# **Bending Spoons and the AOL Playbook: How ‘Zombie’ Internet Brands Are Being Weaponized for AI**

**By Maria Rodriguez**
*Investigative Journalist, Ethics & Technology*

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## **1. Introduction: The Undead Internet Rises Again**

In October 2023, a little-known Italian app developer called **Bending Spoons** made a surprising move: it acquired **AOL**, the once-dominant internet portal, from Verizon for an undisclosed sum [1]. The deal barely registered in mainstream tech coverage—after all, AOL had long been a relic, its dial-up screech a distant memory in the era of TikTok and Threads.

But the acquisition wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about **data**.

Bending Spoons, a company best known for mobile apps like *Splice* and *Evernote* (which it also acquired in 2022), had just secured a **goldmine of unstructured text, user-generated content, and web archives**—exactly the kind of material that powers today’s **large language models (LLMs)**. AOL’s trove included **decades of chat logs, forum posts, news articles, and even defunct services like AIM (AOL Instant Messenger)**, all of which could be repurposed for **AI training, ad-targeting, or resold in the shadowy data brokerage market** [1].

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past two years, a quiet but aggressive market has emerged for "zombie" internet brands**—once-giant platforms like **Yahoo, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista**—that now serve as **AI training data farms and ad-tech zombies**. Call it "brand necromancy": the practice of resurrecting dead or dying digital properties not for their user base, but for their **data corpses**.

As **copyright lawsuits** (like *The New York Times v. OpenAI*) choke off traditional AI training data pipelines, these undead brands are becoming **the new frontier of unregulated data extraction**. And Bending Spoons’ AOL playbook is just the beginning.

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## **2. Context: The Rise of the Zombie Internet**

### **2.1 The First Wave: Web 1.0’s Fall and the Data Graveyard**
The early 2000s marked the **death of the portal era**. AOL, Yahoo, Lycos, and AltaVista—once the gatekeepers of the internet—collapsed under the weight of **Google’s search dominance, social media’s rise, and the shift to mobile**. By 2010, most were **acquired, stripped for parts, or left to rot** in corporate limbo.

But their **servers never fully died**. Behind the scenes, these brands retained:
- **Petabytes of user-generated content** (forums, blogs, chat logs)
- **Archived web crawls** (AOL’s 2004 search data leak was just the tip of the iceberg)
- **Defunct but preserved services** (AIM logs, Geocities backups, Yahoo Groups archives)
- **Copyrighted but orphaned media** (news articles, images, and videos with unclear ownership)

For years, this data sat dormant—**too old to be useful for modern ad-tech, too messy to monetize**. Then came **AI**.

### **2.2 The AI Gold Rush and the Scramble for Training Data**
By 2022, the **AI training data crisis** was in full swing. Companies like **OpenAI, Meta, and Google** had scraped the **public web**—but the well was running dry. Key problems emerged:
- **Copyright lawsuits**: Publishers like *The New York Times*, *Getty Images*, and *The Authors Guild* sued AI firms for **unlicensed use of copyrighted material** in training datasets [2].
- **Data exhaustion**: The "high-quality" text corpus of the internet (Wikipedia, Reddit, books) had been **overused**, leading to **model collapse**—where AI starts regurgitating its own outputs [3].
- **Regulatory crackdowns**: The **EU AI Act** and **US state privacy laws** began restricting **unconsented data scraping** [4].

Enter: **the zombie brands**.

### **2.3 The Bending Spoons Model: How to Buy a Data Cemetery**
Bending Spoons’ acquisition of AOL wasn’t its first foray into **digital archaeology**. The company had already:
- **Acquired Evernote (2022)**: Gaining access to **millions of user notes, PDFs, and web clippings**—a treasure trove of **long-form, structured text** ideal for AI fine-tuning [5].
- **Purchased 30+ other apps**: Many with **dormant but data-rich user bases** (e.g., *Remini*, *Splice*) [6].

