title: Block AI Slop or raise our standards?
created: 2026 May 25
location: https://cybertiggyr.com/mtocc3l.txt
website: https://cybertiggyr.com/

CONTEXT
=======

Currently (early in 2026), "AI slop" is polluting the interwebs.  I don't
disagree.  There's so much junk images, audio, short videos, & AI-written
books that it's difficult to find real content.

Just today, I was thinking about buying an e-book online, but I decided
against it because most of the titles were so recent that they could be
AI-written, & I got tired of looking through the results for an older title.
So the store lost a sale because I wasn't confident I would obtain a quality,
human-written book.

WHAT TO DO?
===========

A lot of people & corporations want to "ban AI slop" or at least to create
detectors (more AI, but whatever) to flag AI slop so it can be removed from
search results.

BUT WHAT IF
===========

Of course the problem is AI slop.

But what if the problem isn't AI slop?  What if the problem is low-quality
content in a more general sense?  Yes, it's AI slop, but what if that's just
right now.  What if it's really the older, more general problem of junk
content?

WHY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN AI SLOP & MORE GENERAL LOW-QUALITY CONTENT
==================================================================

A lot of people are very upset about it.  Would they feel better with the
knowledge that AI slop is a specific & current instance of the problem of
low-quality content?  (I felt better when I had that realization.)  The
problem is still there, but maybe someone could feel less upset about it & be
able to think more constructively about solving it, which brings me to...

Not many decades ago, to publish your novel, you had to get a publisher to
agree it would sell.  Ditto for your music album.  At the time, publishers
were seen (correctly) as bottlenecks, but maybe they also provided a quality
control service.

If we conceptualize the problem as "AI slop", then we have a new problem,
never before seen on Earth, & nobody knows what to do about it, but if we
conceptualize the current problem as a new twist on the old problem of quality
control, maybe we can solve it with a new twist on the old solution:
respected, recognized publishers.  (Also curators: Remember your public
library & that you can borrow e-books from them with only a few more button
clicks than buying the same book from a store.)

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