The AI Slop Backlash Is Actually Having an Impact. Platforms are finally recognizing that people don’t want to consume AI slop.

I’m sorry. I wholeheartedly agree with the article, but this bit:

I had no idea that my online interactions would one day be scraped en masse for AI model training. I didn’t ask for Instagram to enable deepfakes on my account. I didn’t want Google to push AI-generated answers at the top of search results. I woke up one day, and generative AI features were stuffed into every corner of all the software I rely on without my consent.

• You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.

• Instagrams owns you. They own every ounce, every dimension of your content on the platform; they can do whatever TF they want, and you have zero legal recourse.

• No one made you use Google search instead of one of many alternatives, including alt Google frontends.

The fundamental issue here is that people, apparently even journalists, still see these Big Tech platforms as benevolent public squares where they have rights. And fairness. That is an illusion, and this is kind of thing keeps happening because everyone believes the lie.

And they don’t bother to even look for alternatives.

Are they really gonna keep getting surprised when platforms keep squeezing them, yet the platforms don’t stop because no one will leave anyway?

• You post something in public, it is public. You post knowing others might do things you don’t like with it; that’s the bargain. Especially on social media.

Yes the point is that they were ignorant, but also they have a point. For a long while, people have been ignorant of just how invasive data harvesting is. They usually don’t see the forest for the trees. They track your scroll speed to see how long you look at things, video playback times, view counts, referrer addresses, links you clicked on, geolocation history, comment/chat history, voice data, literally anything they can get their hands on. Those are just the trees within a very large forest.

• Instagrams owns you. They own every ounce, every dimension of your content on the platform; they can do whatever TF they want, and you have zero legal recourse.

Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit takes things further. Their forest air is filled with 0.02% opium, so you constantly want to be there. Content serving algorithms that dynamically optimize for engagement, forever scrolling, auto-play, strategically timed notifications, …

• No one made you use Google search instead of one of many alternatives, including alt Google frontends.

Yeah some people are just ignorant. I think many of them just walk a different path in life, may have never taken surveillance seriously as a concern. I don’t know if they’re all clowns, but I’m happy to see some of them are opening their eyes.

And they don’t bother to even look for alternatives.

That’s got to be a cultural issue because people seem unmotivated to teach themselves basic computer skills / knowledge. If it doesn’t “just work” then they don’t want it. If you can make it work, you’re some kind of magician to them. They let their fear stop them from accumulating basic research skills, even.

What’s kind of ironic is, this is the same crowd that loved AI and thought it would love all their problems.