More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.
The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.
Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.
The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention.
The findings are a snapshot of a rapidly expanding industry that is saturating big social media platforms – from X to Meta to YouTube – and defining a new era of content: decontextualised, addictive and international.
I do not think anywhere near most Reddit users came to Lemmy. I wish it were true.
Do we know if Lemmy mods are doing quality content moderation? That and their locking out open source and third-parties is why I mostly avoid Reddit. But I’m not entirely gone.
Anecdotally, my closest friends are all senior level tech workers who are fully aware of what reddit did and the current state of everything, but I’m the only person that’s left for Lemmy. They are all still regulars on Reddit. In the same vein, I’ve written off doing business with many companies due to their shitty practice. Other than my sister also dropping Target, I’m the only person that I know that has stopped giving business to shit companies.
So yea, unfortunately the reality is that the vast vast majority of people just don’t care enough change even the smallest of behaviours for ethical reasons. I mentioned something today at my family Christmas that I don’t buy Reign energy drinks anymore because I stopped buying PepsiCo after they rolled back DEI. The response was, “get over yourself”. That’s probably the above average response for most people I know.
and according to fediverse observer, lemmy has been losing a lot of users…
on the other hand, according to statista, reddit has been gaining users and now has more than when the lemmy exodus happened
the truth is that what we did didn’t affect them as much as we expected, and most people don’t care as well :(
but well, let’s keep the flame alive and not lose hope
I highly doubt Reddit is actually gaining that many new users, but the number of accounts created? Sure.
Reddit never has enough bots for their AI slop machine. They create more bot accounts to “boost engagement” via posts and comments.
Most people don’t really care about anything. They won’t put up with a little inconvenience. Worse than toddlers.
Honestly, I wouldn’t really want everyone on Reddit to come here. With the risk of sounding like some immigrant hating dickbag, they just bring their dumb takes and bot farms with them. What makes Lemmy good right now, is that it’s so small and intimate.
At least with lemmy we can make our server and defederate with the bigger ones if things get bad like that
And they verified those users are not bots?
That’s what I was thinking too. I browse r/all once in a while just to see what’s going on, and both the posts and comment sections are AI cesspools