Spam as a Service: The Grim Evolution of "Search" and the Dismantling of B2C in Tech
SPAM is Mainstream
Search was meant to connect intent with answers. It now redirects intent toward monetisable outcomes—for someone else. This is why ChatGPT reached one billion searches 5.5 times faster than Google. Using AI for general searching is like driving a Ferrari to the corner shop: excessive, but necessary when traditional search no longer delivers useful results. With Google and most other platforms increasingly prioritizing profit over relevance, so-called “luxury” AI brands have become the only viable way to navigate the web.
In my experience, the most relevant answers rarely appear on the landing page. “Suggestions” are often peripheral, if not entirely irrelevant. Increasingly, results are paid placements—ads disguised as answers, hoping to catch someone vaguely resembling the original searcher. The search engine no longer serves the user; it sells access to them. Spam hasn’t disappeared—it’s been absorbed into the business model, repositioned as core infrastructure.
Users are voting with their clicks, migrating to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Mistral, and others. These tools feel clearer, cleaner, and more responsive. For now, they strive to match user needs. But this is a transitional phase. As these platforms mature, their business models will likely follow the same trajectory as those that dismantled the original B2C contract.
The Death of the Customer
Tech platforms once competed to meet user needs. Now, relevance is optional and attention is the currency. The shift was quiet but structural. The customer no longer is served what they want—they are supplied a feed. At some point, data about the user became more valuable than the user themselves. What began as a way to improve service now fuels more profitable outcomes by enabling higher-probability matches for suppliers. The user is incidental to the transaction.
The result is a double failure: user intent is subordinated, and suppliers are locked in a contest for top placement in systems optimized for throughput, not trust or value. Both sides face friction, noise, and diminishing returns—a classic symptom of lost competition.
Bait, Switch, and Regulatory Lag
Dominant platforms still present themselves as disruptive, consumer-focused innovators. In reality, they are incumbents operating at scale with ineffective oversight. Their early models were genuinely transformative—fast, targeted, and useful. That trust built dependence. Now, user intent has been inverted: assistance has become targeting, and the user has become a resource—parsed, priced, and pursued. Filters offer the appearance of control, but the underlying process is driven by supply-side priorities.
Extraction Over Innovation
Innovation has shifted from serving users to extracting value from them. This change outpaces regulatory response but unfolds slowly enough to avoid public alarm. In the gap between user expectation and enforcement, platforms have moved from delivering choice, to presenting curated options, to orchestrating the entire interaction and online experience.
These platforms could build something better. They choose not to. Precision, trust, and relevance are sidelined in favor of volume. Search increasingly promotes content farms and pay-to-play listings. Newsfeeds amplify outrage because it performs better than verification. None of this is accidental—it’s a commercial logic optimized for scale, not quality
AI Will Follow
AI still feels user-centred but we are actually in a narrow window which cannot last. Current AI tools appear to prioritise the user, but that is not their function. They are learning how to engage, respond, and shape interaction. Every prompt trains a future monetisation pathway. The interface—helpful, conversational, adaptive—is designed to extract data. It mirrors the early Google phase: friendly, useful, and increasingly indispensable. That utility will give way to the same structural incentives. Search changed. AI will too. The shift won’t be declared. It will be implemented.
The Commercial Inversion of B2C Tech
Consumer-led transactions in B2C tech are disappearing. The user’s intent is backgrounded; supplier exposure is the objective. Monetization itself isn’t the problem—it’s that the model depends on overriding user goals while maintaining the appearance of service. Spam-as-a-Service is not a malfunction, but a method. Where commerce once matched intent with offer and concluded with a fair exchange, we now have opacity, distortion, and asymmetry. The transaction is broken.
Reclaiming the Transaction
The transaction between users and platforms is fractured, but not irreparable. AI’s trajectory need not mirror search’s decline. By coupling user vigilance with enforceable standards, we can redirect innovation toward shared value—not extraction. The stakes extend beyond convenience: it’s a battle for the internet’s soul as a public good, not a privatized feed.