With AOL, Bending Spoons didn’t just buy a brand—it bought:
| **Asset**               | **Estimated Data Volume** | **Potential AI Use Case** |
|-------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------------|
| AIM chat logs (1997-2017) | [DATA NEEDED] TBs | Conversational AI training |
| AOL News archives (1990s-2010s) | 500M+ articles [7] | News summarization models |
| HuffPost (acquired by AOL in 2011) | 1M+ articles [8] | Political bias training |
| MapQuest data | [DATA NEEDED] | Geospatial AI models |
| Compuserve forums | 20M+ posts [9] | Historical language patterns |

**Key insight**: These weren’t **active products**—they were **data mines**. And Bending Spoons wasn’t alone.

### **2.4 The Zombie Brand Land Grab**
Since 2021, a **shadow market** has emerged for **dead or dying internet properties**, with buyers ranging from **AI startups to private equity firms**. Notable examples:

| **Acquirer**       | **Zombie Brand** | **Year** | **Likely Motivation** |
|--------------------|------------------|----------|-----------------------|
| **Bending Spoons** | AOL              | 2023     | AI training data      |
| **Apollo Global**  | Yahoo             | 2017     | Ad-tech & data brokering |
| **Barry Diller’s IAC** | Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) | 2010 | Search data repurposing |
| **Private Equity** | Lycos             | 2020     | Domain parking & data sales |
| **Alibaba**        | Opera (browser)   | 2016     | User behavior datasets |

**Why now?**
- **Cheap acquisitions**: Yahoo sold for **$4.8B in 2017**—a fraction of its 2000 peak ($125B) [10].
- **Legal gray areas**: Many zombie brands have **orphaned copyrights** (e.g., Geocities pages with no clear owner).
- **AI’s insatiable hunger**: A single LLM like **GPT-4** requires **~100 trillion tokens** of training data [11]. The zombie web offers **trillions more**.

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## **3. Analysis: How Zombie Brands Feed the AI Machine**

### **3.1 The Data Laundering Pipeline**
The process of turning a dead brand into AI training data follows a **three-step playbook**:

1. **Acquire the Brand**
   - Target **distressed or abandoned properties** (e.g., AOL, Yahoo).
   - Use **shell companies or private equity** to obscure true intent.

2. **Extract the Data**
   - **Scrape internal archives** (e.g., AOL’s AIM logs, Yahoo Groups).
   - **Revive dormant services** to harvest new user data (e.g., Bending Spoons’ Evernote updates).
   - **Repurpose orphaned content** (e.g., Geocities pages, old blogs).

3. **Monetize via AI or Ad-Tech**
   - **Sell datasets** to AI labs (e.g., **Common Crawl**, **LAION**).
   - **Train proprietary models** (e.g., Bending Spoons’ rumored LLM [12]).
   - **Feed ad-targeting engines** (e.g., Yahoo’s data used by **Verizon Media**).

**Case Study: AOL’s AIM Logs**
- **What’s there**: **20 years of chat logs** (1997-2017), including **private conversations** of millions.
- **Legal status**: AOL’s **2006 terms of service** claimed perpetual rights to user data—but **no explicit AI consent** [13].
- **AI value**: **Natural conversational data** (rare in public datasets) for **chatbot training**.

### **3.2 The Ethical Landmines**
The zombie brand economy operates in **three major ethical gray zones**:

#### **A. Consent Violations**
- **Original users never agreed** to their data being used for AI.
  - Example: **AIM users in 2003** didn’t sign up for their chats to train **Meta’s Llama 3** in 2024.
- **Retroactive TOS changes**: Companies like Bending Spoons can **update privacy policies** to claim rights over old data [14].

#### **B. Copyright Exploitation**
- **Orphaned works**: Much of the zombie web’s content has **no clear copyright holder** (e.g., abandoned Geocities sites).
- "Fair use" loopholes**: AI firms argue **transformative use**, but courts are split [15].
- **Mass scraping**: Tools like **Common Crawl** include **zombie brand data** without attribution [16].

#### **C. Ad-Tech Necromancy**
- **Reanimated tracking**: Old cookies and user IDs (e.g., from **Yahoo’s 2000s ad network**) can be **matched to modern profiles**.
- **Dark pattern revival**: Some zombie brands **reactivate old accounts** to harvest fresh data (e.g., **Tumblr’s 2023 "log back in" emails**) [17].

### **3.3 The Players: Who’s Profiting?**
The zombie brand ecosystem involves **four key actors**:

1. **The Acquirers** (Bending Spoons, Apollo Global)
   - Buy brands for **data, not users**.
   - Often **foreign entities** (e.g., Bending Spoons is Italian), complicating US/EU regulation.

2. **The Data Brokers** (LiveRamp, Neustar)
   - **Resell zombie datasets** to AI firms.
   - Example: **Yahoo’s user graphs** were sold to **Verizon Media**, then **repackaged for ad-targeting** [18].

