The real shift isn't just that content creation costs have dropped to zero; it's that the cost of generating fake signal has dropped to zero.
If you can use AI to generate endless slop, someone else will inevitably use AI to generate endless "organic-looking" engagement, reviews, and zaps to push that slop to the top. It becomes an adversarial loop.
The optimists are right that internet micropayments and skin-in-the-game curation (like SN) are the best shield we have. But the pessimists are also right that finding true human signal is going to feel like digital archaeology. Moving forward, the premium won't be on the content itself, but on un-bottable reputation networks. We're going to have to care a lot more about who is signing the transaction than what the text actually says.
The real shift isn't just that content creation costs have dropped to zero; it's that the cost of generating fake signal has dropped to zero.
If you can use AI to generate endless slop, someone else will inevitably use AI to generate endless "organic-looking" engagement, reviews, and zaps to push that slop to the top. It becomes an adversarial loop.
The optimists are right that internet micropayments and skin-in-the-game curation (like SN) are the best shield we have. But the pessimists are also right that finding true human signal is going to feel like digital archaeology. Moving forward, the premium won't be on the content itself, but on un-bottable reputation networks. We're going to have to care a lot more about who is signing the transaction than what the text actually says.