"Aura" and the Backlash Against the Slop Machine | decodingvibes.com

Last month, LinkedIn introduced a new feature which now allows any user to report any public post on the platform as “AI slop.” The decision itself is a pretty strong stance in the sense that it accepts AI-generated content is low-quality and should be reported as slop, but how they frame the option is also interesting. It does not say “report low-quality post” or “seems like bad writing”, it uses the term “AI slop” directly.

This is in sharp contrast to what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in his December 2025 blog titled “Looking Ahead to 2026”:

We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our “theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.

A lot of people considered that to be him saying that we shouldn’t just use “slop” as a derogatory term for any AI-generated content. A more charitable reading of the same blog could argue that what he’s saying hints at a different insight touching upon how ethical use of AI is important and how we must go beyond debating the quality of AI-generated things and rather reshape how we fundamentally relate to each other since AI is going to profoundly change everything.

In either case, a “seems like AI slop” button is a vindictive slap on the face to both views.

Codeberg and Vibecoding

Another big story of a platform taking a partially moral stance against AI-generated things in July involves Codeberg (a community-based non-profit alternative to GitHub), who recently voted to prohibit “vibe-coded projects”.

On its official blog, Codeberg offers several explanations for their logic behind the vote and the decision. If one goes through the blog, we can mainly point to two categories of problems with vibe-coded projects, namely:

Ideological issues with using LLMs to code.

Practical, infrastructure-based issues due to the side effects of vibe-coding.

Using LLMs to work with your code gives you a kick of adrenaline. You can develop at a rapid pace, build things as if you had a large team. Only that you have none. In fact, you are (often) alone, working with a statistical machine that turns energy into code.

Codeberg blog, “Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs” 23rd July, 2026

Codeberg’s stance on both training LLMs on the open-source code hosted on its platform and using LLMs to generate code is pretty clear in that they do not like it. Along with listing the environmental impacts of AI (damage due to excess stress on the digital and physical infrastructure layer), they also raise objections to the practice of “single-use software from scratch”.

Although often well intentioned, sharing the result of an prompt and calling it “libre software” does not make the world a better place. Codeberg is not and does not want to be a place to dump such generated single-use software that no one else will ever look at. We are a place for people to collaborate and improve software together. Within this context, the recent votes can be understood as a reconfirmation of those principles: As we want to center on human collaboration, we will not actively support or engage in the creation of LLMs and will not put our limited resources to use for storing single-use software that would pollute our FLOSS commons.

Codeberg blog, “Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs” 23rd July, 2026

Naturally, there have been mixed reactions since it was announced. Some praise Codeberg for taking a strong stance on vibecoding while others have concerns.

The point I’m trying to demonstrate is that this is very similar to the LinkedIn “seems like AI slop” button except in this case, the slop was not only causing a quality issue for the platform but also hogging its resources (unfairly from the perspective of the platform).

Hank Green Witch Hunt and YouTube on AI, Spotify’s “Unregulated Slop”

A major YouTube personality is also facing a lot of “pushback” over his use of artificial intelligence in his videos in recent days. Hank Green, brother of author John Green and a major driving force behind several popular channels, was accused of using AI-written content in a video.

While the title of the video is “Does Hank Green Shave His Butt? | Soupytime Asks Hank Anything”, linked here, the creator slipped a very weird phrase when answering a question to the effect of “And I appreciate the pushback.” Viewers immediately pointed out that it seemed like an AI-generated answer that he was reading verbatim. This evolved into something bigger as the creator then posted a series of apologies/justifications for his actions, which seemed to have only made the situation worse.

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