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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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I pointed out a month ago that Ars Technica is a rot site and starting to be filled with AI regurgitated bullshit and got 80+ down votes and a few uneducated replies.
Y'all feel better now?
Apparently you still can't criticise the Holy Ars even when they put out AI slop articles, because that's SPITTING ON BABIES
No, the issue we are talking about today and calling Ars an "internet rot site" is a huge leap. Yeah, they post shit articles from Wired and such, (they are owned by Conde Nast), but their core writers are still great and have plenty of good articles.
You want credit for what? Over exaggerating an issue then whining about it?
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and then spitting on the baby. It makes no sense.
It's one of the stages of enshittification. Unless we see hard changes to avoid further decay, Ars will inevitably get worse and and worse until it does become an "internet rot site."
My point still stands.
You can argue that EVERY fucking thing in the world is in the beginning , mid, or late stages of enshittification.
But calling Ars an internet rot site, at this stage, is just fucking stupid.
Are they as good as they were a few years ago? I honestly can't say. I do know that there was better news a few years ago.
The people at Ars have a tough job trying to navigate this modern world of oligarchs and autocracy, keeping their identity, while being owned by a corporation whose only job is to make money.
They've done a pretty good fucking job, all things considered, of staying their course.
A much better job than internet assholes who want to act elitist and whine when the world falls apart around them while they blame their fellow class instead of the controlling class.
They are failing at basic editorial controls. This is not a "pretty good fucking job." It is a sign of real decline.
Right.
And what do you know about editorial controls or how journalism has worked in the last 20 years?
Wake up. The decline has already happened. It's now a game of compromise.
You want to complain and whine like these guys are sitting on a beach, sipping mai thais, while telling their AI agents to write an article.
It's ignorant and inflammatory. Just makes y'all look petulant.
It’s been going downhill for some time. I think the Condé Nast investment pretty much killed it. The last unnecessary site redesign that didn’t work correctly and made things unreadable was the last straw for me. I took it out of my rotation of “daily reads” and haven’t missed it.
@sartalon @technology Yeah, I have a lot more trust in the reputation that Ars has built over a decade of solid reliable tech journalism than I do in a random matplotlib maintainer - I’ve interacted with maintainers before. They’re not wrong about agents, but not sure how that’s any different from any human doing the same.
Ars has been around since the mid 1990s. Granted the sale to Conde Nast changed them slowly over time, as well as broadening the focus significantly, but it was likely a case of grow or die since the PC nerd market isn't anywhere near what it used to be.
Simp a little harder for them next time. They appreciate it.
Weren't you whining about other people making comments like this one to you?
Ars hasn't been good in a few years. Fuck those people.
Stuff like this makes me very sympathetic to lemmy instances that disable downvotes
I read the comment, then judge the comment and use that judgement and voting scores to judge the community.
Downvotes are just samethink fuel.
Yeah. In my experience upvotes/downvotes often have very little to do with the actual quality of a comment and more to do with how much it conforms with the current political zeitgeist of whatever community you're participating in. The converse of this is that low quality comments telling people who disagree to go F themselves may also get upvotes.
Yeah, the "platonic ideal downvote" is only supposed to be used for content that "doesn't contribute to the conversation" or whatever, but that is very often just not the case. There's even research on how downvotes easily lead to a bandwagon effect: here's a blog post on this, based on a research article.
Hmm, I should probably create a Beehaw account and move over there. It's a shame that account migration really isn't a thing on Lemmy
Interesting I didn't realize there was research on this stuff. Yeah maybe I should go to beehaw too. Blahaj is another one that disables downvotes. It’s true theres no full account migration but theres ways to export your settings and subscription etc to a new community (see this or this). Apparently theres also ways to link two accounts for a persistent identity, by putting the other accounts username in your bio or something, but I don’t know a lot about that.