This isn’t a problem when people use their own website (blog) to publish content.
In simpler times, people would use their own website (such as a blog) to share things with the wider web, and social media was primarily used to connect with “real world” family and friends. Then social media replaced blogs as the premier place for people to post their content, so it seems like bot spam is a natural progression of that.
Will the flood of generated AI content push people away from social media and back to web properties that they control? I think that’s unlikely for a few reasons:
- Building your own personal website is still very much in the “nerd” realm, or at least the more tech-savvy or design-oriented of the population.
- Although the barrier to entry here is lower than it’s ever been, most people don’t want to go through the trouble (or are willing to pay).
- There’s ways to host a website for free (such as with a static site and Netlify or GitHub pages), but that route requires more technical skill, so free options aren’t really an option for most people.
- Building an audience is hard and takes a lot of time and commitment. What’s the point of posting to the “wider world” when nobody will see it?
- Social media makes it easier to be (or at least feel) “heard” (until bots make too much noise and drown all the people out, that is).
Where do we go from here? I’m not sure. It’s not looking pretty though.