The Internet (As We Know It) Is Dead.
The Platforms Are Picking the Bones.
5 years ago, you searched Google, saw ten blue links, and decided which ones to click.
You visited the sites yourself, read the source, and judged the quality.
Today, most people don’t leave the platform.
TikTok answers questions with short, addictive videos tailored to your feed. AI tools like ChatGPT give you a neat, one-paragraph answer pulled from countless sources you can’t see.
Even Google is shifting — AI Overviews now sit above search results, summarizing content so you don’t need to click at all.
Search is no longer a list of places to go — it’s a finished product, personalized for you, and delivered without showing where it came from.
The open, clickable web is being replaced by closed systems that keep users, data, and attention inside.
The law still treats the Internet as if it’s the old link-based grid.
But the way people find and consume information has already changed.
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Before and After: The “Best Running Shoes” Test
2015:
You Google “best running shoes.” You get ten blue links: Runner’s World, Wirecutter, a blog you’ve never seen. You click through, read their reasoning, maybe bookmark the page. The publisher gets your visit, an ad view, maybe a sale. You know exactly who wrote it.
2025:
You type “best running shoes” into TikTok. You see a 22-second video — slow-motion jogger, shoe names flashing on screen, upbeat music. No link to the source.
Or you ask ChatGPT: one short paragraph naming three models, no way to see where it came from.
Or you Google it: an AI Overview at the top lists the same three models, before you’ve scrolled past a single ad.
The answer comes to you. The source stays hidden.
And in that gap, the legal and business rules that built the web are under pressure to adapt.
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How the New Gatekeepers Work
TikTok as the front desk – Gen Z’s search bar is inside TikTok. You get a finished clip, not a link. Every frame — video, music, logos — may have different rights owners, but the platform owns the view and the engagement.
Chatbots as private guides – ChatGPT, Baidu’s ERNIE Bot, Zhipu AI’s ChatGLM give you a combined answer from sources you can’t see. If it used your work without permission, you’d never know.
Google as both map and landlord – AI Overviews sit above search results and ads, summarizing other sites’ content. If the summary misstates your brand, there’s no clear party responsible.
Platforms keep the user, the data, and the revenue. The open web sees far less of the value.
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The Legal Shift
The old web always showed you the source. You knew who made the content, and you could credit it, license it, or enforce your rights if it was misused.
Now, AI results and social videos often give answers without any visible source. That breaks the model the law was built for:
Money stays with the platform — the clicks, data, and ad revenue never reach the creator.
No one’s clearly liable when a fact is wrong or a brand is misrepresented.
Rights can’t be enforced if you can’t see your content being used.
It’s not a future risk — it’s already in TikTok roundups, AI Overviews, and AI-generated media being shared globally.
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Strategic Moves
If you run (or use) a platform:
Secure explicit rights for training data — “public” does not mean “free to use.”
Build attribution and licensing into your product now; regulation will demand it later.
Decide who owns AI-generated content before the courts do it for you.
Design compliance for multiple jurisdictions from day one — the market is global.
If you own IP:
Audit where your content is already showing up in AI or social answers.
Choose a strategy: license or enforce — hesitation is expensive.
Protect your rights in the fastest-growing markets first.
Automate enforcement; manual monitoring will fail at scale.
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The Bottom Line
TikTok, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Chinese generative platforms have already changed how people get answers.
Billions of users now live in the gatekeeper Internet — getting information without ever clicking to the original source.
The law is still built for the old web, but the terrain has shifted.
The old Internet isn’t coming back. The winners will be those who protect their rights and grow their reach in the new era — and those moves start now.
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