overapplication of suspensions for AI-generated content may be turning away a large number of legitimate contributors to the site
The new owner does not seem to understand that the value of the these sites is the reliability of the information that is amassed here. That the information here, until now, was produced by invested authentic contributors in good faith. That's what draws people to these sites.
Accordingly, dumping unreliable AI content here can not count as legitimate contribution.
The new owner, according to my knowledge, is Prosus N.V. On their portfolio page, they currently seem to list 88 online businesses that are their property. With that many properties, they apparently don't have time to study and realize what makes StackExchange valuable.
They just go after the generic capitalist metric: number of users. We are no more than a bodycount, from now on. The nature of our contributions, Prosus does not recognize.
Furthermore, on the aforementioned portfolio page (in the "Edtech" category) they list only StackOverflow, which is only the flagship of the network of these sites. They seem to ignore that StackOverflow is only a part of the whole. And so they appear to express complete disinterest in the rest of the StackExchange sites.
If they unleash AI content around here, that will undermine the usability of these sites and dilute their value at the same time.
What is interesting, is if they make StackOverflow unusable, the entire world will feel that. The most impactful human creations these times rely on code. Accordingly, disrupting StackOverflow (and Unix&Linux) may disrupt industries, public authorities, and with those, our societies.
But Prosus seem to have only money, and not expertise.
And the StackExchange home team appears to be missing in action too! (Though the Monica Cellio case, its aftermath, and the massive quality hit that the network suffered then, had demonstrated their true attitudes years ago.)
AI is upon us, threatening with the disruption of anything that's done digitally today; the networks organizing our societies are under threat.
Twitter is destroyed, the owners of Reddit are following, now this network here also may join in the self-sabotage, education getting systematically dismantled, greedflation to be observed globally (the capitalist owning class is cashing their investments out as quick as they can, a lot of capitalists seem to not be interested in sustainable business any more (because they might not even know how to do that any more, under the given conditions)), billionaires prepping their bunkers.
This may either be a chain reaction of panic in capitalist systems, or a controlled and planned implosion of public wellbeing — or, as I seem to believe, the blend of the two. When capitalists see that the variant of capitalism oriented at the illusion of human wellbeing is not sustainable any more (it never was, by concept; its implosion was just a matter of time), they now attempt to transition society to some new shape.
Without education, knowledge, without corresponding infrastructure, without democracy.
But one in which they hope to remain on top of the rest of us.
The possible trigger could have been insights into AI potential, I seem to have read somewhere. (Those insights are not necessarily brand new; insiders might have enjoyed years of leeway, behind closed doors.)
In the meanwhile, if someone is willing to bother to save the knowledge that's amassed on StackExchange, I say, it's time to scrape it and archive it somewhere safe, until there is opportunity to do so.
It would also worth asking Canonical if they would be interested in hosting us somewhere else.
Gentlefolks, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.
Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I thank you all, network-wide, for this opportunity to develop personally with you. It's been, and is, an honor.
UPDATE inspired by a discussion with @notthedroids
So I wrote earlier that lot of capitalists don't see the possibility for sustainable business any more, and try to cash out as they can.
I don't know any more if it's SE management to blame or Prosus, but it might be the case that someone there does not see a bright business model for this platform in AI-dominated times.
So maybe they don't see sufficient Return On Investment on running a metaphorical nuclear powerplant indefinitely: maybe they want to set it to explode now, to quickly fry their bacon, the only way they can imagine.
When that ruins the powerplant, that's not their problem. They will have their sorry bacon fried as much as they could, and will be free from the burden of all the sunken cost.
They don't give a damn that this here is no nuclear powerplant, instead, this is the heritage from all of our learnings, hard-won insights, and successful battles that we share here, and that could serve the next generation with all that we could offer.
These sites here carry the fingerprints of our hearts in them!
But for these unworthy people, it's more important to fry their petty bacon, for — in a best-case scenario — like 15 minutes and their petty $1000.
Our cultural heritage, fragments and facets of our authentic personalities, shared in good faith, and frozen in text content, they are uncapable of seeing.
There is a medical diagnosis for people with this condition. It's one of the three items from the "dark triad" psychological theory.
A proposal:
Make SE an UNESCO cultural heritage site, and assign a worthy custodian to it.
Not a joke, and I hope, not a delusion.
In the face of the AI content tsunami, it's time to start to establish natural reserves, and cultural monuments to our cultural heritage.