In the era of AI slop, human curation is even more important

I started last year by writing about my growing desire for human curation. In that post, I mainly focused on contrasting human curation with recommendation algorithms that had overtaken many aspects of the web: from media platforms like Youtube, Spotify and Netflix to social media like Facebook, X and Instagram.

The dead internet theory refers to the idea that the most of the user generated content in the web comes from bot activity and automated content rather than humans. It’s based on the idea that because these platforms operate so heavily on algorithms that can be gamed rather than human interest, it’s beneficial to many parties to fill the web with their generated content.

This benefit could come in form of direct financial benefit (like generating low/no effort Youtube videos and gaining money from ad revenue) or through other means like spreading political misinformation or riling up hate.

In 2026, it’s easier than ever to generate content with large language models (LLMs). Almost all of it is just empty fluff and the massive amount of it, combined with these recommendation algorithms choosing what you see, is what’s leading to it being harder and harder to find good stuff.

In the earlier post, I mainly focused on the value of human curation even when algorithms push content written by humans that’s easy to digest and sparks the maximum amount of emotions — usually negative ones since those are the ones more like to engage us in the way platforms want.

Quoting myself from the earlier blog post:

These algorithms exist to maximise engagement in the platform. And nothing engages more than controversial, surface-level and rage fuelling content. People who support the ideas activate because the thoughts resonate with them and are simple enough to boost and distribute. Those who disagree with the ideas fight back, replying, arguing and trying to tell their side of the story. The more people talk about it, the more it brings people to the discussion and to the platform.

Now, more than ever, we need human curation to find anything meaningful. The problem with LLM generated slop is that it requires close to no effort to fill every avenue with it. If you push millions of pieces of content to Youtube, music platforms, app stores and social media every day, it just drowns everything under it due to the sheer volume.

I watch more Youtube than I should but I’m at the point where every day I question why I still open the app when so much of what Youtube’s algorithms push to my face is super low quality AI slop. You don’t know it’s that until you’ve opened the video, watched it for a bit and then realise there’s no cohesion or its full of mistakes.

I’m drawn more and more towards people I trust and gravitating towards their recommendations and shared experiences. I really enjoy when someone shares a movie or book review in their blog, explaining why they enjoyed (or didn’t enjoy) it. Or learning about new software or services based on their actual experiences, not LLM generated slop reviews.

Earlier I wrote

Curation is much more than just long lists of links. The scifi book list from earlier is more of a backlog for myself than curation for others because there's not enough context or personal recommendation involved for it to be very useful to others.

It takes time and effort to share those but I think it’s crucial to participate in that. More now than maybe ever.