[LegibleCrimson3]

It's an incentives problem, and the ad industry is largely to blame. It's the same cause as much of the destruction and centralization of the web, the rise of clickbait, rising extremism and political polarization, negativity-driven engagement, and myriad other public problems. An attention-drivin economy is disastrous for mental and public social health. And some people still defend the ad industry, even going so far to laud it as a public good, even talking about it as if it's a charity and not a very rich industry, funding a "free Internet".

We missed the boat long ago on dismantling or neutering the ad industry before it did massive irreparable damage. Whatever we do to fix this mess is still going to leave prominent scars for generations.

[smackeyacky]

I don't see the clickbait / extremism promoting content as anything particularly new. In the UK the "red top" newspapers used to supply it and in the recent past it was Fox News.

It was always possible to cocoon yourself into news and opinion you agreed with.

AI slop does seem a little different, if only because it's machine generated and the sheer amount of it would not have been possible when rubbish was human generated and the gatekeepers of publishing were newspaper editors.