The fediverse used to feel pretty anti-ai, but over the past month or two I’ve noticed a LOT of generated memes and images, and they tend to have positive votes.
Has there been a sudden culture shift here? Or is there a substantial percentage of people just unable to tell the difference anymore?
Same with Reddit. In fact I’d just decided to delete the Reddit app and just hang out here, because the AI slop has become intolerable. But really I’m seeing it everywhere. Google News used to be interesting and now again AI slop. Is this the end of human-based online articles and interactions?
It’s been everywhere for a while, but the fediverse seemed like a last bastion up until very recently where I’ve noticed a change.
Is this the end of human-based online articles and interactions?
I sure hope not. At least it’s just a few posts here that are generated for now. If it ever gets to the level of Reddit, I might just leave.
People don’t care. as long as they can get their infinite scroll with funny picture, they’re happy.
This brings up an excellent point about addiction. A
quicklonger than I’d planned anecdote: over the last few years I’ve nearly completely dumped all social media (and big tech in general). Facebook, Insta, Twitter, all gone. The only social for the last few years I’ve had left was Reddit, and I dumped that a couple months ago (all social media is toxic, I learned).I swapped Reddit for Lemmy a few months ago and noticed a huge difference, not just the fewer toxic people, but in the lack of posts overall by comparison. I found myself scrolling through the same Lemmy posts throughout the day, my brain trying to repeat the cycle from Reddit, but stayed strong and didn’t go back to Reddit haha.
Anyway, there’s still toxicity on Lemmy, and I realized how much it affects me without the cloud of all the other socials bogging it down. Not a lot, but enough. So I made a decision and went back to my old nerd days. I didn’t want to miss out on legit articles I was interested in from social media so I set up an rss reader. I started checking out Lemmy in the morning, and my rss throughout the day, which doesn’t update often.
What I found at first was I was re-checking lemmy, re-loading rss, and thinking about what else I can put on my phone to scratch that itch. I was (am) still addicted to the dopamine hit of forever-feeds of useless garbage. So instead, I picked up a book. It’s been a long time, and it’s a slow adjustment, but wow is it ever so much better. Aside from some small interaction on Lemmy in the morning like this, I don’t see comments anymore, I read the info I’m interested in reading and make my own judgments without comments trying to sway me, and use my former doom-scrolling time to read a book.
To sum up, you’re absolutely right. Addiction is a bitch and the average person doesn’t even realize they’re addicted.
I was never big in most social medias except YouTube and Discord until recently where I have to be as im an adult and it’s expected for you to. It really made me realize Lemmy is WAY less toxic than others and it’s very rare online to have a meaningful conversation with someone.
for example on Instagram there was a joke post by a pretty lady that said “my boyfriend just paid to get his tires rotated, doesn’t he know that his tires rotated every time he drives?”, obvious satire. but the comments were ALL insulting the lady calling her a bimbo and shit. Like genuinely people there won’t read a comment longer than 2 sentences.Yeah most comments sections are cesspools that only feed the negative wolf inside us. It’s interesting that now that I’ve cut out most comment sections, I realize how absolutely tiring it is being a part of them, or just reading them.
Lemmy is pretty good overall, but I really am starting to love just a basic RSS feed. Looks like what I’m used to (Lemmy/Reddit) but only links to articles, no comments at all.
I honestly don’t see much from the comms I follow (and it’s a lot thanks to piefed topics), and when I do browse all, if I find a post from a comm that allows them, I either ignore it or block the comm, for example a genAI art comms.
Idk, lemmy, mbin, piefed, etc isn’t reddit with algorithms so it’s kind of on the user if they see a lot of it, IMO.
I don’t see it, which is horrific considering that others do. can you show a few examples that you think is AI slop?
Its usually deleted by mods fairly quickly because its often being posted into comms that specifically ban it. I saw it in politics comms, shitposts, 196 and more
and how unambiguous is it that those are AI generated content? is it like blurry colors on images, 6 fingers and 3 hands, or what do you recognize on them?
