by James Wallace Harris, 7/12/26
Rebecca Jennings, writing for the Intelligencer at New York Magazine, tells about how Zuhair Lakhani has created an army of AI tech influencers to promote your online product. This really bums me out. I knew that companies paid people to promote their products through fake reviews, social media testimonials, and endless scams. But the idea of armies of AI-generated agents putting all those desperate humans dreaming of making a quick buck out of work is even more depressing.
Grifters are scummy, but AI grifters are enough to make me go analog.
Using AI to automate the worst of being online is a bridge too far for me. Humans should create AI buyers to pretend to buy from all the AI sellers.
In October, Lakhani announced Doublespeed and claimed it was the only venture-capital-backed bot farm in America when he received an investment from Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. “Because why let Russia and China have all the fun?” Lakhani asks in his launch video, in which he peels a digital mask off a pretty young woman’s face to reveal his own, sitting in front of a green-lit stack of phones, a cyberpunk set for an explicitly bleak vision. “Never pay a human again,” reads Doublespeed’s website, which advertises the ability to create AI personas on TikTok like a 62-year-old mother in Phoenix or a Gen-Z skater in Atlanta who will then post about your product. The investment was part of a16z’s three-month Speedrun accelerator program, in which young founders with start-up ideas can receive investments up to $1 million from the firm. Peers included “the world’s first AI-powered credit card,” the “world’s largest Netflix-quality AI streaming platform,” and a “Bible-based AI buddy,” which together formed what the tech publication 404 Media called an “AI-generated hell on earth.”
There is so much about the internet I love, but enshitafication is happening faster than I can try to stay cheerful and positive.
I also love watching YouTube, but AI is ruining it, too. I love learning from little documentaries, but it drives me bonkers when supposedly historical “facts” are illustrated with obviously fake photos. I know much of YouTube is created by lone creators, who don’t have the resources of professional documentary makers. But if you don’t have actual photos or videos that match your subject, please don’t generate AI slop. It just makes me cringe.
And I’m so tired of all the natural healthcare testimonials on Facebook and Instagram. If there were easy cures for all those ills, those ills wouldn’t exist.
This is one area where AI is helpful. I’ve found that if you take any claim for a natural remedy and give it to an AI, it will debunk it or explain why the claim has limited positive effects.
The internet is being ruined by greed, hate, delusion, lies, and people trying to validate their personal beliefs by brainwashing others to believe the way they do. It’s all grifting.
AI makes it much too easy for people to become grifters.
Is there any way to fix the internet? I’ve wondered if we should start over with another internet where every user has to be validated with something like a RealID. Leave the old internet in place for people who like to hang out on the dark web and be anonymous, but create another web where every packet has a validated user.
What would the Internet be like if every IP address had a validated user ID attached to it?
For now, I’m just going to start avoiding anything that smells fake, even if it looks fun. If the Internet continues to enshitify, then I’ll go back to the analog world.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 