3. **The AI Labs** (OpenAI, Meta, Mistral)
   - **Indirectly benefit** from zombie data via **third-party datasets** (e.g., **C4, RefinedWeb**).
   - **Deny knowledge** of origins ("We use publicly available data").

4. **The Regulators (or Lack Thereof)**
   - **FTC**: Has fined companies for **deceptive data practices** (e.g., **Everalbum’s 2021 settlement**) but hasn’t touched zombie brands [19].
   - **EU GDPR**: **Right to erasure** conflicts with **AI training exemptions** [20].
   - **US Copyright Office**: Still debating **AI training as fair use** [21].

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## **4. Implications: Why This Matters**

### **4.1 The Death of Digital Forgetting**
The zombie brand economy **erases the concept of data expiration**.
- **Your old AIM chats?** Now part of an AI’s knowledge base.
- **Your 2005 LiveJournal posts?** Scraped into a dataset sold to Meta.
- **Your abandoned MySpace profile?** Resurrected for ad-targeting.

**Result**: **The internet never forgets—because someone is always digging up the corpses.**

### **4.2 The AI Training Data Arms Race**
As **high-quality data becomes scarce**, zombie brands are the **new oil fields**.
- **OpenAI’s GPT-5** will need **10x more data** than GPT-4 [22].
- **Startups like Mistral and Anthropic** are **quietly buying old datasets** [23].
- **China’s AI firms** (e.g., **Baidu, Alibaba**) are **hoarding domestic zombie data** (e.g., **Sina Weibo archives**) [24].

**Prediction**: By 2025, **80% of new AI training data will come from pre-2010 sources** [DATA NEEDED].

### **4.3 The Legal Time Bomb**
Three pending cases could **blow up the zombie brand economy**:

1. **The New York Times v. OpenAI/Microsoft**
   - If courts rule **AI training = copyright violation**, zombie data becomes **toxic assets** [25].
2. **GDPR "Right to Erasure" Challenges**
   - EU users are **demanding old data be deleted**—but zombie brands **ignore requests** [26].
3. **FTC Crackdown on Dark Patterns**
   - If **retroactive TOS changes** are deemed **deceptive**, acquisitions like Bending Spoons’ could be **unwound** [27].

### **4.4 The Ad-Tech Zombie Apocalypse**
Zombie brands aren’t just for AI—they’re **reviving old tracking methods**:
- **Cookie matching**: Yahoo’s 2000s user IDs are being **linked to modern ad profiles** [28].
- **Lookalike audiences**: AOL’s old demographic data is used to **target new users** [29].
- **Fraudulent engagement**: Some zombie sites (e.g., **old Lycos properties**) are **filled with AI-generated content** to **boost ad revenue** [30].

**Result**: **The ad-tech industry is feeding on the carcasses of Web 1.0.**

---

## **5. Conclusion: Can We Bury the Zombie Internet?**

The resurrection of AOL, Yahoo, and their kin isn’t just a **business strategy**—it’s a **cultural and ethical failure**. The internet was supposed to **forget**. Instead, it’s being **exhumed, repackaged, and sold** to the highest bidder.

### **5.1 What Can Be Done?**
1. **Regulatory Action**
   - **FTC should classify zombie brand acquisitions as "data mergers" (requiring **antitrust review**).
   - **EU should enforce GDPR’s "right to erasure" on **legacy datasets**.
   - **Copyright Office must clarify AI training rules**—especially for **orphaned works**.

2. **Technical Solutions**
   - **AI firms should disclose training data sources** (like **Google’s Dataset Nutrition Labels**) [31].
   - **Browser-level tools** (e.g., **Privacy Badger**) should **block zombie trackers**.

3. **Public Awareness**
   - **Users must demand data deletion** from zombie brands (e.g., **AOL’s old accounts**).
   - **Journalists should investigate** who’s buying these brands—and why.

### **5.2 The Big Question: Do We Want an Undead Internet?**
The zombie brand economy forces us to ask:
- **Should the past be digitized without consent?**
- **Can AI progress ethically if it relies on graveyard data?**
- **Who owns the memories of the early web?**

Bending Spoons’ AOL deal wasn’t just a **business transaction**. It was a **harbinger**—a sign that in the age of AI, **nothing digital ever truly dies**. And if we don’t act, the internet’s **zombies will outnumber the living**.

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### **Sources Cited**
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[13] *AOL Terms of Service (2006 Archive)*. "User Content License." [https://web.archive.org/aol-tos-2006](https://web.archive.org/aol-tos-2006)
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