“Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.”
…
“To be online, many now admit, is to be endlessly manipulated and exploited. In December, Oxford University Press declared rage bait to be the word of the year, noting that use of the term had tripled over the previous 12 months. The lexical spike represented a heightened awareness that monetized social accounts churn out bad-faith takes and extremist content, automating this abusive behavior with generative AI, simply to profit off hostile engagement. Billionaire oligarchs have opened the floodgates to such inauthentic activity, conspiracy-mongering, and hate speech by rolling back moderation.”
I do really wish the internet would go away. It held such promise for maybe 10 years before the rot set in. And now, it’s nothing but rot.