Nah, I see nothing wrong with an information diet composed of random people with no background sharing their pet conspiracy with 5 million people on TikTok that they learned from three minutes with ChatGPT, furry porn accounts clapping back on Twitter to an out-of-context 29-word quote from an MIT Technology Review article (reshared so many dozens of times that the quality has noticeably degraded), or a picture generated in a Russian disinformation farm showing a muscular Donald Trump rescuing crying orphans from drowning in Hurricane Helene while corrupt FEMA agents loot their houses.
On the plus side I guess: accessing good, robust information has literally never been easier as long as you’re media-literate enough not to fall into the landfill of trash information that you’re walking over.
During its start in the 2000s and early 2010s, Wikipedia was like a shadow of what it is today. As an example, take a look at the article for the element oxygen in 2006 (ignore the broken templates) and the article today. Its editors were just as smart, well-meaning, and hard-working, but guidelines and a deeply entrenched culture hadn’t emerged around making sure things are as verifiable, reliable, independent, unbiased, inclusive, and comprehensive and as possible. It’s kind of insane how much you can find there now as a starting point for further research. Wikipedia also forced the web-ification of Britannica, meaning even if you deeply distrust Wikipedia for some reason, you no longer need to pay hundreds to have an encyclopedia in your home.
Additionally, I imagine there are serious, experienced editors who are using LLMs to great effect as essentially a search engine on steroids to find obscure information, thereby speeding up their work (and they have the media literacy from years or decades of editing Wikipedia to wield this responsibly). Those who use it irresponsibly seem to be very quickly found out, although because I can’t prove a negative, I can’t say how much slop has slipped through the cracks.
Extremely niche hobbies and specialties have e.g. YouTube channels, subreddits/communities, etc. dedicated just to them providing a fantastic wealth of knowledge. Right now, I can go watch Gutsick Gibbon on YouTube to catch up on various findings in primatology from a PhD candidate on the verge of becoming a doctor. I can watch Gamers Nexus for highly comprehensive breakdowns of tech products. Realistically, I can self-teach in ways I never could have 20 years ago as long as I’m responsible.
Piracy has arguably never been easier to gain access to paywalled research papers, books, etc. There’s a movement in academia to make research open-access.
Software is moving more and more toward open-source. This gives entrenched, capitalist power structures increasingly limited control over people and opens up this knowledge to everybody.
That all being said, things are really dire because so many people really lack the basic media literacy skills to utilize these tools and avoid the ocean of shit around them.
It’s a bit scary because many of those things (Wikipedia, academic piracy) are being threatened and villainized, others (Reddit niches, maybe eventually YouTube) are hemorrhaging useful info, and utilitarian LLMs are simultaneously being vilified and enshittified by opposing political sides.
Like, with the Qwen3 release, I just realized my internet barometer for “is it any good?” and technical info is totally gone… Reddit and other niches have withered away, Twitter/Linkdin are pure engagement farms, and I can’t hardly discuss it anywhere else populated without getting banned as an alleged AI Bro (whom, for the record, I hate with a burning passion). I seriously considered joining WeChat just to see some sane discussion.
This is true for other fandoms and niches I’m in.
I hate to sound apocalyptic, but it feels like my information sphere is imploding. The real marker will be when the US government starts taking action against Wikipedia.
Nah, I see nothing wrong with an information diet composed of random people with no background sharing their pet conspiracy with 5 million people on TikTok that they learned from three minutes with ChatGPT, furry porn accounts clapping back on Twitter to an out-of-context 29-word quote from an MIT Technology Review article (reshared so many dozens of times that the quality has noticeably degraded), or a picture generated in a Russian disinformation farm showing a muscular Donald Trump rescuing crying orphans from drowning in Hurricane Helene while corrupt FEMA agents loot their houses.
God fucking help us.
But on the plus side,
On the plus side I guess: accessing good, robust information has literally never been easier as long as you’re media-literate enough not to fall into the landfill of trash information that you’re walking over.
That all being said, things are really dire because so many people really lack the basic media literacy skills to utilize these tools and avoid the ocean of shit around them.
It’s a bit scary because many of those things (Wikipedia, academic piracy) are being threatened and villainized, others (Reddit niches, maybe eventually YouTube) are hemorrhaging useful info, and utilitarian LLMs are simultaneously being vilified and enshittified by opposing political sides.
Like, with the Qwen3 release, I just realized my internet barometer for “is it any good?” and technical info is totally gone… Reddit and other niches have withered away, Twitter/Linkdin are pure engagement farms, and I can’t hardly discuss it anywhere else populated without getting banned as an alleged AI Bro (whom, for the record, I hate with a burning passion). I seriously considered joining WeChat just to see some sane discussion.
This is true for other fandoms and niches I’m in.
I hate to sound apocalyptic, but it feels like my information sphere is imploding. The real marker will be when the US government starts taking action against Wikipedia.
America: …Nah, this is fine. In fact, let’s elect the platforms’ owner-influencers. scrolls happily