I think I can identify generated images, but text… well I can’t even decide. Probably I just can’t so far, because I don’t remember any posts or comments that were suspicious
Straight up vibes a lot of the time these days. It gets better and better
After you use ChatGPT for a bit, you will start recognizing its style of writing in posts and comments. I’ve seen dozens of obviously ChatGPT generated posts or replies on Reddit and Lemmy. Usually there will be a person who already replied to them something like “Thanks, ChatGPT”, because it is that obvious. This only happens with naive prompts though, if you ask ChatGPT to present its answer to your prompt in a different style (for example, mimic some famous writer, or being cheerful/angry/excited and avoid overly safe language), it will immediately start writing differently and there’s likely no limit on variety of writing styles you can pull out of it with enough effort of just asking it to write this or that way.
Identifying them is a skill for sure. You learn what you have to look for, but it depends heavily on the art style that was used. Most people are usually better at identifying hyperrealism ones than comic style ones for example.
Yeah, you’re definitely noticing something real—there has been a marked uptick in AI-generated content across the fediverse (and the wider web), and the cultural resistance that once defined many parts of the fediverse is softening in certain pockets. Here’s a breakdown of what’s likely going on:
Cultural Shift: Anti-AI Sentiment Is Fragmenting The fediverse (especially Mastodon and related platforms) did start out with strong anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, and often anti-AI stances. But:
The fediverse is not monolithic. As it grows, the original culture is diversifying. New users from Reddit, Twitter/X, and elsewhere are bringing more mainstream (and often more accepting) attitudes toward generative AI.
Fatigue and normalization. Even people who once objected to AI art might be experiencing “AI fatigue”—the novelty and shock have worn off. Now it’s just part of the media landscape.
Irony and memetics. A lot of AI slop is posted ironically, which muddies the waters. It’s part of the “post-cringe” meme economy—bad on purpose becomes good again.
Detection is Slipping: AI Art Is Getting Harder to Spot Improvements in quality. Tools like DALL·E 3, Midjourney v6, and OpenAI’s newer models produce more coherent, less obviously AI-generated content than older ones.
Users are desensitized. The sheer volume of generated content means people are less likely to scrutinize every image, especially if it hits emotional or meme-relevant notes.
Some folks just don’t care. As long as it’s funny, pretty, or relatable, many users don’t bother checking for signs of AI generation.
Positive Votes Don’t Always Equal Approval Engagement ≠ Endorsement. Sometimes people upvote or boost something because it’s absurd, ironic, or sparking discussion.
Algorithm-free doesn’t mean signal-free. Even on federated platforms, attention follows trends. If a few users with high visibility post AI memes, others follow.
So, what does this mean? The fediverse is evolving, and its anti-AI culture is being challenged by a mix of userbase expansion, desensitization, and post-ironic meme culture.
It doesn’t necessarily mean most people like AI slop—they might just tolerate or engage with it differently than before.
You’ll still find strong anti-AI sentiment in certain instances (e.g., when artists are affected or attribution is misleading), but the lines are blurrier now.
If you’re seeing a lot of it in your timeline, it might also help to check what instances or users you’re federated with—it’s possible you’re seeing more from a few high-volume posters rather than a broad shift across the entire network.
em dash spotted
Yes. Left that in purposely.
Why is this written ai style lol
AI writes the average. This person speaks the average.
Nah this is just AI.
AI writes formal. No one replies to a discussion thread in this kind of format. Where on Fedi do you see an ‘average’ that looks anything like this?
Half the stuff I write gets flagged as AI generated when put into a “”“detection”“” service because its too average. You can’t reliability filter AI text from non-AI text. Hell, even a lot of the tankie rhetoric here reads like a hallucinating AI, spitting out over-long sentences with little meaning and no overarching argument.
Maybe whatever automated detection service you’re using can’t reliably tell, but a human who knows what to look for can. This whole format just looks very obviously out of place compared to any typical reply you’d see on this platform.
You mean using subheadings? Yes, AI often does that, but it doesn’t have to, nor do people avoid it.
There are more tells than just that.
