Despite LLM Slop or Chatbots, Our Traffic Has Doubled Since We Moved Everything to the UK (in 2023)
A lot happened in 2023. I still remember us regularly going to yoga lessons/classes, making better use of outdoor spaces, returning to some normality after COVID-19 (we didn't get infected until late 2023), and the sites getting a fair amount of traffic but only about half what they are getting this year. In 2023 the slop hype was peaking, as many falsely believed that chatbots would somehow replace/misplace everything (no, that did not happen; gaslighting media is just painting everything with the "AI" brush). The demise of news sites was not what we thought it would be; yes, many sites did die or become slopfarms, but at the same time some blogs and news sites rose and took advantage of the vacuum and we'd like to think we're among those. Our pace of publication increased a great deal, we're becoming more and more "mainstream" (in the exposure and acceptance sense) every year, and more people get involved as contributors (community), whistleblowers and so on.
Don't despair in the face of slop; as Andy explains, from this crisis come opportunities too - we might need to build solutions from the ground up, like some American students do with “Quibble”.
Be part of the solution; if you build it, they will come.
My wife Rianne says she still very much enjoys running her site (despite all the abuse she got online for running it) and we believe that we've hit some "targets" (popularity, key topics). And hence, more traffic. The "crab mentality" means that the abuse will intensify, partly due to jealousy.
They say that "haters gonna hate"; it's worse, as sometimes they send death threats. Such threats only reveal their weakness or vulnerabilities. █
Image source: Field of Dreams poster
