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Cat soap operas and babies trapped in space: the ‘AI slop’ taking over YouTube
(www.theguardian.com)
Who is watching this slop? Kids?
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Technology
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8-12 age range, just the right time to induce lasting brain rot.
Yes and old people. I work with a guy who is 66 years old and I’ve seen him on multiple occasions watching YT videos of girls dancing that is AI.
You were watching an AI video of him watching YT videos of girls dancing? Talk about AI-ception!
My mind has been AI blown!…
If I could get blown by AI, I would probably be more in favour of it
Reminds me of the the sexydancingladies skit from Viva la Dirt League
I legitimately want a setting on YouTube to block/remove AI content for my account, especially anything with an AI voice over. It's all fucking trash. Normally a company would want to introduce features that are desirable to customers, but it won't happen this time. Billionaires are all in on AI, and they don't want to lose money if/when it flops, so I'm sure they'll be no way for people to prevent AI being shoved down their throat
The “x” in the youtube browser tab or the “x” at the corner of the youtube app is the button that removes the slop
This but with Shorts, too.
If you're using Firefox, there are several plugins available that remove YouTube Shorts completely.
I removed shorts by using ubo -> select eye dropper -> move eye dropper over the shorts section til it is all highlighted, then click "create" on the popup.
waiting for the AI blocking extension to come out one can wish
They started to auto translate comments based on your one(!) language setting, completely destroying nuance in the process. Oh, you're multilingual? TOO BAD! A lot of the translations don't even make sense. It's just word salad a lot of the time and they don't even give you an option to see the original comment, title or video description! And of course there is no way to give Youtube feedback about it. They're cooked. Their service is shit and the platform is suffocating from slop in more ways than I ever imagined. Like, I knew it would be bad but you even get bombarded with it when users aren't even involved.
Yeah, I don't think YouTube believes I can speak both English and polish, because it translates titles into polish and completely ruins them, I've seen some that are so nonsensical I had to open the video in a browser (on my phone) to see what it means
Two devices? More engagement! Bonus time!
“Watch how this guy…” I cloud blow up when I hear this voice,sound. No matter how good the content might be
I am convinced Youtube and many other platforms are dying right now because instead of protecting their assets, they double down on AI slop that nobody cares about. Of course traffic will keep increasing first but that's mostly from bot accounts spamming garbage and not actual users consuming content and ads. Server cost will explode while ad revenue will shrink. The corporations behind it have vast resources and will take down the Internet with them but their end is slowly approaching.
It's all about those next quarter results
youtube was in trouble the moment they announced election denial has free reign on the platform, this allow so many right wing bots, propaganda to test the waters, and then increase the current trend of right wings stuff, like anti-trans, anti-woke, pro trump, toxic masculinity.
Sometimes I forget people watch YouTube on purpose. Other than music videos and the rare "how do I do this thing in this game?" I just don't use it
I feel like an alien sometimes. Reading books like some sort of lost time traveler.
- Video essays
- Podcasts
- Stand-up comics
- Sketch comics
- Home improvement
- Queer slice of life stuff
There is definitely content on there that I value still
This is only me describing my personal taste, but:
Almost all video essays and podcasts I would rather just read. It takes half the time. Include pictures, diagrams, and animations if needed. But I can read much faster and retain much better reading than listening to someone talk. Listening at double speed is faster, but can be uncomfortable.
I can imagine some value in some other niches, like you're saying, but the amount of slop and trash out there is too high for me, and the companies selling it are the worst.
Every time I see some parasocial YouTuber making That Face I just get irritated.
You don't get the animations and other visual aids to understanding like that.
Don't know why you'd get a downvote for personal preference. I would argue that a lot of the content I watch doesn't have a suitable book form, so even if I did prefer that method of osmosis, I'd be out of luck.
Got a recommendation for a book (or audiobook) for a nerd like me? I'd describe myself but the internet already knows too much so.... Conservation and technology (new or ancient)
Is that a fair ask?
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In my experience, you have to be incredibly selective with what you watch. The entirety of what I watch on there is makerspace type crafts, misc educational content, and the occasional video game, with ideally the least emotional commentary possible.
Yes I consume a ton of YouTube but that's because I have a ton of professional and personal niche interests. It does take a ton of curation and just general awareness and education about this type of content to sift through the piles of shit but when you do there is real gold there. Also great for having in the background when I'm working on the PC.
