“Automatic tools like these will surely accelerate the enshittification of the internet that I discussed yesterday.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Automatic misinformation generation tools will accelerate the degradation of the internet.
Assessment: Unresolved No deadline stated on 2026-10-29 Evidence as of
Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it
Marcus on AI, Automatic Disinformation Threatens Democracy— and It’s Here, paragraph 9.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment marcus-automatic-disinformation-threatens-f6732a-a1
We recorded 12 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-29. The source may have been edited after 2023-08-17. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Forecast
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No deadline stated
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No deadline stated (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- Automatic tools like these
- will surely accelerate
- the enshittification of the internet
Our interpretation
- In context, degradation means increased contamination of online information by misleading content.
- Acceleration means that automated misinformation generation makes this contamination increase faster. More AI-generated content alone does not establish this.
- The claim concerns the internet broadly and supplies neither a deadline nor a numerical threshold.
Counts as supported if: Longitudinal evidence establishes that automated misinformation generation increases the rate of online misinformation growth across a sufficiently broad sample.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable evidence establishes that these tools do not accelerate misinformation growth, or instead reduce it, over the scope being assessed.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Did the forecast come true?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No deadline stated
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
Research documents growing synthetic misinformation and substantial virality on X. It also finds qualifications concerning harmfulness. These findings are relevant, but they do not establish that automated misinformation tools accelerated degradation across the internet. No decisive event meets the early-resolution rule, and the forecast has no deadline.
Limitations
- The assessment uses misinformation contamination as the ordinary contextual meaning of degradation.
- Available platform studies are observational and depend on selective detection.
Evidence (2 items)
Context only: Chrysidis, Papadopoulos, and Papadopoulos / arXiv,
expanded access
Why it matters here: The study reports growth in flagged synthetic visual misinformation, including during 2025. The authors describe a correlation; this does not isolate causation or establish an internet-wide rate of degradation.
- Publisher
- Chrysidis, Papadopoulos, and Papadopoulos / arXiv
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Drolsbach, Demirel, and Pröllochs / arXiv,
Believability and Harmfulness
Why it matters here: For posts collected through January 2025, the study finds greater virality but lower annotated believability and harmfulness for AI-generated misinformation. These assessments qualify a simple equation between more synthetic content and greater harm, but do not measure acceleration.
- Publisher
- Drolsbach, Demirel, and Pröllochs / arXiv
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
Broad longitudinal measurements showing that automated generation caused misinformation to grow faster, with changes in detection and overall posting accounted for.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Marcus on AI, Automatic Disinformation Threatens Democracy— and It’s Here
Automatic tools like these will surely accelerate the enshittification of the internet that I discussed yesterday.
- Where
- paragraph 9
- Published
- 2023-08-17
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment marcus-automatic-disinformation-threatens-f6732a-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment marcus-automatic-disinformation-threatens-f6732a-a1.