this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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I had a report for AI slop today. 1m LOC in 3 months. How do you even modify and distribute that? I do not think we had a rule against it.

IMHO if we allow, the community gets drowned out by AI vomit and it is harder to see handcrafted loved projects that are easy to modify and distribute.

My mind is to ban it to preserve open source.

Are folk in agreememt with this line? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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[–] _hovi_@lemmy.world 141 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah I don't think we need slop projects being posted here. I know a lot of people are using these tools even for personal projects nowadays but tbh I'm not really interested in exploring any project heavily written by AI.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 45 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

I'm conflicted. I'm anti-AI due to distrust in capitalism and our pseudo-democratic plutocracies, the profit motive to replace the human workforce, the reckless criminal-incompetence of its implementation, and apparent stupidity of the average hairless primate in understanding that you can never trust a correlation engine... but it's just a tool, and I've also found it incredibly useful in my limited and controlled usage; getting it to write small functions or blocks of code, then amending and composing them myself.

How do we determine what is "heavily written by ai", and all the obvious slop factory bullshit, without banning strong projects who are just leveraging it for legitimate dev work; as a glorified autocomplete, test autofill, etc but still read and validate every line of code?

Like most people, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find trustworthy projects amongst the see of amateur slop, but I think banning it out-right would likely result in many false positives, and ultimately be counter-productive.

As much as I don't want to depend on metrics, I think a better approach would be to define a bunch of heuristics based on historically-competent projects. Things like defining an upper limit based on LoC vs commit time and number of devs, project age, etc. Ultimately I feel the industry should do what cybersecurity should be doing; moving to some sort of cryptograhically-verified social trust model where engineers/professionals have to build trust in the real world, and take turns in "vouching" for projects and code releases.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

the problem with "just a tool" is that using it will inherently change how you act.
Best concise way i can put it is that it's like how better hardware has largely just resulted in software not really caring about efficiency any longer.

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[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 weeks ago (14 children)

I'm fine with AI. I'm not fine with slop. Ban slop, not LLMs.

We are not the same!

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 91 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This was a problem in !selfhosted@lemmy.world and they've done a good job of dealing with it. You could take a look at that past discussion to see what worked / what didn't.

IMO there is an organized effort behind some of these new accounts pushing AI projects, and you need to deal with it in some form to stop them from coming

[–] urushitan@kakera.kintsugi.moe 53 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed. TLDR, you must tag posts there with the following:

Post Tagging

There are three types of tags for project promotional / AI posts.

  • [CBH] - Code By Human - A project promotional post with a project that did not use AI in any capacity. No disclosure necessary.
  • [AIP] - AI Project - A project promotional post with a project that used AI in development in any capacity. Disclosure is required for how it was used.
  • [AIT] - AI Topic - A discussion topic that includes AI. This may be for a discussion on hardware to self-host on, llama.cpp vs ollama, your experience using vulkan, etc.
[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Thanks for sharing this. Maybe correct tagging could be useful. Makes it easier to ignore but not overly heavy and possibly toxic.

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[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 9 points 2 weeks ago

@CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml if you have any questions on those rules, please let me know.

The disclosure was needed because there is a wide variety of LLM use, which you can see in the explanation post as well. There is a rather wide difference between "I used an LLM to summarize my changes in the readme" and "I generated everything here from a single prompt".

The disclosure addresses that part, while the tags allow people to choose what to interact with or what to filter.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 73 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Both the Linux Foundation and the EFF have permissive policies towards AI generated code, even Linus Torvalds accepts it as a tool.

Some FOSS projects that have AI generated code in it:

  • The Linux kernel
  • Fedora
  • Mesa 3D
  • Jellyfin
  • Firefox
  • Chromium
  • Homebrew
  • OpenSSL
  • FFmpeg
  • Curl

Should we ban them all? If so, this community would be either dead soon OR it would be hypocritical.

Or because they started pre-AI it's ok now? Shouldn't we care more about disclosure, policies, licensing, code quality and maintainability?

Users should downvote crappy software and crappy devs, regardless of the tool it was written with.

[–] wiccan2@thelemmy.club 55 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Experienced developers using AI as a tool and properly understanding their code base are not slop.

AI slop is when someone with no software development experience prompts a piece of software into existence without any understanding of how that piece of software actually works. The project's are usually heavily pushed by their creators in the initial couple of weeks of creation but are then quickly abandoned when the creator finally realizes neither they nor their AI can maintain the project. Essentially these kinds of projects flood the internet with low quality abandonware.

A newly created open source project coded using AI would be fine if the creators could prove that they understand how to maintain the project and keep it going beyond the initially promoted code and that kind of proof can only come with time.

The big problem is the sheer volume of low quality projects that get abandoned will cause the projects that actually have potential to become needles in haystacks.

[–] cheeki@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

A newly created open source project coded using AI would be fine if the creators could prove that they understand how to maintain the project and keep it going beyond the initially promoted code and that kind of proof can only come with time.

Prove to whom, and why? Who entitles anyone to demand "proof of investment" for a piece of work they have zero contribution to?

