word searches. I got stuck at level 17, and now I’m not sure if I actually am a human.
[Neal.fun]

A new wave of writers is porting their publications to rivals like Ghost and Beehiiv.
The Google Docs-style editing feature won’t appear in the upcoming WordPress 7.0 update, according to an announcement on Thursday. WordPress.org co-founder Matt Mullenweg cites concerns surrounding recurring bugs and memory efficiency, but plans to launch the feature in a future version of WordPress.
[Make WordPress Core]
An update to Google’s spam policies includes a new “malicious practice” that could get websites demoted: “Back button hijacking,” which is when a website stops users from leaving with their browser’s back button.
“Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site’s performance in Google Search results. To give site owners time to make any needed changes, we’re publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on June 15, 2026.”
Google is officially rolling out Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) to Windows users in Chrome 146. The new security feature cryptographically binds your login cookies to your device’s hardware. So, even if malware steals your browser cookies, they should be useless to remote hackers. MacOS support is coming soon.
The web hosting platform is working with Cloudflare to integrate the company’s AI Crawl Control tool, which lets publishers choose how web crawlers can access their site. Publishers can use the tool to permit or block bots, or ask them to pay.
Cloudflare began blocking AI crawlers by default last year.
A hacker took over an account belonging to the lead maintainer of the JavaScript library, Axios, which is used to handle HTTP requests, as reported by Cybernews. Security researchers found that versions 1.14.1 and 0.30.4 contained the script for a remote access trojan capable of giving hackers access to a user’s Windows, macOS, or Linux device.
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Developer Niels Leenheer decided to see if he could recreate the classic FPS using the language that describes webpage formatting. cssDOOM is a bit messy and definitely pushing the limits of what is possible using cascading style sheets, but it’s undeniably impressive.
You get a few seconds to sear a color into your brain. Then you have to find it again with a set of hue, saturation, and brightness sliders. Then you do it four more times. You can challenge yourself, your friends, or play against the entire world.
[Dialed]


The European Commission has preliminarily ruled that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos have insufficient measures in place to prevent minors from accessing their platforms. The porn sites are being advised to remedy the DSA breaches or risk facing fines:
“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content.”
A New Social’s Bridgy Fed tech has been linking microblog posts and accounts across services like Mastodon and Bluesky for a while, but now that ability applies to more macro content as well:
….users on platforms like Mastodon will see the announcement with the article attached, but platforms that support long-form like WordPress and Ghost will get the whole article, and both will be treated as the same post across the Fediverse.
By joining the beta test and connecting a Beehiiv account to AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, its paying customers can ask the chatbots for help with things like a grammar check on posts or insights on subscriber lists and specific performance details. Down the line, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) link will let people use AI chatbots to directly draft posts or send offers to particular groups of subscribers.
[Product Updates]
Leonid Radvinsky died at age 43 “after a long battle with cancer,” an OnlyFans spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. Radvinsky acquired Fenix International Limited, the parent company of the adult content platform, in 2018.
[The Wall Street Journal]

Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra says the intention of Grammarly’s expert review feature was not to impersonate real-life journalists. But he wouldn’t defend it.


A modest proposal from law professor Kate Klonick: acknowledge the failure of the ubiquitous “accept cookies” screen and abolish it posthaste:
Government can point to the highly visible cookie banner and declare its promise met in addressing data privacy issues. Industry, now that a compliance solution has been agreed on and normalized, prefers a known system with which they can easily comply and are unmotivated to push for a reform. While users, faced with endless click-throughs, learn not to assert their rights but to surrender them reflexively.
A new digital trading card game called Wikigacha lets you open packs of Wikipedia articles and have them battle each other. (My Pyramid of Neferirkare card lost against the Great Sea Interconnector, in case you were wondering.)
The game isn’t affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, but it could be a whole new way to fall down Wikipedia rabbit holes.
Kit apparently isn’t a red panda either, according to Mozilla, but its own creature “with attributes from both.” The browser developer says that Kit may appear in Firefox branding and “moments that are meant to feel welcoming or encouraging,” such as discovering new features or changing settings.

How Yahoo escaped its Verizon death spiral and became profitable again.
I love tools that let you make music based on a simple set of rules. Tim Holman created this one based on a YouTube video in which notes are triggered by a simple binary counter. Now if only I could get this out of Chrome and into my DAW.
[Musical Toys]




Three years ago Buzzfeed embraced AI, using it to generate articles and quiz responses. Turns out, nobody wants that. The company posted a loss of $57.3 million in 2025 and its stock dropped to just $0.70. But CEO Jonah Peretti is still planning to bring “new AI apps” to market. 🤦


Now users in Canada, New Zealand, and India can access Chrome’s built-in Gemini AI assistant, which has added support for more than 50 languages, including Spanish, French, Hindi, and Chinese.
Along with answering questions about what’s on your screen, Gemini in Chrome can help you do things like send messages in Gmail, create a table comparing products in your tabs, and remix images you see online.



Jeremy Wacksman on affordability, AI in listings, and the future of real estate.

The former Complexly owner lets loose on YouTube, AI, and why he turned his educational company into a nonprofit.
In an article for Techdirt, Wayback Machine director Mark Graham raises concerns about the impact of publications preventing the site from archiving their content due to AI scraping:
What concerns me most is the unintended consequence of these blocks. When libraries are blocked from archiving the web, the public loses access to history. Journalists lose tools for accountability. Researchers lose evidence. The web becomes more fragile and more fragmented, and history becomes easier to rewrite.


















