I think there's probably a lot more trash today. There's a lot more of everything.

The number of books published each year in the US has grown by something like 300x over the past one hundred years, if you only count traditional publishing (and not print-on-demand).

There’s lots more today. You can go to Amazon and search for any very specific niche subject and find AI generated books that claim to address that subject. The ability to churn out useless garbage with few resources is at an all time high and will continue to increase.