I have been seeing a lot of obvious AI content trending on Dev.to. While I don't mind AI assisted writing, I do mind AI generated experience.
Here's an example, I saw on trending page recommended to me
Note sorry for the black censoring, I don't want people to target them and cause unnecessary distress.
Though some of these writers have been called out, by people including dev.to staff, they continue to write AI garbage!
Technical blogs shouldn't entirely be generated by an AI. If I wanted to read AI blogs, why do I need to come to Dev.to? I could ask GPT to summarize a new topic everday, everyhour.
You can generate content but not experience!
Pattern
Almost all the AI writers follow a similar pattern, they publish technical articles almost everyday, has in the world of, have a conclusion explicitly written like shown.
I don't care if they published AI garbage in their own profile, but, I do mind Dev.to encouraging it by bringing on trending page an main pages. When they get more likes, comments not only are they being actively encouraged to continue generating AI content, but also, encourages other writers to start publishing AI experience.
Eventually, actual experienced dev will leave the site and will be completely taken over by Bots
The other problem bigger problem arises when they start lying about their experience by showing the AI generated blogs to potential clients/ employer.
Possible solutions
- Start bringing reputation for certain actions similar to Stackoverflow.
- Make this site a self-moderated, similar to Stackoverflow.
- Make it easier to flag AI generated experience, 3 AI flags and it would be put in moderators queue, and will no longer trend until the article is reviewed for AI content.
- Temp suspension from writing blogs, if almost all their blogs are AI content.
- Stop massive automated followers, yes, you need a starting point but, dev.to making auto following random people without limits serves no purpose and only encourages people to write random AI articles.
other problem on dev page
Dev.to must stop encouraging thank you comments on Technical articles, they serve little to no purpose. Like the article? well there is a like button you can press to show appreciation.
The discussion must be related to the article written, bringing out important points or sometimes questions related to the article or the topic, other short comments such as "Thank you", "good read" are just noise, should be filtered towards the end in the comment list.
Sometimes, comments here feels very similar to LinkedIn Comments, I left that place a long time ago and I don't want to see it here as well.
Promoting unrelated stuff under other people's blogs
Yes you have to promote to get people to start using your product or try your project, but promoting a very unrelated project under someone else's post, is just ruining the experience. There are people just going around asking for support for their project under every comment section, it just gets annoying after a point.
If you want to promote, promote in subtle ways by providing value, not by going to everyone else's blog post and pasting you link.
Possible solution
- set a cool down period before they can comment again, if they have linked to same external source everywhere.
- Too much self-promo under, everyone else's blog? temp suspension from commenting and make links unclickable.
Conclusion
In today's world, where bots and AI-generated content are prevalent, dev.to can stand out and can effectively combat bot-generated content and attract a community of experienced, genuine developers, ensuring high-quality, reliable articles and discussions.
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Top comments (6)
The blind leading the blind. Been happening for quite a while now.
Here here. I read dev.to mostly by RSS feed. I have seen 10-20 articles written by supposedly different people on the subject of using bash scripts to manage users and groups on linux. All in the past week or two. Is there some AI that people prompt with "give me an article on linux" and it regurgitates for some cr*p on using bash/shell to manage user/groups on linux/unix?
It's quite dystopian isn't it? AI-generated articles receiving AI-generated comments, subs, likes. We humans are actually free to go outside, take a walk, enjoy the sun, let the bots entertain themselves.
I think AI prompts are far more interesting than the answers AI provides. They show what questions people are thinking about. Maybe we could encourage sharing prompts instead of AI results.
Excellent thinking
Wonderful meanderings... I've been wracking my brain on this as well.