Vibe coded slop that collapsed under its own weight. I didn’t realize there was anything remaining to even sell. It’s got to be the easiest payday that guy’s ever had. How do I do this? I can vibe code garbage too but nobody ever offers to pay me for it.
It just kills me that there are so many incentives in this world to be a shitty person. I could do that. God knows I need the money. But I'm over here stuck in the grind with my stupid old conscience, trying to keep pushing that rock up the mountain year after year like a loser.
I don’t think there was much purpose other than for fun. Essentially, the purpose is to generate entertainment for people. Which it seems to have done.
It’s no different than Subreddit Similator running on markov chains circa 2015
I happen to value quality over novelty, and these LLM-regurgitated chunks of unmaintainable code are consistentlypoorquality.
I could write an essay, but if you struggle to see why anybody who has worked in the software industry at any point could be upset by current industry trends, that likely says a lot about you. Personally, I could not imagine shipping such a flawed product- and I definitely would not accept money for it. Why are you so defensive about this?
Personally, I could not imagine shipping such a flawed product-
Flawed how? It's just a novelty project in a really new field. I don't know what do you ship exactly, but as a senior dev in enterprise, corners are cut all the time, I have plenty of past colleagues of mine to thank for mountains of unmaintainable nightmare code that nobody better touch now and we have very big and well known clients which rely on all this. And let me tell you, none of them give a rat's ass about it, or rather they do, but it's just a norm in the industry. That's the cost of actually shipping a product and all that legacy "flawed code" is making a ton of money, and the company has been acquired for a ton of money as well.
So, to me, this is completely in line with how software development works as a business, it just happens to be AI related.
Why are you so defensive about this?
Because all too often on tildes I see responses that seem more like dismissive grandstanding by somebody who is just disgruntled rather than any sort of analysis based in the real world.
You regularly ship software which is susceptible to prompt injections, or fails to protect critical endpoints, or provides API (edit: sp.) keys over un-authenticated channels? You often forget to secure your databases, leaving them world-accessible?
Shipping code which has low-maintainability, or code which "works well enough", might be excusable (though a disappointing reality), but shipping code that fails to pass the simplest of cybersecurity audits is inexcusable.
Marketing stuff is how you do it. The most lucrative is rarely the first or the best, and I think that’s a real shame, because if we aligned the incentives better we could have a lot more smart people focused on quality and utility.
The concept is well-outlined in this article which was posted to Tildes mid-February, though it appears to have been removed at some point since.
But basically, it's the sort of person who ships product-after-product, hoping to make it big. The sort of person who doesn't question if something is possible, they just promise to make it happen anyway (Tesla self driving, perhaps?). The sort of person who does not necessarily have the competence to fulfill the promises they make, so outsources the work (either to another country, or to an LLM).
Agency is important- nothing would get done without it- but the technology sector seems to value agency over competency.
I was looking into Moltbook about a month ago. A social network for "ai agents". Fat chance. At that time, I was able to easily set up an unverified twitter account, and then register myself as an agent, made posts and comments. In under an hour, I could make posts as a human. So much for "no humans allowed". Of course if you look at the site for more than 10 minutes, you'll notice the thousands of spam posts, redirecting users to untrusted domains, pushing crypto coins, scams, you name it. Of course if one random guy like me can make a post, someone with real money and interest can rent servers and post scams around the clock. There are some other security concerns/criticims on their wikipedia page for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moltbook
If you look into the creator of Moltbook, mentioned in the article, his Twitter is full of hype, crypto, scammy stuff. Why Meta would decide to hire this guy, who knows. It's not for the Moltbook codebase I don't think, I'm sure they could create a clone of it pretty quickly. It could be that they are just buying the idea and will launch their own version of it with real security? Or maybe it just got enough eyeballs, has AI in the name, and Meta has the money to spend.
lynxy | 11 hours ago
And another high agency idiot receives millions of dollars (probably), and validation, as a sacrifice to the hype machine.
balooga | 8 hours ago
Vibe coded slop that collapsed under its own weight. I didn’t realize there was anything remaining to even sell. It’s got to be the easiest payday that guy’s ever had. How do I do this? I can vibe code garbage too but nobody ever offers to pay me for it.
fxgn | 6 hours ago
You need to be good at grifting and hyping things up on Twitter. The same kind of people who made money from the NFT/memecoin hype.
balooga | 6 hours ago
It just kills me that there are so many incentives in this world to be a shitty person. I could do that. God knows I need the money. But I'm over here stuck in the grind with my stupid old conscience, trying to keep pushing that rock up the mountain year after year like a loser.
stu2b50 | 3 hours ago
It’s just an acquihire.
babypuncher | 2 hours ago
Even if it worked, I don't understand why LLMs need a social networking platform at all. I'm starting to think tech bros believe these things are actually intelligent and sapient even they they categorically aren't.
stu2b50 | 2 hours ago
I don’t think there was much purpose other than for fun. Essentially, the purpose is to generate entertainment for people. Which it seems to have done.
