Fuck AI

Okay, so I'm going to jump in and defend podcasts, because I think they're an exception to the Dead Internet Theory.

There is (ironically, I know) a podcast I really liked on the topic:

https://podtail.com/en/podcast/frontiers-of-commoning-with-david-bollier/rabble-evan-henshaw-plath-how-network-protocols-en/

The quick summary is, while some kinds of social media have been captured by big centralized companies, centralized, and enshittified - like microblogging with X, or videos with YouTube and TikTok - podcasting hasn't.

Because podcasting is distributed via RSS, a free open source protocol, anyone can create and distribute a podcast and there are hundreds of podcast apps to listen with.

There's no centralized location where you have to go to listen to podcasts - you search for podcasts on whatever app you like and you follow the podcasts you want to listen to. Apple Podcasts and Spotify have big databases of podcasts, but you don't have to use either of them, as long as somebody has an RSS feed you can subscribe directly to their podcast without going through a gatekeeping platform of any kind.

This makes it really difficult to enshittify the podcastosphere with a ton of AI slop, because people follow the podcasts they want to follow, they don't rely on an algorithm to feed them new podcasts the way TikTok feeds them new videos, and if their podcast app tries to promote content they don't want, they can just switch apps.

So while this idea is shitty and a podcastosphere dominated by AI would suck I really don't expect it to get much traction.