Browser Extension 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co) 47
"The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video," argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google's search API "to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022" — the day ChatGPT launched — "so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human hand."
404 Media calls it "a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free." Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry's unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called "generative AI" — despite widespread criticism and the wider public's distaste for it. "This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we're in," Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. "I've been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022...."
Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won't be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists.
Of course, the tool's limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo's search indexing instead of Google's. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley's AI-pushers have forced on us... With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)... But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.
404 Media calls it "a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free." Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry's unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called "generative AI" — despite widespread criticism and the wider public's distaste for it. "This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we're in," Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. "I've been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022...."
Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won't be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists.
Of course, the tool's limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo's search indexing instead of Google's. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley's AI-pushers have forced on us... With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)... But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.
Prince Mode (Score:4, Funny)
...takes you to 1999
Re: (Score:3)
Can you do September 1993? Well ... USENET was awesome. Finger me for my public key.
Re: (Score:3)
Just gopher it.
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Or just use lynx
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Re: Prince Mode (Score:2)
I'd try Summer of 69 mode but it's marked NSFW for some reason?
Re: Prince Mode (Score:3)
Can't they just call it "bury head in sand mode"?
Re: (Score:2)
Wall Street mode: Party like it's 1929.
why stop there? (Score:3)
I want results from the time before ads, seo, and engagement metrics ruined all the results above the fold. Give me results from 2001.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You see, the internet community at large has labeled price tags as “racist”,"
No, I don't see. I think you are full of shit. You found a word like "racist" that you think will get readers attention with no referent behind it.
The "internet community at large" doesn't exist. What exists are silos where people go to see what they believe repeated back to them.
Re: why stop there? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a mood is so easily ruined, how strong is it really?
Re: (Score:3)
You know there was something like we would now call the "idealist web" where people who had actual content payed to host that content so their visitors can read it? A time when content was produces to show something to the world, instead of have the world click your ads or buy a pass for your paywall? That's the time the OP talks about.
Re: (Score:3)
Give me results from 2001.
Oh man I'm so sorry you just had to find out what happened in September 11. Spoiler alert, America is about to go to war again.
Re: (Score:2)
Won't work (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Won't work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not entirely wrong, if you have two articles, the longer one is more likely to have more information. As a metric it's easily gamed, and they need to stay on top of that somehow but didn't.
Re: Won't work (Score:3)
Re: Won't work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Websites were already getting ridiculously verbose (like recipe websites having a long story before the actual recipe) because Google favored pages like that. If you wanted your page to show up in the search results, it had to be nonsensically verbose.
Not sure what you're talking about. https://www.justtherecipe.com/ [justtherecipe.com]
That said on the odd occasion (like very occasionally) the verbose part is actually quite useful, it helps to know why ingredients were selected rather than the specific ones since it does give you some indication of what aromatics may be substituted or how to adjust a recipe to your liking.
But really https://www.justtherecipe.com/ [justtherecipe.com] bookmark this.
will it filter slashdot? (Score:3)
Re: will it filter slashdot? (Score:1)
Re: will it filter slashdot? (Score:1)
"repetitive essays,"
Remember how slashdot just recently repeated the same phrase in a summary? Would AI have been so careless?
Re: (Score:3)
Slop existed long before AI. It also existed before the Internet. Quality is not tied to being AI or not.
Re: (Score:2)
For the past few years, very few /. "summaries" have been summaries. They're either the whole article or the first couple of paragraphs copy-pasta'd. The reason they read like slop is because TFA is too.
Curated web (Score:1)
However, the real issue is that Google has no incentive to stop this. Worse the Google search result get, more indispensable their AI summaries and prompts become.
While I applaud the effort ... (Score:2)
... this is not going to really work. Art project?
My Tip For Browsing YouTube (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
This comment is not written by AI.
Uh-hu, that's precisely what an AI would write in a comment.
Re: (Score:2)
Applies also to articles. Headlines like "The best X as of 2025" are made for bots and not for humans.
We Need AI Wannings on Videos (Score:2)
Need an AI-enabled filter to filter the AI (Score:2)
So much AI slop video has splattered all over YT recently.. What I'd like is an AI-enabled browser plugin trained to identify AI-generated videos and remove them from my feed. A colossal waste of energy, but how else can we hold back the mudslide of slop?