9.7K Substackers Made AI Slop Go Viral

If any writing community is to survive the onslaught of AI we need to do better as readers too, not just as writers.

You ever had a post get 10K hearts? 2K restacks? No? I haven’t either.

Yesterday I was on Notes when I noticed that a writer I read and respect restacked a post so I clicked to go look because it had 9,714 hearts and 2,057 restacks.

I started reading… it’s about a “debate” between Elon Musk and Keanu Reeves.

In the piece, Musk is shouting at Keanu that he’s too stupid to understand technology, we don’t need actors anymore because we can use AI models that never age and don’t need to get paid. Saying we don’t need human creators anymore, Ai can make all the stories and art and music. Keanu, of course, is defending human art.

That debate never happened. It’s fake. Written by AI.

1,219 comments — mostly people chastising the writer for not disclosing AI. People shouting this is fake, this is AI. Here’s the irony —the algorithm doesn’t know readers are chastising the writer. The algorithm just sees engagement. So it sees all that engagement and pushes the post out to more people. Who also engage.

So it goes, as Vonnegut liked to say.

Some people didn’t know it’s fake. So they’re posting yay Keanu comments. Omg, you go Keanu! Between the people who don’t know it’s AI and the people who do, the engagement keeps pushing that post to more and more (and more) readers.

Took me less than a minute to find out it’s fake.

I googled and Snopes came up. They debunked the story.

Apparently it started as a deep-fake video on YouTube. Then it moved to Facebook, some fake news sites and then someone put it on Substack. It’s going crazy.

That post got a hundred more hearts and 40 more comments just overnight.

The writer is taunting people in comments. Every time another person chastises him for not disclosing AI he says something snarky so they’ll reply. Yay, more engagement. It’s like we can’t help ourselves, get so mad we don’t even stop to think.

I won’t link to the post. That guy can get his traffic somewhere else.

And if you know the story I mean, please don’t share his name, the post title or link to anything regarding the post because I don’t like deleting comments but I would. He won’t get traffic from this post. None. Not one click.

---

Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t but a lot of people are really mad at Medium right now. A lot of people have left Medium for Substack.

They’re mad because they say Medium isn’t paying anymore. And it’s true. Pay has dropped. Personally, I believe it’s mostly due to the explosion of AI there.

Most writers have no idea how much AI is on Medium. Last October, almost half the content on Medium was AI according to an independent analysis for a Wired piece. I figure it’s over half, maybe 60% now and in reality, it might be higher. I run four publications on Medium. I get a ton of submissions. Many are AI. After I decline, I wait. Watch those posts go live in another publication. Then I go report them.

I write about AI a lot on Medium. I have an entire library of posts about AI from how to keep AI from training on your work to why AI isn’t “real” writing.

People love to think they can spot AI but they can’t. Studies show humans can’t tell AI from human writing. We get it wrong more often than not. But people comment on my AI posts and say they can absolutely spot it. Then I see those same people commenting on AI posts like they think a human wrote it and I just sigh.

There’s only one way to really spot AI. Volume. No real writer can churn out 2-3 posts every day, day after day, week after week, without a drop in quality. The rushing shows up in their work, whether they see it or not. AI doesn’t get worn out.

Funny thing is, readers don’t look for things like volume. They see a catchy title in their feed and go read. No idea they’re reading AI. They don’t go look at the writers profile and see that they’re publishing 2-3 times every day. They don’t say hmm.

Which means the dollars are being spread thinner. Less money for the real writers.

So everyone runs to Substack because Medium is bad, Medium sucks, Medium isn’t paying. And then they click to heart and re-stack an AI post here. And even if they knew it was AI, their outrage becomes engagement that drives more views.

Oh, the irony.

Oh, the bitter, bitter irony.

---

At the beginning of this year, 57% of the content on the internet was AI. Analysts estimate that by the end of this year, 90% of the content online will be AI.

Most of that is a factor of speed. A person who’s adept at prompt engineering can have a post ready to go faster than you’d realize. If they’re really good, they develop a feel for which phrases to edit to fool AI detection, too. So a person writing with AI can literally outwrite human writers until human written stories are the minority.

It’s not that human writers are the minority. It’s not. It’s that human writers can’t keep up with the volume that can be produced by AI.

And meanwhile, what are we worried about on Substack?

Just look at Notes. You’ll see all the people lamenting that they don’t want marketing in their feeds, they don’t want to know how to get more views, they don’t want people selling programs or selling stuff or giving advice.

“Omg, just show me the *real* writing, please.”

“If you have a “real” story, not marketing garbage, please drop a link.”

And then they heart an AI post that’s faker than a three dollar bill and don’t even know it. Or engage with the post because they’re so mad they don’t stop to think they’re driving engagement, which drives more network views.

Medium at least has a policy that they do not permit AI content behind the paywall. And they’re losing the battle. They are. But at least there’s a policy in place. I can report stories and they will get taken down. Here? Substack has no such policy.

Here’s the difference between the platforms. On Medium, AI writers cost real writers money. Because they dip into the pay pool with greater frequency than human writers. On Substack? AI writers don’t cost you money. They cost you views.

For every AI piece getting pushed out in the Substack Network, that’s less views for you and for me and every other human writer.

Which means it’s on us. The community. To determine what we want to thrive here. There is no excuse for 10K hearts and 2K re-stacks on a deep-fake AI piece that can be debunked in 30 seconds flat. None. That’s just down to readers not paying attention.

I am a writer. I’ve been a writer since before the internet. I mailed stories to magazines in a manila envelope and waited to hear back. I care about writing. I care about not just the craft but also the industry and the people writing their hearts out.

And I think if any writing site is to survive the explosion of AI, it’s not enough to say I am a real writer, I don’t use AI. It’s not enough to take a stance as a writer. We need to do better as readers, too. Love to know what you think.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley