[jpfr]

Exactly, everybody can publish on arXiv. And there are enough semi-predatory journals/conferences which basically accept everybody. Especially since the LLM can rewrite any paragraph nicely.

So the role of journals and conferences is not to prevent "the word getting out". It is to provide value by a curated list of on-topic and high-quality publications.

So no need to wade through tons of crap. Especially for PhD students who might take more time to detect crap as such.

In my experience, the publications at the good venues get a lot more eye-balls and by consequence citations. So there seem to be a lot of people who like this role as a "filter" for what to focus on.