Effort is no longer a quality filter, and readers are angry

The Shiny Object Syndrome post made one point that stuck: previously, effort was a reasonable barrier to making something new, so if a library or feature existed, someone cared enough to build it. That filter is gone. Around it, commenters kept running into the result. One reply to the ChatGPT account takeover post asked 'Does no one write their own blogs anymore?'. The Jules Verne article drew a complaint about opening with an AI-generated Paris skyline. An archived Ask HN proposed a flag for AI-generated articles, and others were skeptical that anyone can reliably detect them. Cliff Stoll's 'rumors of my death' post was about AI-generated content declaring him dead.

The pattern: people are building trust shortcuts. They look for human authorship, they leave platforms like X (the Digital Minimalism post), and they value things that obviously cost time. HN's own guideline says not to post generated text, but the open question is enforcement and where the line sits between AI-edited and AI-written.

The counterpoint: stigma has costs too. One commenter said hostility on Lobsters made them feel unwelcome even though they don't use LLMs to write.