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).…