Your contribution moved the debate forward not one jot. Whining about people whining is even less valuable than the whining. And given Simon was meta-whining as a response to me whining… Well, I just don’t know where that leaves you. But I’ve added even less to the debate, beyond my initial contribution.

However, to your point directly: Simon has a pretty valid argument. There’s a lot of slop posted on jere these days.

Personally I’m reading far less stuff from HN than I used to. That’s a shame because up unto the past six months or so I’ve found it a great place to expand my reading.

Now I increasingly click something open, realise it’s more AI slop and close it.

What I don’t understand is why these people do not realise how utterly, unmistakably, glaringly obvious their awful AI crap is.

I recently said elsewhere on here: I partly work with words. I find AI-“authored” content absolutely and unmistakably obvious.

The fact that people publish crap like this shows that they don’t know what good writing is, or what good expression of ideas is. Because if they did they would proof what their AI had written and realise how awful it is.

And that by extension means that the content is almost certainly worthless, because whoever prompted it read it and said “this is fine! I’m happy to publish it under my own byline!”

And in reality it just makes them look idiotic. No discrimination. No original thought.

So I don’t think my comment, - or Simon’s comment - was moaning about “Things These Days”.

It was a point about the erosion of the community this creates.

And if nothing else that erosion is silly arguments about the value - or otherwise - of AI slop.

No, it's important. Hacker News is tolerant of slop, and pointing out slop is not popular here.

I'm meta-complaining if you like, but it's a point that I'll stand by.