“People are concerned that AI is going to turn the internet into a porridge of low-quality service journalism and/or ecommerce marketing, and I’m not worried because that’s what the internet already is.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Zitron says he personally is not worried by fears that AI will turn the internet into a porridge of low-quality service journalism and/or ecommerce marketing, because that is what the internet already is.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, The Internet Is Already Broken, paragraph 13.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-the-internet-is-already-broken-db18b6-a1
We recorded 3 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2023-06-20. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- the internet
- low-quality service journalism and/or ecommerce marketing
- that’s what the internet already is
Our interpretation
- Assess the factual explanation for his lack of concern, not his personal feelings.
- The plain reading is that low-quality service journalism and ecommerce marketing were widespread features of ordinary internet use. It does not require every website to fit this description.
- Use June 2023 through publication as the latest contemporaneous reporting window for this ongoing state. The claim supplies no formal reporting period.
- Affiliate marketing or advertising alone does not establish poor content quality.
Counts as supported if: Broad, reasonably representative evidence from the target period establishes that low-quality service journalism or ecommerce marketing was widespread across the internet people ordinarily encountered.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable evidence establishes that such material was uncommon, rather than a widespread feature of ordinary internet use.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
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 horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The evidence documents a substantial low-quality commercial publishing problem in narrower settings. It does not establish the broad characterization of the internet during June 2023. Individual examples and advertising-placement measurements cannot settle that scope. This is an evidence gap, not evidence that his characterization was false.
Limitations
- The judgment depends on preserving the sentence’s broad scope.
- His personal lack of concern is not independently graded.
- No numerical prevalence threshold is attributed to him.
Evidence (1 item)
Context only: Association of National Advertisers,
21 percent of study impressions
Why it matters here: The study documents substantial exposure to sites made for advertising among participating advertisers. Its observations cover September 2022 through January 2023, and advertising impressions do not measure the prevalence of the specified content across the internet.
- Publisher
- Association of National Advertisers
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
A representative archive-based study of June 2023 internet content or user exposure, with explicit quality criteria and coverage of service journalism and ecommerce marketing.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, The Internet Is Already Broken
People are concerned that AI is going to turn the internet into a porridge of low-quality service journalism and/or ecommerce marketing, and I’m not worried because that’s what the internet already is.
- Where
- paragraph 13
- Published
- 2023-06-20
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-the-internet-is-already-broken-db18b6-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 wyea-the-internet-is-already-broken-db18b6-a1.