Mastodawn

Sorry for doomerposting... But I think AI slop has killed whatever tiny shreds of passion for the homelab space that I had left. Every other post on r/selfhosted now starts with "I built..." which basically translates to "Claude code built". 50% of those "self-built" projects are for personal use and niche use cases (fine by me), but the other half has the audacity to ask for contributors, donations, testers and offer "business pricing" for their slop. I've now seen at least two self hostable projects go up in flames because of the slop, and many more will probably follow.

Don't get me wrong, I still self host most of my services (because fuck big tech) but because the space is now inundated by LLM-generated garbage, I've lost all interest in enganing with it online.

Yvan ーイボん 🗺️

@notthebee oh man that's so sad :(

People forget that even if you have an army of builders it still takes rules, good practices, good processes, maintenance and security planning, upfront thinking, ideation and validation, etc. to build a city.

@notthebee I wish it were different. Homelabbing is such a nice way to learn about things.

@notthebee Dang, readings this hurts, because you are part of my inspiration for my homelab. But I understand the frustration. I constantly hope that the projects I have in use don't get overrun by slop :(

Gardiner Bryant Mar 14

@notthebee I FEEL this. It's actually why I started my website. I wanted a space that was completely free from AI slop and where what I posted was appreciated by real people and not bots and trolls.

@notthebee if someone had told me five years ago when I got into Linux & selfhosting what this space would (d)evolve to due to the rise of LLMs, I would have probably laughed it off...and here we are :/

it's just *everywhere*, no matter where you look

Leminski Mar 14

@notthebee sorry man. I have so many problems with LLMs that losing passion wouldn't even break the top 10, but yet it probably hurts the most.

Maybe we should move into self hosted knitting?

ChloeCrimson Mar 14

@notthebee I‘ve been very active for a few years on r/selfhosted and r/datahoarder but that ended quite some time before the age of slop

From what I remember, this could very well be a bubble that concentrates on Reddit. I‘d be genuinely curious if the accounts posting about that are new, and if not, how large the percentage of „old“/„established“ is

I got a lot of ideas and help from there back when I started and hearing what you say makes me kinda sad tbh. I really hope this is a bubble that bursts sooner rather than later and people come to their senses

@chloecrimson @notthebee

Does anyone with a proper interest in independence from fascist tech still use Reddit? (as in: browse, engage with others) Seems kinda like an odd place to hang out with that sort of preference.

I'd have expected the majority of quality contributors to have left in mid 2023 – whether for #lemmy or for good.
Though I wouldn't know given I'm included in that set ^^'

I can recommend getting off Reddit regardless though; one of the best decisions in my life probably.

ChloeCrimson Mar 14

@Atemu @notthebee There’s still a lot of knowledge in these subreddits, I could understand anyone making an account just for that

@chloecrimson @notthebee

Do you mean knowledge as in "knowledgeable people are there and contribute new information" or historical information from before most knowledgeable people left?

I too "use" Reddit for the latter purpose via my search engine but I don't really consider that to be me using Reddit as a platform. I just read the existing content (usually from many years ago) – through a proxy front-end no less.
IME it's rare to come across a post without redacted comments these days.

ChloeCrimson Mar 14

@Atemu @notthebee I know that there’s historical data and I’d wager (hope?) that there are still people on there that can and do contribute useful information

The amount of posts in the genre of „I have this weird issue with the motherboard, anyone got an idea“ to „yes, here’s the github repo for the exploit that you need to fix this“ was at least astonishing once upon a time. I hope that at least some of these people stayed

Back when Reddit pulled the plug on third party clients, the datahoarder subreddit was talking about options but idk what became of that

@notthebee “I built…” very quickly got added to my mental list of words that makes me skip a post altogether. And also reinforced my desire to write a client that can essentially “grep -v” those kind of posts :)

Kat the Leopardess Mar 14

@notthebee I relate to this feeling.

Root Moose Mar 14

@notthebee This is where I'm at. Not sure what I'm going to do other than go into a pure 'maintenance mode' on home labbing stuff and focus on other projects and tech stacks, stuff not focused on computers and software.

Mason Loring Bliss Mar 14

@notthebee As long as you keep running your own stuff yourself, that's what matters.

There are projects that are steering clear of slop, and there will continue to be projects that steer clear of it.

Keep in mind something that amuses me - those of us who aren't using LLM actually remember how to build things, how to write code. And man, there are a lot of us out there. My kids are learning how to do a bunch of this themselves, from programming to animation, and they're not using LLMs. They're building useful skills while many of their peers are learning a new kind of dependence.

@notthebee I'm sorry to read that :/ A certain "Wolfgang" once sparked my passion for self hosting!
And I feel guilty for asking a chatbot for help when I was fed up with overcomplicated manuals.

@notthebee when you have something to share, we'll be here ready for you. I'm only on here for yourself, Niklas, Alex and Jeff. I have barely any time for being on Mastadon, zero time for discord, reddit, substack etc. But as I can say honestly, I value what you share.