Not paranoid, but respectful

Andreas posted some interesting thoughts, wondering if maybe we are too paranoid when it comes to AI slop. Please, go read his words first, I only intend to add to the conversation here, not to put him in an uncomfortable position or something, we are friends and everything after all—even if he barely mentions my posts on his Link Dumps… 😭

As someone who posts to the internet and exposes a fair chunk of my thoughts out in the open for everyone to read. It is undeniable that, as free as we are, we do care about what others think of us and our opinions, and most of us would rather avoid getting in trouble.

We limit ourselves all the time, some of us learn about certain dog whistles or slang to avoid which may seem funny and even popular in the mainstream, yet they originate from dark places we’d rather not support. Of course, we also don’t really talk about certain things that could break the law, such as sharing copyrighted material.

Both situations can end up with pretty harsh consequences, and both of them are relatively easy to avoid. I think that the same goes for media generated with AI. It’s a matter of respect, for the original artists whose work got stolen, and for the audience who interacts with the work you put out there.

It’s true that we can end up policing each other, I have seen people who don’t ever give the benefit of the doubt for things like this, immediately attacking someone because their post contains an image whose origin they didn’t even know. As humans we definitely should be more understanding of each other.

Of course, there is also people who purposefully generate images, who think they are pretty, and may be naive about the complexities and harms of their use. Sure, some don’t care at all, but I’m happy to avoid those people and move on with my life.

So, yeah, while it’s a bit of a burden, and it can be annoying to feel once again limited by other people’s expectations. Isn’t that something we already do? We already know not to promote certain symbols in the wrong context, we also avoid to refer to people in a certain ways, it’s mostly common sense.

It’s true however, that it’s not very easy to tell nowadays when it comes to some pretty convincing slop. There is no golden rule other than maybe just, not sharing things whose origin we are not familiar with altogheter.

Especially when it comes to blog posts that are just text anyway and may not even require it. Some of us are very fixated on having a graphic somewhere, to gather more attention and bring more eyes to what you share. I have had this feeling before, I’ll probably have a banner image on this post because why not—or not because I’m lazy. But again, text should be able to stand by its own, and I’m sure there’s a lot of people who are there for your words, and not necessarily the graphics around.

Of course there’s something to be said about the beautiful work some people do to make awesome theming on their websites and special posts that end up turning a page into a unique piece of art, but that’s a different point to make!

In the end, it is annoying, and we can definitely feel the pressure of having yet another thing to worry about when sharing things online. But I think that burden is easier to carry when we know we are respecting other people by doing so.

Now with Blaugust going on, a lot of conversation has shifted to how the event decided to handle AI generated stuff. Personally, I don’t want anything to do with any of it, but I also know it’s not easy to police and don’t really have any reason to lash out against any specific person about it. I will simply not read, nor promote any of the blogposts I see that make use of it, out of respect to myself and those who read what I say here.

This is day 9 of #100DaysToOffload, day 4 of #Blaugust2026