It’s no different than Subreddit Similator running on markov chains circa 2015
Lobachevsky | 7 hours ago
Well, yeah... Making new stuff that no one else has is how you do it. Why are you so negative about this?
lynxy | 4 hours ago
I happen to value quality over novelty, and these LLM-regurgitated chunks of unmaintainable code are consistently poor quality.
I could write an essay, but if you struggle to see why anybody who has worked in the software industry at any point could be upset by current industry trends, that likely says a lot about you. Personally, I could not imagine shipping such a flawed product- and I definitely would not accept money for it. Why are you so defensive about this?
Lobachevsky | 3 hours ago
Flawed how? It's just a novelty project in a really new field. I don't know what do you ship exactly, but as a senior dev in enterprise, corners are cut all the time, I have plenty of past colleagues of mine to thank for mountains of unmaintainable nightmare code that nobody better touch now and we have very big and well known clients which rely on all this. And let me tell you, none of them give a rat's ass about it, or rather they do, but it's just a norm in the industry. That's the cost of actually shipping a product and all that legacy "flawed code" is making a ton of money, and the company has been acquired for a ton of money as well.
So, to me, this is completely in line with how software development works as a business, it just happens to be AI related.
Because all too often on tildes I see responses that seem more like dismissive grandstanding by somebody who is just disgruntled rather than any sort of analysis based in the real world.
lynxy | 3 hours ago
You regularly ship software which is susceptible to prompt injections, or fails to protect critical endpoints, or provides API (edit: sp.) keys over un-authenticated channels? You often forget to secure your databases, leaving them world-accessible?
Shipping code which has low-maintainability, or code which "works well enough", might be excusable (though a disappointing reality), but shipping code that fails to pass the simplest of cybersecurity audits is inexcusable.
Greg | 4 hours ago
Marketing stuff is how you do it. The most lucrative is rarely the first or the best, and I think that’s a real shame, because if we aligned the incentives better we could have a lot more smart people focused on quality and utility.
Ozzy | 3 hours ago
There's something called principles and doing things for the good of humanity.
This AI slop shit is anything but.
papasquat | 5 hours ago
Could you explain what you mean by high agency?
lynxy | 4 hours ago
The concept is well-outlined in this article which was posted to Tildes mid-February, though it appears to have been removed at some point since.
But basically, it's the sort of person who ships product-after-product, hoping to make it big. The sort of person who doesn't question if something is possible, they just promise to make it happen anyway (Tesla self driving, perhaps?). The sort of person who does not necessarily have the competence to fulfill the promises they make, so outsources the work (either to another country, or to an LLM).
Agency is important- nothing would get done without it- but the technology sector seems to value agency over competency.
papasquat | 3 hours ago
Gotcha, interesting (and pretty depressing) article. I don't think I've ever heard the word used that way.
I think my main descriptor of the type of person being described as "agentic" would instead be "impulsive".
googs | 2 hours ago
I was looking into Moltbook about a month ago. A social network for "ai agents". Fat chance. At that time, I was able to easily set up an unverified twitter account, and then register myself as an agent, made posts and comments. In under an hour, I could make posts as a human. So much for "no humans allowed". Of course if you look at the site for more than 10 minutes, you'll notice the thousands of spam posts, redirecting users to untrusted domains, pushing crypto coins, scams, you name it. Of course if one random guy like me can make a post, someone with real money and interest can rent servers and post scams around the clock. There are some other security concerns/criticims on their wikipedia page for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moltbook
If you look into the creator of Moltbook, mentioned in the article, his Twitter is full of hype, crypto, scammy stuff. Why Meta would decide to hire this guy, who knows. It's not for the Moltbook codebase I don't think, I'm sure they could create a clone of it pretty quickly. It could be that they are just buying the idea and will launch their own version of it with real security? Or maybe it just got enough eyeballs, has AI in the name, and Meta has the money to spend.
pete_the_paper_boat | 5 hours ago
recession indicator