The quality hasn't changed. The volume has. It used to take real human time to create garbage. There was value in that. Someone though "Hmm, what worthless thing can I do? I know! I'll make people online mad." And then they spent the time getting someone else's goat. It was great. A good balance, spreading lies took some minimum effort. Now we have automated garbage. And the flavor of the garbage is: gaslighting people with an illusion of community. We've empowered the trolls with an infinite meme-o-rater while ignoring the real human time spent unwillingly sifting through the ever increasing pile of worthlessness.

The world does not have to get worse. We're letting it though.

If I recall it was an artifact of the compression algo.

Full context and details: https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...