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AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet

50 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2025–2026 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN uses it as a reference for AI slop, LLMs citing LLM output, and the growing difficulty of fact checking.

Kurzgesagt examines how AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from video and music to news and books. It looks at how this makes verifying what is real harder.

“Kurzgesagt made a great video on how this stuff gets generated” (HN, 2026)

1 strong recommendations · 2 recommendations · 8 citations · Explainers · news from the time

11 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@ColdStream Jul 2026 Strongly recommends
on HN thread How AI Slop Is Killing World War II History (YouTube Video)
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I'm glad they go in deep on the data feed back on this. Kurzgesagt made a great video on how this stuff gets generated, an article uses this, data sets get trained on this, and then future outputs will use the article as citation. [this video] This is the paradox to be addressed. In trying to make LLM's more accurate, we try to pin it to citations, but then that means having to trust that the citations are accurate. But having the citations generated by an LLM means it basically becomes impossible to confirm the accuracy. As it has been said anything after 2022 cannot be reliably trusted. You can do you due diligence but that is a lot of work if you can do it. Really highlights the idea that a lie will travel around the world before the truth puts its shoes on.
Explains the feedback loop of AI-generated citations
@zwnow Oct 2025 Recommends
on HN thread Vibe engineering
Absolutely. If the knowledge is verifiable. Kurzgesagt recently uploaded a video about this, its a lot harder to verify statements due to AI. Not easier. Here is the video in case you are interested: [this video]
AI makes verifying knowledge harder
@ikiris Oct 2025 Recommends
on HN thread You did no fact checking, and I must scream
If you think this is trivial, I suggest watching the video kurzgesagt just did on the topic. It’s much harder than you appreciate and getting massively worse as the days go by due to ai garbage. [this video]
Shows how hard fact checking is becoming

Citations, criticism and jokes

@CaptainOfCoit Oct 2025 Cites it
on HN thread AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time
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> Actually there was a Wikipedia article of this name, but it was deleted in June -- because it was AI generated. Unfortunately AI falls for this much like humans do. A recent Kurzgesagt goes into the dangers of this, and they found the same thing happening with a concrete example: They were researching a topic, tried using LLMs, found they weren't accurate enough and hallucinated, so they continued doing things the manual way. Then some weeks/months later, they noticed a bunch of YouTube videos that had the very hallucinations they were avoiding, and now their own AI assistants started to use those as sources. Paraphrased/remembered by me, could have some inconsistencies/hallucinations. [this video]
Concrete example of AI sources citing AI hallucinations
@Joel_Mckay Oct 2025 Cites it
on HN thread How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise
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Silicon valley capital investment firms have always exploited regulatory capture to "compete". The public simply has a ridiculously short memory of the losers pushed out of the market during the loss-leader to exploit transition phase. Currently, the trend is not whether one technology will outpace the other in the "AI" hype-cycle ( [link] ), but it does create perceived asymmetry with skilled-labor pools. That alone is valuable leverage to a corporation, and people are getting fired or ripped off anticipating the rise of real "AI". [this video] One day real "AI" may exist, but a LLM or current reasoning model is unlikely going to make that happen. It is absolutely hilarious there is a cult-like devotion to the AstroTurf marketing. The question is never whether this is right or wrong... but simply how one may personally capture revenue before the Trough of disillusionment. =3
Cited loosely alongside skepticism of AI hype
@Joel_Mckay Dec 2025 Cites it
on HN thread Is it a bubble?
LLM slop doesn't have aspirations at all, its just click bait nonsense. [this video] Drives people insane: [link] And LLM are economically and technologically unsustainable: [link] These have already proven it will be unconstrained if AGI ever emerges. [link] The LLM bubble will pass, as it is already losing money with every new user. =3
Cited as example of clickbait LLM slop
@Joel_Mckay Feb 2026 Cites it
on HN thread I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
You seem very passionate about your opinions, but are you happy? The fact remains LLM can't reach comparable human error rates without consuming 75% of the energy output of our entire local galaxy. While I find true Neuromorphic computing topics more interesting, the emergence of the LLM "AI" true believer is deeply concerning to those that understand how they are actually built. =3 [link] [this video] [link]
Linked among skeptical references on LLMs

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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