Actually, the biggest tell is that for how long it is, it’s mostly noise with little signal. Some of it doesn’t even make sense, “check what instances or users you’re federated with”?
Actually, the biggest tell is that for how long it is, it’s mostly noise with little signal. Some of it doesn’t even make sense, “check what instances or users you’re federated with”?
So like someone dumb trying to sound smart, or someome trying to fill space. See my previous comment about tankies.
I pasted the full post title and body into ChatGPT. I bolded the subheadings and removed the emoji bullet points.
If people would stop talking about AI all day then it probably wouldn’t be used as much as it is every day.
No lie. If anything, this site reminds me that ChatGPT might handle a task for me.
They are flooding the zone, there are countless pro-AI generated content instances. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, I often downvote obvious and human-altered slop (it’s all slop to me). Unfortunately, there are going to be images that have positive votes despite the general dislike of said AI-slop, especially because I tend to block those slop instances these days. Naturally, most of it is objectifying women (something I don’t want to see anyway) so those will naturally get a lot of votes because people weren’t thinking with the right head.
I’ve noticed a LOT of generated memes and they tend to have positive votes
What’s the issue with that one in particular? Isn’t the entire point of a meme just whether it’s funny or not?
I mean, they’re low effort and unoriginal to begin with. The AI isn’t really changing anything about that.
I feel like memes is one of the few places where AI doesn’t hurt anyone at all.
It’s annoying that people are downvoting you just for asking an honest question. I think the anti-ai sentiment is strong enough that in many communities, people just oppose it in any context. The arguments I usually see against using ai are:
- It takes business away from actual human artists
- It takes a lot of energy, thereby contributing to climate change
- It is a privacy concern
All are real concerns, but I agree that making memes should be an effectively harmless use of it even if you otherwise oppose it. 1 and 3 aren’t really applicable to your average meme. 2 could apply depending on how you measure it, but most of the cost of ai is from training, not generation. For someone using the tool and not developing it, that training is a sunk cost they are not responsible for. I’ve seen estimates that you can generate about 9 images with the energy it takes to fully charge a phone. I think that’s more than worth it if you share it with a few other people to enjoy.
Personally I block all the meme communities.
Damn, I don’t follow any meme stuff anywhere but Lemmy. Guess I’m late to the meme party, I kinda hated them for the first couple decades of the 2000s.
Meh. They are fine in moderation but whole communities just about them is to much for me. Its like I block all sports ones to and im not 100% uninterested in sports but its not something I keep up with daily or even weekly.
Most people like me don’t care especially if the post is supposed to be a shitpost
Is this post AI generated?
i wish there were a client available that would simply hide all image posts because i really hate memes
Be the change you want to see
thank you Gandhi satva I would like to make a pull request to Sync if the source code were available
In Jerboa I know you can change posts from Card to List, which will get rid of the large pictures and make them a small image off to the right, maybe your client has something similar? Not sure if there is another option that might mold it more to your liking.
Vs
John Oliver did a show on this recently, in summary: “not all AI is spam, but all spam is AI”. My take, legitimate accounts with a long history are cheap to generate, they’re a great purchase to help spread bad faith disinformation and look legit. It’s a business model.
O don’t give a shit and 100% skip useless posts clearly created using AI.
But interesting posts, I do read them even if made with AI.
Almost like… it’s the content that matters not the medium used to make it.
“slop” is being thrown around just like “socialist” and “gay”. Save it for actual AI slop. Just because something is made by AI doesn’t make it automatically “slop” 🙄
I’m referring to stuff that I consider low quality. I don’t mind if something is generated, as long as it is labeled as such and is interesting or valuable in some way.
There’s always been plenty of human-made content that is slop. AI is just another tool to make easy content. Trying to categorize everything done with AI as slop is lazy and shifting blame, ignoring the difficulty in both moderating large volume as well as the lack of a definition of what is and isn’t “good”. Which really ends up coming back to the individual, who has means to shut out places that are regularly a problem to them.
God I remember deep fried memes. That was around when i decided humanity needed to be reset.
