the way i see it, monopolies and duopolies are inevitable and really the end goal of capitalism. what AATs do in the intervening time is provide a standard upon which web developers and agents can interact and monetize their work.

while adversarial blocking is a possibility it comes with a real financial penalty on the side of the content provider, fewer agents competing for your content does mean fewer agent providers to haggle with, ergo, a high likelihood of a bad deal.

in a perfect world they'd serve as IDs for agents similar to a person's ID card, but spoofing is a potentially massive issue. what stops a content provider capturing an agent's ID and repeatedly hitting their own endpoints?

brighter men than me will have to figure most of this out, but i wanted to put this thought out into the universe