AI slop is pushing communities toward provably human spaces

An Ask HN proposes a flag for AI-generated articles. The replies show the problem: voting can be gamed, detectors are unreliable, and some commenters think YC's AI investments make it unlikely HN would act. Someone quoted the new guideline, 'Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans,' and noted it covers comments but maybe not articles. A commenter said the stigma on Lobsters got bad enough that they stopped feeling welcome even though they don't use LLMs to generate articles. Cliff Stoll's 'rumors of my death' post, about AI-generated misinformation circulating about him, lands in the same place, with one commenter noting AI is built by people who think everything is performance.

The other side is warm nostalgia for human-made things: Mike Tomlin's 12-year Minecraft city, Newgrounds praised as a still-uncensored creative space, and a joke thread about an all-AI 24x7 slop channel. The pattern: the more generated content there is, the more provenance and effort become the scarce, valued thing.

Nobody has a reliable way to prove authorship, which is why moderation threads keep going in circles.