Don’t hold out on us, what channels do you watch? I have a growing list of feeds I check
Here's my subscriptions, though they don't make the entirety of what I watch:
Educational
- Atomic Frontier
- Captain Disillusion
- DSA (My city's local chapter's youtube)
- Kurzgesagt
- Philosophy Tube
- Scott Manely
- Technology Connections
Educational Adjacent
- Jim Browning
- Primitive Technology
- Sam O'Nella Academy
Hobby Projects
- Code bullet
- Colinfurze
- Project KegRocket
- Stuff Made Here
- The Bibites: Digital Life
- Tom Stanton
- Works By Design
- Zach Freedman
Gaming
- Doshdoshington
- EthosLab
- Grian
- Hazardish
- Matt Lowne
- Michael Hendriks
- Project Incursus Gaming
- Starship EVO
- Stratzenblitz75
Art
- Felix Colgrave
- The Sixth Door
- Worthikids
Misc
- Atomic Shrimp
- Brick Experiment Channel
- Hbomberguy
- Lyle Forever
- Two Gay Grandpas Travel
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You didn't really ask for this, but here are some suggestions for YouTube content that is worthwhile:
- Fall of Civilizations - originally a podcast, these are long-format episodes that each focus on the history of a collapsed civilization. On YouTube they have added video of the ruins and the locations described in the podcast which really adds a lot to it.
- Folding Ideas - all of Dan Olson's content is worth watching, but I particularly recommend "Line Goes Up" which digs into the culture around NFTs and cryptocurrency, "The Future is a Dead Mall" which looks at the metaverse/VR and the people who bought into it as the next big thing, and "In Search of a Flat Earth" which tries to understand the cultlike behavior of flat earthers. Dan basically does well-researched sociocultural analysis and the things he finds are fascinating.
- Technology Connections - Alec Watson gives in-depth descriptions on how various pieces of technology do (or don't) work. I think the videos on pinball machines are particularly fun.
- Moon Channel - somewhat similar to Folding Ideas, Moony does sociocultural analysis, though in different topical areas. I highly recommend "Kawaii: Anime, Propaganda and Soft Power Politics".
- Cody's Lab - Cody does various scientific experiments, mostly focused on chemistry. He still tops my list of craziest things I've seen anyone do on YouTube - refining uranium from ore in his garage.
I subscribe to Technology Connections and his Patreon. Highly recommend his videos.
I also follow a few van lifers and a friends channel. I also have own channel on YouTube. I also read a ton of books. Wish we bad tons more options but watching YouTube is not a bad thing. Also follow a YouTuber who keeps me updated on politics and such.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I both read books and watch YT videos nearly every day.
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I maintain my YT subscriptions and history quite meticulously. Anything I didn't like will be immediately removed from history. Stuff I regularly watch is subscribed to
I get exactly 0 weird AI or right wing stuff suggested to me
Downside is, you have to keep up quite a good view history hygiene
It's where all the good factual content has gone. Build series, disaster analysis etc is all on YouTube now.
If you have an account, they do a pretty good job of recommending good content based on what you've watched previously.
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You might be ahead of the curve. I still consume Youtube a lot but my experience is getting worse each and every month. It's a consistent downward spiral. It's just a matter of time until I realize "Oh, I haven't watched Youtube in weeks!" That's when I know. The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either. When they realize how bad it's gotten it will be too late to course correct. You can't win users back after they sobered up from your addictive dopamine machine because they stopped coming and the only traffic on your servers are bots.
The people who make decisions at Youtube clearly do not even use their own website or app and there is no way to give feedback either.
Ed Zitron, famously verbose web blog guy, wrote a post about how he thinks most of these big businesses are run by idiots that are out of touch with both the product and the users.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
It's simple: they neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate.
Massive bookshelf here. Can't enshittify watch we already own! Fuck corps
the more pressing thing is the AI propaganda thats being posted as well, all those anti-woke videos with cut scenes, plus the "pro-hypermasculinity/toxic masculinity shorts too), complaining women for not going for certain kinds of men.
plus there are ton of those bizarre animals in distress videos as well, its strange asf.
I don't have facebook or anything like that, so i don't really see a lot of this slop. One day i thought: so okay, there is more social medias out there than facebook, twitter instagram or whatever, they are just not well known. I downloaded one, and looked at what people post there. The amount of AI slop was unbearable. They weren't boomers, but post the most obvious AI shit of like a kid in the desert of some african country making a horse out of coke can. The caption is then something inspiring like: you don't need money to make art or whatever. This shit is only getting worse
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I instantly skip anything AI that attempts legitimacy. I’m irritated at the attempt to grab my attention with complete fakery.
I do occasionally watch some of the disturbing fever-dream clips simply because they are hallucinatory and seem to flow the way a human mind might grasp facets of something and amplify or distort the flow.
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What can I say, this sounds like a plan to start requiring real IDs for security purposes, what smart guys... Great plan.
Wow yikes. I couldn’t even get through a few minutes of one of them. I assume the prompt was “generate the most annoying video possible using random clips of humanoid cats and a soundtrack that induces aneurysms”
I went and watched a couple and... what. the. fuck.
Are AI videos still a series of ripple animated stills?
But AI similar to but legally distinct from Seinfeld got banned.
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