The Internet Is Becoming a Walled Garden

Adam Taylor
Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:12:03 +0000
Strategy

Remember when the web felt like it was open and maybe just a little bit free?

Think about how it used to work: You’d publish a post, search engines would crawl it, social feeds would share it, and people would actually land on your site. Your website’s pageviews rolled in as visitors arrived. Your analytics told a story you could follow.

That world we loved isn’t completely gone, but it is fading fast. Little by little, the open web is being fenced in and the open range is coming to a close. The goal now is to keep users inside platforms, not roaming the web.

This article is written for people who live with their CMS open on their desktop all day, who measure success in traffic and revenue, and who’d prefer not to play whack-a-mole with every algorithm update that comes down the pike.

?What Is the “Walled Garden” Internet?

If you’ve been on the internet long enough to remember dial-up tones, you saw this movie when it first hit the theaters. Early online life was AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy. They were pure classics. Each one a tidy garden with curated paths.

Then the web blew past those walls and everything started to explode. We obtained hyperlinks, blogs, RSS Feeds, and an ethos. In a nutshell: Information wants to be free, and distribution wants to be shared.

For roughly a decade and a half, that open model rewarded creators who made great stuff and kept their sites fast and usable. Search sent you qualified traffic. Social sent you bursts of attention. Email was the steady drumbeat. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a system you could learn.

Now we’re drifting back toward gardens with even higher hedges. The walls aren’t just paywalls. They’re algorithmic walls, identity walls, data walls, and AI walls.

Let’s unpack what’s driving this shift so you can better understand it.

?Recommendation Engines Prefer Their Own Backyard

TikTok didn’t invent recommendations, but it normalized a feed that never needs a link out. The next hit is already in front of you. Swipe. Repeat.

That design pattern is now everywhere. It’s grown from phone apps to reels, shorts, “for you” feeds, news aggregators, and even podcast apps. The goal is to keep users inside, because time in an app drives revenue. Yep, everything comes down to money.

Creators still get reach, but clicks are scarce.
It’s not that your content is “losing to the algorithm.” It’s that the algorithm’s goal has changed. It’s now to give users what they want without sending them away. Distribution exists, sure. However, access to it is now conditional and increasingly detached from the idea of a website visit.
?AI Turns Answers Into Destinations

Search used to be a map, but now it’s a destination. AI overviews, answer boxes, “people also ask,” and conversational results give instant satisfaction. Sure, it’s helpful for users, but tricky for anyone who has built a business on clicks.

Even when AI cites content, the behavior is completely different. There are fewer links cited which means there is far less curiosity to “go deeper.” It’s not a moral judgment, it’s a UX reality. The more helpful the answers get, the less people are going to navigate away to explore more or receive better answers.

?Monetization Losses for Publishers

Advertising alone has gotten harder with privacy changes, cookie deprecation, rising customer acquisition cost (CAC), and opaque reporting. So the industry did the rational thing: Ask the people who value your work the most to pay for it. Memberships, community tiers, exclusive access, and bundles have emerged.

However, a side effect is that more valuable content lives behind authentication walls, and the casual browser sees less of your best stuff. Nowadays, the open web finds itself starved of top-shelf work. And the hedge just added a few more inches to the top.

?Trust, Safety, and Brand Suitability

This is the least-discussed driver. Advertisers want “safe” inventory. Platforms want “quality” signals. News feeds want “reliable” sources. But when trust is measured by internal metrics and private scorecards, distribution starts to look like a velvet rope. You might be allowed in, but you also might not.

?Losing Algorithms or Access

Publishers aren’t losing so much to algorithms as they are to access.

The gatekeepers aren’t just deciding who gets distribution, they’re also going a step further and deciding how distribution works. And the “how” increasingly favors content that stays where it’s published, which is on the platform, instead of content that invites users to wander the open web.

If you’re a publisher or brand, you feel the symptoms:

Social reach is high, but referral traffic is low.

Search impressions look okay, but click-through rate (CTR) declines.

Paywalled work converts well, but discovery is harder.

Earned media hits move awareness, but not sessions.

Newsletter growth is strong, but those readers rarely browse beyond the article they opened.

?A Practical Strategy

This is where the instinct is to say “diversify channels.” However, that advice is like telling a marathoner to “hydrate.” Sure, it’s true, but it's not helpful.

Here’s a more concrete plan you can run next quarter with the team you already have in place.

Think “Content Particles,” Not Just Articles

An article is one container. Inside it are particles (parts of an article): the key take, a chart, a quote, a how-to guide, a stat line, a 20-second explainer, a three-image carousel. Each particle can live natively on a platform, pointing back to the source only when it truly earns that click.

The goal isn’t to tease the click. It’s to be useful where people already are, and then make the path home obvious for those who want more information.

On TikTok/YouTube Shorts: A single insight with a strong visual metaphor.

On LinkedIn: One data point and a save-worthy checklist.

On Threads: An opinionated opener and a one-graphic carousel.

