Post

Greg Pak
@gregpak.net

I find this intriguing because I'm a HUGE "A.i." hater, but I don't even think attie is the worst example out there - as I understand it, it's a feed creator, not a content scraper/thief. But it's "A.i.," so it's potentially contributing to the environmental/economic issues we've seen... AND...

Greg Pak
@gregpak.net

...since it's "A.i.," I think it's justifiable to suspicious of mission creep and additional "A.i." crap to follow that DOES scrape and steal data and contribute to disinfo and bullshit. It was also AGGRESSIVELY marketed as "A.i." - down to the domain name - to a platform of users that HATE "A.i."

3 reposts126 likes

Greg Pak
@gregpak.net

Maybe the product will work fine. But it ALSO feels like a situation where tech overlords are pushing "A.i." onto something that doesn't need it. If feeds are so hard to create, why not just... make a better, more intuitive feed creator with better UI?

DavidNelsonNM
@davidnelsonnm.bsky.social

Similar to what you said, complex feed creation was a choice. Solvable long before 2026 & AI. Not all will agree, but I find amusing they are hoisted on their own shared block list petard.

Greg Pak
@gregpak.net

I also suspect a big part of the backlash is that dedicated users have a long list of features that we've been requesting for years now - and this was absolutely not on that list. (The ability to make accounts private is the most important unrealized feature. I know it's hard! But it's key.)

Greg Pak
@gregpak.net

Last thought: I think they also dug their grave here by creating an account for this thing with a cutesy name, so many people no doubt assumed it would be an LLM bot account and blocked it for that reason alone.

Aaron Bossig
@aaronbossig.bsky.social

I think a huge part of this is that internet users are tired of being treated like an obstacle in the platforms *they* make viable. It’s sensible for us to show how we want these services to work, and to stop acting like good design is an accident.