Snapchat announced on Friday that it will stop recommending wholly AI-generated videos in its Spotlight feed. The move is part of a broader effort by major platforms, including LinkedIn, YouTube, and Substack, to combat AI slop—low-quality, automated content that threatens user trust and authenticity.
The surge in generative AI tools has made it possible to create everything from realistic videos to full essays in seconds. While this technology offers creative potential, it has also flooded social feeds with repetitive, low-quality material. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, acknowledged that completely AI-generated content is often repetitive and low-quality, which does not align with what its users want to see.
Snapchat and the Spotlight Feed Shift
By prioritizing authentic, human-made content, Snapchat is drawing a line between automation and assistance. The platform isn’t banning AI entirely; content that is enhanced or edited using AI tools will still be eligible for recommendations. This distinction suggests a strategy where AI is welcomed as a tool for human creators but rejected as a replacement for them.
LinkedIn’s War on Automated Comments
LinkedIn is tackling the problem through direct user reporting and aggressive backend filtering. The professional networking site recently introduced a button allowing users to report posts or comments that appear to be AI-generated.
Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s chief product officer, wrote on the platform that AI slop is a top priority for all of us.
The scale of the problem is massive. Srinivasan reported that the platform has blocked billions of attempts to post AI-generated comments in just the last few months. According to Srinivasan, the system now catches hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts every single day.
To further discourage “slop,” LinkedIn is removing an automated prompt that previously offered to enhance a user’s post via AI, reverting instead to a basic proofreading tool. Like Snapchat, LinkedIn maintains that users who use AI simply to refine their writing should not be targeted by these combat efforts.
YouTube’s New Monetization Restrictions
While Snapchat and LinkedIn focus on visibility and reporting, YouTube is attacking the financial incentive. Google-owned YouTube recently updated its policies regarding which types of content creators can actually monetize.
This change follows research from last year showing that numerous channels consisting solely of AI-generated content had amassed millions of subscribers and millions of dollars in revenue.
In an effort to discourage what the platform calls inauthentic content,
YouTube broke down the kind of videos that will not be allowed to make money into three categories: generic, repetitive, or template-based. These styles are particularly susceptible to generative AI because they are fast and cheap to produce.
Matt Halprin, YouTube’s trust and safety chief, noted in an interview that while AI tools can help people with their content, they are more frequently used to create fake and low-quality videos. The same technology really enables great stuff,
Halprin said. But it also enables stuff that's kind of content farming, and that's the stuff that we don't want to have.
Substack’s Detection Tools and the ‘Race to the Bottom’
Substack is approaching the crisis by empowering the reader. The newsletter platform launched a tool designed to let readers detect AI-generated writing. This move is driven by research that found up to 40% of writing on social media is now fake or AI-generated.
Chris Best, the co-founder and chief executive of Substack, stated last week, It's getting harder to tell what's real on the internet.
Best’s warning highlights a systemic risk, adding that Platforms that reward fakeness will create a race to the bottom.
The Erosion of Online Trust
The collective pivot by these four companies suggests that AI slop is more than a nuisance; it is a threat to the viability of social media. As users are exposed to more automated content, their overall trust in the internet declines. According to research cited, the prevalence of AI slop makes people less likely to believe that any content they see online is real. Recent studies into public perception of AI-generated videos show that people typically agree that such content is “low-quality” and “repetitive.”
This creates a paradox for tech giants. The same tools that provide the fast deployable solutions customers want are also eroding the human connection that keeps users on these platforms. By restricting recommendations, removing “enhance” prompts, and cutting off monetization, these companies are attempting to pivot back toward a human-centric internet before the race to the bottom becomes irreversible.
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