On Apple News/Flipboard: The narrative arc with clean punctuation and minimal fluff.

On Your Site: The canonical, evergreen version with context, links, and structured data.

RebelMouse is built for this atomic approach. It’s not just about publishing to many places, but templating the particles so distribution isn’t a one-off scramble. Then you can make it repeatable.

Treat Distribution Like a Product

What gets measured gets shipped. Define owners for each major concept: search, social short video, social long form, aggregators, newsletters, and AI engines.

Give each owner a weekly ritual: What did we publish? Where did it resonate natively? Which particle performed? What got saved or shared? What earned a click and why?

Rituals beat heroics, and consistency compounds.

?Design Content That Satisfies

This sounds like heresy to people raised on pageviews, but it’s the move to make in this era. If your short video or carousel makes someone feel smarter in 30 seconds, you’ll get two outcomes:

1. Platforms will keep showing your work because it performs there the best.

2. The audience that does click will be self-selected superfans who will look at your future stuff.

Chasing empty clicks fights the platform and needs to be avoided. Delivering complete value wins the platform, and that means the right people show up downstream.

Once on site, welcome them with the next step, such as a related piece, a tool, a checklist, or a signup that actually matches what they came for so it becomes a win-win engagement for everyone involved.

Publish With Structure

AI summarizers and recommendation engines read content structure even more than they read the actual writing.

That means the following:

Clear headlines that state value.

H2s that map the argument.

Captions that stand alone.

Schema for articles, how-tos, FAQs, videos, and products.

Canonical rules that avoid duplicate confusion.

You’re not writing for robots. You’re formatting for machines so humans can find you and like what you write.

Rebalance Your KPIs

If you only track sessions, you’ll optimize for the wrong era.

Consider this tiered scorecard instead:

Platform-Native Metrics: saves, completions, replays, follows

On-Site Quality: engaged time, % of articles scrolled past 60%, recirculation

Relationship: email signups, member conversions, return readers within 30 days

Revenue: subscriber average revenue per user (ARPU), revenue per mille/1,000 (RPM) that include sponsorship + membership + commerce

Traffic still matters, so don’t think it doesn’t. However, loyalty beats volatility. And loyalty thrives when the on-platform experience is generous and not stingy.

Bundle Things

The individual paywall is hard. You’ll want to partner with peers to create bundles where a single membership unlocks multiple properties, events, or tools. It’s not just about shared revenue, it’s also about shared discovery. Your best future subscriber may find you inside someone else’s garden.

?What This Means for Content Teams

Here’s the most human part of all this: The emotional whiplash. Creators and editors didn’t sign up to chase ever-moving goalposts. Nobody loves putting together the “perfect” thread that performs and then experiences absolutely zero traffic. It can feel like creating value for everyone but yourself, and it’s very demoralizing and depressing.

A few mindset shifts that can help:

Publishing vs. Posting: Publishing is your canon, your owned site, your archives, your members, and your brand. Posting is how you distribute your particles, your experiments, and your tendrils. Do both, but don’t confuse them.

Generosity First: If a post does its job on a platform, that’s not a failure. Sure, it’s only a breadcrumb. But generosity earns repetition, and repetition earns habit. And habit earns subscriptions, which do matter.

Small Bets, Weekly: One new template a week. One experiment a week. One member-only perk a week. Micro improvements beat big bangs and are a win.

Protect Creative Time: Atomic distribution only works if the atoms are compelling. Carve protected hours for research, reporting, and actual writing.
?A Quick Word on AI

AI is not the villain here — closed loops are. Use AI where it helps you move faster, such as the following:

Draft alternate headlines and H2s.

Summarize a 1,500-word feature into a 20-second script.

Suggest schema and internal linking candidates.

Pull quotes and turn them into captioned snippets.

Cluster comments to surface what readers actually want next.

Then, have a human make the final call. The web doesn’t need more generic filler. It needs your angle, your reporting, and your taste.

?What to Do Right Now

Pick a flagship article you published in the last month that deserves more love.

Extract five particles, such as the pull quote, the chart, the counterintuitive stat, the how-to block, and the “what most people miss” paragraph.

Publish each natively on your top-two platforms with no link, just value. Use consistent branding and a simple call to action (CTA) to your newsletter.

On the article page, add an FAQ block, a members-only downloadable, and a bold “next read” that actually answers the follow-up question your post created.

Measure saves and signups for seven days. Don’t judge by sessions alone, but go the extra step.
?The Future of the Web

This is the part where we get nostalgic about RSS Feeds and blogs. We all miss when things were simple. However, the web didn’t become less magical. Instead it just became more managed.

Think of it this way: Once you accept that you’re publishing into gardens, you stop fighting the walls and start planting smarter:

Create work that thrives natively.

Invite the curious back to a site that respects their time.

Trade empty clicks for lasting relationships.

Use structure to help machines help people find you.

Make membership feel like a natural next step, not a turnstile.

Stop chasing clicks. Build logged-in audiences and recurring revenue with RebelMouse.