Coverage spread: 2 sources — 1 center · 1 international
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What happened
LinkedIn introduced a new “Seems like AI slop” button this week, letting users flag posts and comments they believe are low-quality or overly reliant on artificial intelligence. The option appears in the menu that opens when a user clicks the options button on a post. LinkedIn’s chief product officer, Hari Srinivasan, announced the feature in a platform post, saying “slop is hard to define and the definition changes; this lets us tune our models and make better feeds.” He called combating AI slop “a top priority for all of us,” adding “we really care about this.”
Alongside the new flagging tool, LinkedIn is retiring its “enhance your post” feature — which used AI to rewrite user posts — and replacing it with a simpler proofreading tool designed to correct writing without altering a user’s voice. The company also says it has stepped up bot detection and profile/page verification. Srinivasan said LinkedIn now blocks hundreds of thousands of automated slop-comment attempts daily and has stopped “billions” of other automation attempts, including mass-posting schemes, over the past couple of months. He was careful to note that AI use isn’t inherently bad — many users refine genuine thoughts with AI assistance — and that the new tool is meant to flag content that reads as “inauthentic,” not to penalize all AI-assisted writing.
Days earlier, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, announced it will stop recommending videos that are wholly AI-generated in its Spotlight discovery feed, which surfaces content from users across the app. Content that has merely been edited or enhanced with Snapchat’s own AI creative tools is exempt from the change, though such videos will now carry transparency labels. Snap said it wants Spotlight to remain a place for “authentic creativity from real people,” describing fully AI-generated content as typically low-quality and repetitive.
Wider industry context
Both articles place these moves within a broader wave of platform responses to AI-generated content proliferating since ChatGPT’s 2022 release. The BBC notes that YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Substack have all rolled out related measures in roughly the same two-week span. Substack CEO Chris Best introduced a tool letting readers detect AI-generated writing, warning that “platforms that reward fakeness will create a race to the bottom” and citing research suggesting up to 40% of social media writing may now be fake or AI-generated. YouTube separately updated its monetization policies this month regarding AI-assisted content, according to the BBC, though specifics of that policy change aren’t detailed in either source.
Fortune cites a study by AI-detection company Pangram finding that 40% of long-form LinkedIn posts and 30% of short-form posts were flagged as fully AI-generated, underscoring the scale of the problem LinkedIn is trying to address. The BBC references separate research indicating that as more AI-generated content appears in a feed, users become increasingly skeptical that any content they see is genuine — a trust erosion both outlets treat as a core motivation behind these platform changes.
How the coverage compares
Fortune’s account centers specifically on LinkedIn’s rollout, giving fuller detail on the mechanics of the new slop-flagging button, the removal of the “enhance your post” tool, and Srinivasan’s specific quotes about detection volumes and platform philosophy. It also uses Meta as a contrasting example, noting that Meta has taken the opposite approach by building out its own generative media tools, including a newly launched “Muse Image” model capable of generating images from references like people, clothing, and environments, plus a preview of “Muse Video.” This contrast — platforms cracking down on AI content versus Meta leaning into building AI content tools — is unique to Fortune’s framing and situates LinkedIn’s move against an industry that isn’t uniformly resistant to AI-generated media.
The BBC’s coverage is broader in scope, treating Snapchat’s Spotlight change as its lead and weaving in LinkedIn, YouTube, and Substack as part of a larger industry pattern rather than focusing on any single company. It emphasizes the research angle more heavily, citing survey findings about eroding trust in online content and quoting Substack’s Chris Best at length, material that does not appear in Fortune’s piece. Both outlets agree on the core facts about LinkedIn’s new button, Srinivasan’s quotes, and the volume figures on blocked automation attempts, with no factual contradictions between them.
Why it matters
The near-simultaneous moves by LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube and Substack signal that major platforms increasingly view unchecked AI-generated content as a threat to user trust and engagement rather than simply a curiosity of new technology. The tension both articles surface — platforms trying to filter out “slop” while companies like Meta invest heavily in generative content tools — highlights an unresolved industry split over whether AI-made media undermines or enhances user experience, with no clear consensus yet on where authenticity lines should be drawn.
Sources
Featured photo: Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)