Scrolling through my Google News feed today, a headline stopped me cold: “12-Year-Old Secur es ‘Zuck.net’ and Is Paid $1 Million and a Free VR Headset.”
The source? A user-generated site called Vocal.media—a platform that it seems, lets just about anyone post “news.” Google syndicates it, so it popped into my feed. Whether or not this particular story is true (it seems more like fiction and I could find no corroboration), it highlights a bigger issue: we are entering an age where AI and automation are flooding the internet with content that looks like news but isn’t.
Why Domains Still Matter in an AI-Fueled Media World
And when that happens often enough, people stop trusting the channel. That’s the real danger of AI: it doesn’t just generate words, it can erode credibility.
When Channels Get Abused
We’ve seen this movie before. Telemarketing was once a legitimate sales channel. But after decades of relentless abuse, most of us don’t answer calls from numbers we don’t recognize. At my in-laws’ house last weekend, their phone rang over ten times in one afternoon—they didn’t even bother looking at the screen. That’s what happens when a channel gets poisoned: people tune it out.
AI risks doing the same thing to news feeds. When junk is mixed with truth, trust collapses.
The Case for Domains
This is why domain names remain essential. If I want reliable information about domain sales, I don’t rely on whatever Google feeds me. I type in trusted outlets like DNJournal.com, NameBio.com, or DomainNameWire.com. The domain itself becomes a marker of credibility.
The same logic applies to email. Phishing thrives because people click on links in a rush. The best defense? Don’t click—type. Teaching people to type in domains rather than follow links is one of the simplest, most effective cybersecurity habits we can pass on.
QR codes make the problem worse. Fraudsters can print & paste a malicious QR code sticker right over a legitimate one, and nobody can tell by looking. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes a major scandal. That’s why I rarely use them—they’re too easy to exploit.
This isn’t to say everything is hopeless. Trusted outlets and domain-based journalism are still alive and well. But the responsibility is shifting to readers: question feeds, resist blind clicks, and type in domains you know.
In the end, the defense against fraud, phishing, and misinformation isn’t complicated:
Don’t just trust the channel. Trust the domain..
