[maltalex]

It's not just open source though. Many high quality sources of information are being (over-)exploited and hurt in the process. StackOverflow is effectively dead [0], the internet archive is being shunned by publishers [1], scientific journals are bombarded by fake papers [2] (and anecdotally, low-effort LLM-driven reviews), projects like OpenStreetMap incur significant costs due to scraping [3], and many more.

We went from data mining to data fracking.

[0]: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-...

[1]: https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news-publishers-limit-inte...

[2]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/wiley_journals_ai/

[3]: https://www.heise.de/en/news/OpenStreetMap-is-concerned-thou...

[_aavaa_]

StackOverflow was well on its way to death even without ChatGPT, just look at the graph from [0]. It has been in steady consistent decline since 2014 (minus a very transient blip from covid).

Then the chagpt effect is a sudden drop in visitors. But the rate of decline after that looks more or less the same as pre-chatgpt.

[silverwind]

StackOverflow was killed by its toxic moderators. I hope it stays online thought because it's massive source of knowledge, although in many cases outdated already.

[ggregoire]

> StackOverflow was well on its way to death even without ChatGPT, just look at the graph from [0]. It has been in steady consistent decline since 2014.

> [0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-... (monthly question asked on Stack Overflow)

"monthly questions asked" is a weird metric to measure the decline of StackOverflow tho. How many times are people gonna ask how to compare 2 dates in python, or how to efficiently iterate an array in javascript? According to the duplicates rule on SO, should be once anyway. So it's just inevitable that "monthly questions asked" will forever decrease after reaching its peak, since everything has already been asked. Didn't mean it was dead tho, people still needed to visit the site to read the responses.

A better metric to measure its decline would be "monthly visits", which I guess was still pretty high pre LLM (100s of millions per month?), even if the "monthly questions asked" was declining. But now I imagine their "monthly visits" is closer to zero than 1M. I mean, even if you don't use Claude and its friends, searching anything about programming on Google returns a Gemini answer that probably comes from StackOverflow, removing any reason to ever visit the site…

[raxxorraxor]

Mods made asking questions a very hostile experience since they had a flawed ideal of SO becoming some form of encyclopedia. So no wonder people jumped on another train as quickly as possible, especially since it so often was a mistake to close a question whose next best answer was a long deprecated solution.

It still has some corners where people are better, but this is mostly the smaller niches.

[lelele]

I don't know about others, but I switched to Reddit or forums for asking and answering questions because it offered a much smoother experience.

[torginus]

We can only hope reddit shares the same fate. Its only saving grace - as much as it pains me to say it - is that it's still not Facebook

[AbstractH24]

StackOverflow is the next iteration of Yahoo Answers.

[rurp]

Even if we completely avoid the worst case scenarios where AI obliterates the job market or evolves into a paperclip maximizer, it has a good shot of being the most destructive technology in generations. The tech industry has already done a lot of harm to our social fabric with social media, gambling, and other addictive innovations replacing real life experiences and personal connections. This has led to well documented increases in depression, loneliness, and political extremism.

Now it seems AI is poised to eliminate most of the good innovations that tech brought about, and will probably crank social strife up to 11. It already feels like the foundations of the developed world have gotten shaky; I shudder to think what a massive blow will bring about.

I've read enough history to know that I really, really don't want to live through a violent revolution, or a world war, or a great depression.

[renegade-otter]

After the iPhone, every single "innovation" has wrecked all kinds of havoc. Whatever we have is not healthy, and AI is going to supercharge that.

[nunez]

AI also killed Reddit (the API changes were motivated by early GPT iirc)

So so SO much good stuff is gone now and much of what's left is AI cruft

[randomNumber7]

I think reddit was killed by a moderation that only allows the most norrowminded persons to have their echo-chamber.

[gf000]

Well, Reddit surely didn't help the issue with how it was all handled.

[AbstractH24]

AI has certainly killed Reddit.

But where do people turn next? There were a lot of benefits to some of its niche communities.

[lawstkawz]

That’s entropy for you.

Society is a Ship Theseus; each generation ripping off planks and nailing their own in place.

Having been online since the late 80s (am only mid 40s...grandpa worked at IBM, hooked me and my siblings up with the latest kit on the regular) I have read comments like this over and over as the 90s internet, 00s internet, now the 2010s state of the "information super highway" has been replaced.

Tbh things have felt quite stagnant and "stuck" the last 20 years. All the investment in and caretaking of web SaaS infrastructure and JS apps and jobs for code camp grads made it feel like tech had come to a standstill relative to the pace of software progress prior to the last 15-ish years.

[d_silin]

Overpromises and overhyping of AI is making all of IT industry worse.

[sixtyj]

Everytime I start to discuss LLM/AI with non-IT people it is the same. Absurd expectations. Or denial of AI.

But as CEOs like Altman, Musk or Amodei have some much space in media, they can amplify their products - as good salesmen :)

I think that we are in times similar to 1997-1999, “everything will be web”.

[csomar]

Stack Overflow is an interesting case because these days most people ask questions on Discord instead. The data isn't public, and the search functionality is terrible. It makes no sense, but somehow companies still prefer it even though it's inefficient and the same questions keep getting asked over and over.

[arcologies1985]

> and the same questions keep getting asked over and over.

This is a feature not a bug. The people asking those questions are new blood and accepting and integrating them is how you sustain your community.

[m4rtink]

Looks like at least Discord is recently decided to finally fix the issues caused by having users & are trying very hard to not have any going forward through insane identity verification mandates enforced by the most toxic partner companies ever. :)

[karmakurtisaani]

> the same questions keep getting asked over and over.

More user engagement, users spend more time on the platform. These companies don't have the best interest of users in mind.

[nicbou]

Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT are also killing traffic to information websites

[BrandoElFollito]

StackOverflow was destroyed by a steady stream of miserable questions, and then by the infinite ego of moderators and power users.

They forgot that there are still people asking good questions and started to close everything.

Z downvote from z bozo weights the sama as one from an expert.

You need to bend backwards znd then lay flat to not annoy mods

Meta is the nest of psychopathic narcissists.

And many more.

Stack Exchange sites such as cooking or latex (and other niche ones) work very well. It is just that people are not full of themselves.

I started with SE ca 2014, loved it, participated a lot, accumulated half a million internet points and now hate the place. It did not age well.