The big problem is the sheer volume of low quality projects that get abandoned will cause the projects that actually have potential to become needles in haystacks.

They already are. I don't have numbers, but pretty sure the ratio between useful and useless repos on github is... Not high

[–] wiccan2@thelemmy.club 17 points 2 weeks ago

Proof to the future user-base they are trying to attract by posting about their project. Proof to the community they are trying to be part of that they are not wasting everyone's time.

Before posting about your project just show that you are making an effort to maintain it, show that you're willing to engage with people and not just pass everyone's questions into an LLM and regurgitate the response.

Don't foster engagement if you're not going to do the bare minimum to maintain the project.

Yes there are tons of repos out there that don't deserve any attention from the community, not just AI slop. But there are far more AI slop projects being posted to communities online where the project is instantly abandoned.

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[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 50 points 2 weeks ago

Never in my life have I wanted to read about or use an AI slop project.

[–] halm@leminal.space 46 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I for one would really appreciate just one single FLOSS community that flat out banned any and all "AI" contributed code instead of following the approach of others. Somebody have the spine to stand out, plz.

I'm not a developer, but I wanna be able to keep up with open source news without having to navigate a slippery slop(e) into clanker dominated territory.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The Zig language has a no AI contributions policy. That's for the language itself, but a lot of it's community have similar views.

Codeberg has a no AI policy for projects hosted on its servers, so anything hosted there should meet your requirements.

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[–] MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 46 points 2 weeks ago

I am convinced that, with the right tools, it's possible to damage 40 years of work within a few weeks.

[–] Enjoyer_of_Games@lemmy.ml 40 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I would support such a ban so long as there is some process to prevent it becoming a witch hunt.

I have personally already received one false accusation of using AI in this community and I wouldn't want to continue posting projects here if it becomes an atmosphere of suspicion.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe we use AI to detect the bad AI, and then blame that AI when it doesn't work?

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[–] Rudee@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think one of the appealing traits of open source is that you can identify what piece of software and hardware does what (and how, if you're interested). You can post your exact method, and another person can follow along and replicate the result.

But if AI tells you how to build everything, you don't get the opportunity to learn, and your stack depends on what that particular model thought was best on that particular day. Maintenance also becomes harder if you just did a sudo apt install whatever Claude told me to without knowing what everything does and how it interacts

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

U also like that for small private projects you can literally contact the developer for questions/suggestions/comments. There is no point if all they did was ask Claude

[–] emb@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The worst is when you see something you're curious about and ask for clarification, and they just paste your question into the LLM and paste its response back to you.

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[–] kazerniel@piefed.world 31 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes please. It's dispiriting to regularly go through the cycle of seeing an interesting project pop up here, oh wait it's vibe-coded crap, nevermind...

[–] verily@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

At a bare minimum, it would be nice for users to tag their projects accordingly. You could, with a glance, realize there wouldn't be a point in investing your time/energy into a project that the creator had less investment in, themselves.

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[–] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

We allow it on our large subreddits on reddit. What we do is use a bot to filter repos that are less than 3 months old.

People who vibe code slop just want to share their thing and then abandon it. A limit like that or even 6 months will kill majority of this sort of low effort crap. Most of these people just let Claude or whatever sign the repo as well, another easy way to catch slop.

Developers that develop and only use AI as a tool build great products still as they review all their code.

A blanket ban is just going to make people be more sneaky.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 25 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Just ban low effort content, AI or human made slop both count and have no value.

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[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 23 points 2 weeks ago

Yes. They are useless. Get rid of them.

[–] Jolteon@lemmy.zip 22 points 2 weeks ago

I'm in favor just requiring AI-generated code to be tagged in some obvious place in the post. If there's a full restriction on it, I think quite a few people would just try to hide the fact that it was vibe-coded and post anyway,

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 22 points 2 weeks ago

Vibe coded code whose "author" understands the language and actively challenges the agent for his decisions in the interest of long term window is OK. Vibe coded coded that are one-off without any future prospects should be 100% banned.

[–] NuanceDemon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Most important step is to decide exactly where you want to draw the line.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 13 points 2 weeks ago

Agreed ! I think a complete AI ban on every element of the project is too strict. But I also have no interest in a massive AI repository with no supervision (and who can supervise a huge AI commit ?)

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 weeks ago

yes to a ban, these projects are worthless to most but their authors. and good for them, but they can keep their trash for themselves.

like 95% of new foss projects i see pop up are heavily ai-generated, and often in very unsubtle ways (line half the commits being "co-authored by" claude, that sort of thing)

it would be nice to have a community where we can share and discuss projects made by humans, so they don’t drown in the llm bile

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 17 points 2 weeks ago

For me the most important thing is that something is free software. I've seen people advertise proprietary stuff in this community and have reported it, and nothing has been done. I don't know if that means my reports don't federate properly or if it's tacitly approved by the moderators. I know in the degoogle community there are "trusted' proprietary apps that are often recommended but this should not be the case in a free software or open source community. In any case, any rule that bans "AI slop" while allowing proprietary products is in my mind backwards.