I somewhat agree. It’s overused
How would you use that term? Would you call “slop” something that was just mindlessly generated using AI in a single prompt and non-“slop” something that uses AI in more sophisticated/deliberate ways? What is the threshold of something being “slop” ultimately? Is this just result not looking decent enough or amount of effort combined with amount of knowledge and experience that was used to create that? I’m personally conflicted on this, because sometimes even mindless prompt may give great result, and sometimes a lot of manual effort may give shit result. I guess with “slop” I tend to gravitate towards “amount of effort combined with amount of knowledge and experience that was used to create” and perhaps also the amount of content that particular person produces and speed of its production. So if someone is really good with some tools (not necessarily AI) and figured some overpowered shortcuts that allow to produce results very fast with little effort, it also can be called “slop” just for the rate of production alone.
That output is what matters, because there’s no way for us to see the input. How are you going to know what words somebody used to generate an AI image?
Slop to me is a simple, low-quality, repetitive output. So, it’s not just one simple, low-quality medium but many. Looks at this video for examples. Or just scroll youtube shorts after searching for anything Indian or even literally “omg look at this” for the search term and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
If you have a hard time telling whether AI did it or not, it’s not slop.
I understand your point of view. But would you call something complex, high-quality, but repetitive, slop? And the same question, but if the person who produces it, does it extremely fast.
If you went to a restaurant that made a high-quality, complex soup, for hundreds of customers per day with the help of machines, would you call it slop? I wouldn’t.
If the restaurant however made ramen from packets, threw in some starch to make it thicker, and they had a nice big ladle to slap that liquid into a vessel with a nice sound, I would for sure call that slop.
This is where the fundamental difference in attribution of connotations lies. From what you say, you perceive the term “slop” as a direct synonym to “low quality”, without any extras. I perceive it as something more of a synonym to “repetitive” but with extra connotations, the most accurate common divisor of which is “repetitive content produced at speeds suggesting low effort”.
From what you say, you perceive the term “slop” as a direct synonym to “low quality”, without any extras.
Slop to me is a simple, low-quality, repetitive output.
Yeah, got a bit carried away yesterday. Ultimately, there can’t be right or wrong, since the whole discussion is simply about individual understanding or even preferences for the term “slop”, nothing more. Some people will try to be as empirical as possible and choose a meaning based on how they’ve seen it being used in the wild, others will try to push the meaning they want for the term, it’s all good and subjective.
It’s always kind of hard to nail down trendy slang terms, but from what I’ve gathered, and the interpretation I think is useful, is less to do with AI, quality, or effort (although those are certainly common elements of slop) and more to do with what the thing’s role is. What was it made for? What is expected of the audience? Regular art or non-fiction stuff is meant to communicate something to its audience. An emotion, an idea, etc. it requires the audience to engage with it if only in a fairly limited way.
Slop, by contrast, is a product meant to take advantage of the increasingly marketized internet. It’s there merely to capture some small share of the attention economy on a mass scale. It’s not trying to communicate anything to the audience, what it specifically is doesn’t matter, it’s just, to play into the metaphor, feed to fill the trough so people stick around and keep paying, generating data, or looking at ads. All that matters is that it takes up space. It requires nothing of it’s audience, in fact it’s probably advantageous that they don’t spend too much time looking at it, lest they notice how vacuous it is.
Under this definition, we can better sort things out. Someone making art because they want to share an idea or feelings but they use AI because they don’t have the skill to make it themselves? Not slop. Someone making propaganda or misinformation? Not good, but also not slop. It has a purpose which couldn’t be achieved if someone scrolled by it after a second.
Meanwhile, this definition can identify slop, or at least slop-like elements, in other pieces of media you may not have considered. Streaming services have been making movies and TV differently based around the assumption that the audience isn’t actually going to be paying that much attention, so either the content needs to be really attention grabbing, or it needs to be so unremarkable that you get as much out of it while looking at your phone as you would actually giving it your full attention. They make all of this because it’s a cheap way to make it look like their service has a lot to watch so that people keep subscribing. They don’t even necessarily need people to watch it for it to achieve its goal. Just having it existing in the service gives the appearance of value they’re going for.
