The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

It's not just the internet, it's everything.

Every document I read at work has been AI generated at some capacity. It's becoming so annoying that I have to use AI to create a summary.

I don't know if anyone agrees, but AI generated documents are so verbose and explain things in an overcomplicated way that makes me exhausted after reading. Sometimes I don't even understand what AI is trying to explain

Don't romanticize the internet. The modern internet has torn society apart at the seams. It's made the world less tolerable and made civic discourse impossible.

If AI forces people to re-weight their priorities (i.e. be less on the internet), perhaps that's a good thing?

The Internet began to break at the same day you gave it away to Jeff Zuckermusk.

NOW people start to complain. And it's quite transparent why. ;)

I don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.

The same people who would petition against ZKP Internet IDs complaining about the unregulated internet.

You can't have your cake and eat it too...

Depends on what you define "internet" as, and what you expect it to be. So if it becomes a garbage, probably that's the equilibrium state it could get to, due to the forces around it. There are no isolated phenomena.

Slop is awful, but I've found networks like Mastodon and Bluesky where most users are actively antagonistic to still be enjoyable. Beyond that I've taken to leaning on RSS, private chats and automated filtering where it makes sense. Folks are setting up blogs again too. Most of the bigger platforms are flooded with slop, but their owners are encouraging that. Those spaces weren't healthy to begin with and they aren't now, but the reasons are different.

The never ending catastrophizing of every little thing is going to be the greatest cause of societal collapse. It's sucking the joy out of every aspect of life and it's usually some idiot hyperbolizing that most people don't grasp because most people don't even grasp sarcasm now because it's been so overused. It really wears on me and makes me think that Most people just want life to be horrible.

If places cease to be interesting, people will stop visiting them.

That means either AI will become interesting, or people will figure out how to stop slop ruining their places.

Either of those options might bring their own problems, but the sloppification of the internet is not a stable equilibrium.

Is there no-AI internet? Like anti-nuclear shelters?

There are two conflicting messages here: AI is ruining the Internet, but also now the relationship with the Internet is more "peaceful".

A more peaceful relationship with the internet does sound good, and most of us probably waste too much time with social media in some form (including here).

My "optimistic" take on this is that AI will ruin the Internet and cause us all to spend more time with people in real life. And maybe that's a good thing.

That's assuming that AI Internet slop is such a turn-off that most of us will decide to disengage from it, which is a big assumption. But I did say it was optimistic.

What really makes my internet use worthwhile is interest-based tight knit communities that also interact in meat-space. Members are vetted based on personhood (REAL personhood) , not points/likes/bullshit.

Pay attention to what you consume. Find sources you trust, creators you enjoy, and communities that are real. Participate.

Not sure what else to say. Yeah, if you consume the "internet" like some firehose of information you spray at your face hoping for the best then, yeah, even today you're going to wind up gargling mostly shit.

The "internet" being a small group of well-minded people who largely shared a similar outlook on things was the anomaly, not what's going on now.

There is Gemini (the real gemini) and gopher, so far there is a lot of interesting items. Some Links:

gemini://gem.sdf.org/

gemini://sdf.org/

gemini://gemi.dev/

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/wp.cgi/

gemini://cdg.thegonz.net/infrastructure/search/

gemini://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/cia-world-factbook/

gemini://geminiprotocol.net/

gopher://sdf.org/1/

gopher://magical.fish/1/

gopher://gopherpedia.com/1/

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/overbite

While I disagree with The Dark Forest hypothesis, the way AI and LLMs interact with the internet validate the theory in this specific instance. Individuals hosting their own slice of the internet have to deal with crawlers DDoSing them into oblivion and other islands retreat into privacy to avoid them entirely.

I would say what he means is the web. LLMs can be used as another interface to the internet. Additionally the web gets polluted by slop.

If AI slop completely kills social media then that’ll only be a good thing. Bring it on down.

There's so much spam and junk everywhere. It's all slop now.

This is another one of those "duh" posts that many people seem to be slowly waking up to while the python of AI wraps around the body of the internet and squeezes the life out of it in preparation to shove the whole thing down its gaping maw. Still, everyone will go on about how great vibe coding is, and LLM models and sing "Nearer my God To Thee".