📥 Hello, and greetings from the Central Office!
This week, we are sharing how we investigate complex issues and ensure that edge cases are fully understood, not ignored.
Mid to late January focused heavily on performance investigations and CI stability. We analyzed Media Library behavior related to PDA Gold, including Grid View actions, loading performance, and UI inconsistencies. These were confirmed as environment specific edge cases rather than systemic failures.
At the same time, we resolved multiple CircleCI build failures caused by dependency conflicts, AWS SDK issues, and submodule configurations. Composer dependencies were updated and build pipelines simplified.
Outcome: stronger CI reliability, reduced build friction, and higher release confidence. 🚀
The IAB Knows This: Major Publishers Already Signed Direct AI Deals
The Interactive Advertising Bureau just proposed legislation to stop AI companies from scraping publisher content without permission. The "AI Accountability for Publishers Act" would make it illegal to ignore robots.txt files and scrape content without compensation. It sounds reasonable until you realize the IAB represents the same publishers who've already signed lucrative licensing deals with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The New York Times, Associated Press, and Axel Springer didn't wait for legislation-they negotiated eight-figure contracts. This bill isn't about protecting publishers. It's about creating for publishers who missed the first wave of AI deals.
Fighting to Preserve Ad-Supported Pageviews is Blockbuster Suing Netflix for Mail Fraud
The IAB frames this as protecting "the free and open internet, which is funded by an ad-supported model." That model collapsed when Google's search traffic to publishers dropped 40% in 2024 according to Similarweb data. Tollbit documented nearly 40 APIs built specifically to bypass paywalls and feed AI training-all ignoring robots.txt files. The IAB's response? Propose legislation that makes ignoring robots.txt a legal violation based on "unjust enrichment" claims under common law. This sidesteps copyright's fair use defense, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem: AI companies don't need to visit your website anymore. They already trained on your content, and users get answers without clicking through.
The Real Question: What Infrastructure Do You Own When Search Traffic Disappears?
Publishers treating AI scraping as their primary threat are optimizing for the wrong metric. The issue isn't whether AI companies compensate you for training data-it's whether you have direct relationships with readers when AI answers replace search traffic. Consider the economics: A publisher earning $50 RPM from programmatic ads needs 20,000 pageviews to generate $1,000. That same publisher with 1,000 email subscribers paying $10/month generates $10,000 with zero dependence on search traffic, ad networks, or AI companies respecting robots.txt files. The IAB bill doesn't address this gap.
What Actually Works: Build Infrastructure That Compounds Without Platform Permission
WordPress site owners have the technical foundation to own their distribution infrastructure, but most configure it like a platform dependency. Every post optimized solely for Google is a bet that search traffic will return. It won't. The publishers surviving this transition run email lists, membership programs, and direct subscription models. They use their WordPress sites as owned infrastructure that captures contact information and builds recurring revenue. When Tollbit reports AI bots bypassing paywalls, the vulnerability isn't the paywall-it's publishers who never built a business model beyond ad-supported pageviews.
The IAB Bill Creates Legal Theater While Economics Shift Underneath
Even if the IAB's legislation passes, enforcement remains nearly impossible. Robots.txt files are requests, not technical barriers. AI companies operating outside U.S. jurisdiction ignore them completely. The bill's "unjust enrichment" framework might win individual lawsuits, but it doesn't change the underlying economics: AI companies already have your content, users already prefer AI answers to clicking through to websites, and ad-supported pageviews decline regardless of legal protections. Publishers waiting for legislation to restore 2019 traffic patterns are optimizing for a world that no longer exists.
Your Move: Do You Own Infrastructure That Works When Search Traffic Hits Zero?
The question isn't whether AI companies should compensate publishers for training data. The question is whether your business model survives when search traffic disappears entirely. If you're running a WordPress site optimized exclusively for SEO, you're building on rented land. If you're capturing emails, running membership programs, and generating recurring revenue from owned infrastructure, the IAB bill is irrelevant to your economics. What percentage of your revenue comes from sources you control versus platforms that can change algorithms overnight?
Google's crawl team files bugs directly against WordPress plugins wasting crawl budget. Action parameters from plugins like WooCommerce accounted for 25% of all crawl issues in 2025. Google filed bug reports directly with plugin developers-WooCommerce fixed it fast, but commercial calendar plugins ignored the outreach. Site owners running these plugins burn crawl budget without knowing it.
Vlogbrothers convert Complexly production company to nonprofit to escape acquisition pressure. Hank and John Green gave up personal equity to turn Complexly into a 501c3, rejecting multiple acquisition offers. The move protects educational channels like Crash Course from shareholder demands for premium subscriptions or LMS pivots. Donations now tax-deductible.
Publishers shift pitch from scale to relevance as AI Overviews hit 70% of top queries. People Inc. reports Google AI Overviews appear on 70% of their top queries, yet non-session revenue (events, social, AI licensing) grew 37% YoY while session-based revenue grew just 4%. InStyle's "The Intern" social show commands $500K-$700K sponsorships with near-zero production costs.
Microsoft expands AI content marketplace beyond Copilot to multiple LLM buyers. Microsoft's publisher marketplace moves past pilot phase with Business Insider, Vox, USA Today, People Inc, AP, Hearst, Condé Nast. Platform tests usage-based pricing models and provides publishers feedback loops on how content gets used by AI builders.
AI Mode drives 10% query increase as users shift from search sessions to decision sessions. Google's AI Mode integration with Gmail and Photos changes user behavior-people ask harder questions and delegate outcomes instead of explaining context. When effort drops, habits change first, then business models scramble to catch up.
While publishers fight AI companies over scraping, YouTube built a $60B business by making creator content discoverable and monetizable. The platform that makes content easier to find wins-not the one that locks it down.
Michael
Operator @WP Folio - now WP Defense Lab. Same Plugins. Different Name.