- An End to AI’s ‘Free Ride’?
- Chapter 1: The Silent Crisis – AI Grows by “Eating” Your Content
- Chapter 2: The Counter-Attack – Building ‘Tollgates’ on the Web
- Chapter 2.5: The Core of the Problem – Examples and Data
- The Big Picture at a Glance
- Chapter 3: The Showdown! Fastly/TollBit Alliance vs. The Cloudflare Empire
- Chapter 4: A Guide for Businesses – Implementing a ‘Tollgate’
- Chapter 5: A Quick Detour – What is a CDN?
- Chapter 6: The Biggest Challenge – What About Individual Bloggers?
- Chapter 7: Future Forecast – Will the ‘Tollgates’ Open for Individual Creators?
An End to AI’s ‘Free Ride’?
The ‘Tollgate War’ for the Future of the Web
Updated: July 26, 2025
Chapter 1: The Silent Crisis – AI Grows by “Eating” Your Content
Whether you’re a blogger or a corporate communications manager, we are all content creators. We invest time and money to produce information for our human readers. In return, we’ve traditionally received ad revenue and site traffic.
However, AI agents (like `GPTBot` and `ClaudeBot`) don’t play by these rules.
- They don’t click ads: Zero ad revenue.
- They don’t become fans: No repeat visits.
- They summarize information: Users no longer need to visit the original site.
As a result, site owners are left bearing server costs while the value of their content is siphoned off by AI. This imbalanced relationship has become a silent crisis, threatening the entire web ecosystem from beneath the surface.
Chapter 2: The Counter-Attack – Building ‘Tollgates’ on the Web
In response to this crisis, the giants who manage the web’s traffic and security have stepped in. They’ve proposed a simple yet revolutionary solution: creating **web-based tollbooths** that require AI agents to pay for the content they use.
And now, a battle for supremacy in this new market is heating up between two major powers.
Chapter 2.5: The Core of the Problem – Examples and Data
A symbolic player in this issue is the “answer engine,” like **Perplexity AI**. Instead of returning a list of links like traditional search engines, it summarizes information from across the web to generate a direct “answer.” This is highly convenient but generates almost no traffic for the original source sites.
This situation is illustrated by the “**crawl-to-referral ratio**”—the ratio of how many times an AI reads a site’s information (crawl) versus how many times it sends readers back to that site (referral). With the rise of AI, this ratio has deteriorated sharply, highlighting a structure where creator contributions go unrewarded.
The Big Picture at a Glance
🤖
Problem: AI’s Free Lunch
No compensation for site owners
🚧
Solution: The ‘Tollgate’ Arrives
A system to charge for AI access
The Players: A Clash of Titans
🤝
Fastly/TollBit
Alliance
VS
🏰
The Cloudflare
Empire
💰
Challenge: High Costs
Currently for enterprises only ($1,000s+/mo)
💡
Future: Hope for Individuals
Hopes for plugins and lower prices
Chapter 3: The Showdown! Fastly/TollBit Alliance vs. The Cloudflare Empire
🤝 Fastly / TollBit Alliance
Strategy
A partnership model between CDN giant “Fastly” and monetization startup “TollBit.”
Division of Labor
Fastly: Provides the highway (CDN) and checkpoints (bot detection).
TollBit: Operates the tollbooth (Paywall) and handles collection/distribution.
Ideology
Experts collaborating to provide the best service. Aims to become a “neutral” industry standard that can partner with other CDNs in the future.
🏰 The Cloudflare Empire
Strategy
A vertically integrated model that handles everything from CDN to security and monetization in-house.
Division of Labor
Cloudflare: Manages the construction and operation of the highway, checkpoints, and tollbooths all by itself.
Ideology
Users should be able to manage everything from a single platform. A seamless experience is paramount.
This battle is a proxy war over ideology and standardization, determining whether the web’s future infrastructure will be an “open alliance” or a “conveniently integrated” one.
Chapter 4: A Guide for Businesses – Implementing a ‘Tollgate’
How can you implement this new system for your own media? Here’s a summary of the services from both camps and their approximate costs.
| Faction | Service Name | Official Website | Est. Budget (Monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fastly/TollBit Alliance | TollBit & Fastly Next-Gen WAF |
TollBit Fastly Sales |
$1,000s+ |
| The Cloudflare Empire | Cloudflare Bot Management | Enterprise Plan Inquiry | $1,000s+ |
Why so expensive?
These services process vast amounts of global traffic in real-time and provide advanced bot detection and security features. The high-performance infrastructure and R&D required incur enormous costs, leading to enterprise-level pricing for now.
Chapter 5: A Quick Detour – What is a CDN?
For those wondering, “What’s a CDN anyway?” Don’t worry, it’s simple. A CDN is a service that lets you store copies of your site’s data in **”convenience stores” located all over the world**.
User
(Hokkaido)
Factory
(Tokyo)
Store
Store
Store
Chapter 6: The Biggest Challenge – What About Individual Bloggers?
Thousands of dollars per month. Seeing this figure, many individual bloggers and small site owners must have thought, “This has nothing to do with me.”
And they’re right. The current solutions are out of reach for the very individual creators who are most affected by content “free riding.” This is the greatest challenge facing this new ecosystem.
Chapter 7: Future Forecast – Will the ‘Tollgates’ Open for Individual Creators?
So, is there no solution for individual creators? I predict that, **in the long run, services for individuals will certainly emerge**. However, the future may not be a single path.
- Democratization of the ‘Tollgate’: Lightweight WordPress plugins might appear, allowing users to connect to monetization systems without expensive CDN contracts, based on a “free to register, revenue share” model. Or, it could be offered cheaply as a standard feature by hosting services.
- The Rise of Direct Licensing: A trend of major media outlets (e.g., Reddit) making direct content licensing deals with AI companies (e.g., Google) is also emerging. Negotiating individually, without a “tollgate,” will be another option.
- Price Reduction Through Competition: As the competition between Fastly and Cloudflare intensifies, more affordable plans may become available, making them accessible to individuals.
The vast majority of content on the web is made up of our individual voices. For AI to achieve truly diverse intelligence, it cannot ignore the value of this “long tail.” That’s why I believe a future where creators receive fair compensation and can continue to produce high-quality content is inevitable.
This “tollgate war” has just begun. Its outcome is deeply connected to the future of every one of us who believes in the value of content.
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