App Store Slop Is Coming

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3 points·ihaveajob··6 comments

Yeah it’s already here. The attention economy is about to become a whole lot more expensive

AI collapses the cost of “good enough” content in every medium.

Disagree a little - there are media where "good enough" is great. Advertising, propaganda, scams, are all arenas where "good enough" is maybe even better than what we have now, from the advertiser, the Temu Goebbels and the scammers point of view.

I think there are areas where "good enough" (chabuduo, anyone?) won't really clear the bar. Anything were safety or accuracy are required, slop just won't do.

Yes, that's a good point. I don't think the public is ready to accept a vibe-coded medical diagnostic system (hopefully), but software in the app stores specifically is rarely used for mission-critical tasks, and I think that's why it's the next frontier for slop.

If you use the App Store the way the people run them want you to (browse instead of using the search that they hide in a corner) you will find it is already 99% slop. I make a point to only install an app by name if I know the brand (e.g. McDonald's or Taco Bell) or if it is something really famous (e.g. Arknights, Fate Grand/Order)

If you just go looking for a "game" I'm certain whatever you find won't be fun at all.

my game is pretty sweet, i built the real-time ocean physics system from scratch https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hydrofoil-surfing/id6753151332

Yes, but that's mostly hand-made slop. What I'm referring to is 100% automatically generated apps from start to end. Potentially orders of magnitude larger volume, once you realize you can churn an app an hour and have it published, with the reviewers effectively unable to do meaningful testing.

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