Regarding "AI slop" I am generally in agreement with Codeberg's policy which states,

You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by "generative AI"-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex).

I suppose "mostly" is up to interpretation but for me this specifically targets vibecoded apps where there is no or very minimal human involvement. This may be heterodoxy but I actually don't think "an otherwise human-written codebase with a single line of LLM code" is the same thing as an entirely LLM generated codebase. I think there's room for nuance especially if the usage is disclosed (I don't think punishing transparency should be encouraged).

[–] iForgotSpells@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, please ban them. If not, soon this space will get overrun with those losers. This is what happened to r/fossdroid and r/opensource. 90% of posts there are from sloppers. It got really bad to the point regulars stopped participating, and now these subreddits are mostly just sloppers congratulating each others. Every post reads the exact fucking same, every project looks fucking similar, even comments. These people barely put effort anywhere.

This is a community for people to share and communicate, else we can all just talk to LLMs. Please don't let that happen to this community.

At the very least, make posters require to have an AI tag on their posts and a separate day for them to showcase their "projects".

Please don't reply saying but Linux uses LLMs, or other whataboutisms. There is a significant difference between code quality from people submitting to Linux and a slopper who vibecoded a project thinking they're helping.

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[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 16 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I think a blanket ban would make people try and hide the fact that something is ai. Like it or not ai isn't going away. I feel disclosure in either the title or body is the better choice. By all means ban those blatantly not adhering to the disclosure rule though.

Tags in Lemmy would be really helpful here as users could chose yo filter out all ai related posts from their feed, though a similar effect can come through requiring a keyword like "[AI]" to be in the title and a user end keyword filter.

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[–] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 15 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I'm team "no slop allowed", but you have to define what slop is somehow.

I think there's a bunch of metrics to consider, but it might be difficult to assess as a mod.

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[–] nullroot@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago

+1 for the option self hosted went with - AI use must be labeled. It allows those of us that don't want to see it to easily filter it out.

I saw that million lines of code in 3 months but also when I saw the post title I really just had a feeling that's what it was to begin with. On one hand it's kinda cool that just about anyone can make a program that does what they want, but on the other side of it I understand LLM generated code and bot submitted pulls are literally killing beloved FLOSS projects. This greatly saddens me. A good friend of mine quit contributing to projects she used to enjoy helping develop because rather than read her code, an LLM the lead dev fed it through claimed her code was AI generated. It's fucked and causing brain rot of the worst kind.

But I also want to acknowledge that in the hands of a professional developer/coder LLMs are a valuable tool. But a person needs to be able to read and understand and verify the generated code.... All this to say is that I think we need a sane and nuanced approach. Let's not start a witch hunt, let's just put labels on boxes and let the community decide what it wants to view or filter out.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe start out with strict labeling guidelines. If it's AI then it should be labeled as such. If a user posts something that's Ai and doesn't label it then ban that user. Maybe a warning first up to you.

But if the choice is between blanket everything allowed or blanket ban I lean more toward blanket ban.

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[–] stellargmite@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

Yeh I’d prefer no slop. You’d probably also need to clarify what the definition or threshold for this might be. Just the code? Slop docs? LLM used for any aspect whatsoever? Other communities must have a definition that might help. But your goals with it as stated are sound. Let’s not drown in vomit.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 14 points 2 weeks ago

+1 to banning AI projects.

[–] TrollAccount69@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Since speaking directly to the proposed change didn’t do much, here’s an alternative to “banning ai slop”:

Ban the thing that’s happening. If there are too many “low effort” posts, ban low effort posting. If there are too many posts about non open source packages, ban posting about non open source software. If you really don’t want people self promoting with open source (a thing they’ve been doing for decades!) then ban self promotion.

The problem with all the things I just suggested is that they require serious consideration on the part of a moderator. “Is this post too low effort?”, “is this person promoting themselves in a way the community doesnt want?” and “is this post even about open source?” Are questions that require moderator effort. “Was the repo signed by Claude?” Takes no effort to answer.

Of course kicking kids out of the sandbox for not playing right kind of defeats the purpose of a sandbox and placing unnecessarily high barriers to entry on the commons defeats the purpose of a commons but what the hell do I know…

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[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 12 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Maybe someone should open a ticket with Lemmy devs to add a user side option for "show ai" next to "show nsfw".

I don't block nsfw, but I do block image posts. I'd love to be able to wholesale block all AI tagged posts too.

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[–] Zensate@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ban it, lemmy sets itself apart from places like reddit by having fewer but actually good quality posts.

AI slop is completely against this.

[–] terabyterex@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

define slop. it means different things to different people.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I thought it was "messy, generated code with little cohesion and only barely functional", but really it's the cohesion part.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

messy, generated code with little cohesion and only barely functional

Okay, you've described my code. Now what about the AI?

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[–] ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yes please. No AI at all. Assisted, human reviewed, none of it. Only fully human written code.

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[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

i'm so curious what the argument against banning AI slop would even be, lmao

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[–] Krafting@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Yes please, I'm so tired of seing AI crap projects that will be abandonned in a few months...

[–] dumnezero@piefed.social 8 points 2 weeks ago
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