Been banned for AI-Slop on a few subs here on Lemmy as well as on Reddit.
I always provide a good amount of technical detail in my posts and i try to be as transparant and communicative about the details. My projects are very complicated and I try to document them well.
my project is pretty cryptography-heavy… the act of me sharing my efforts in an attempt to show transparency… but it is used against my project by calling it AI-slop (undermining Kerkhoff’s principles).
It’s 2026 and most developers are using AI. I have used it to create things like formal proof and verification.
my project is aimed to be a secure messaging app. i have all the bells-and-whistles there along with documentation… but if the conversation cant move past “its AI-generated”… then it seems the cryptography/cybersecurity/privacy community isnt aligned with the fact that using AI is now common practice for developers of all levels.
AI is a tool. you cant (and shouldnt) “trust” AI to do anything without oversight. AI does not replace the due-diligence that has always been needed. i dont “trust” my hammer to bash in a nail… i “use” the hammer. AI is not different in how you need to be responsible for how its used.
i’ve busted my ass on my project for it to be called AI slop. i think its completely fine when it comes from folks in the community. cryptography is a serious subject and my ideas and implementation SHOULD/MUST be scrutinised… but its simply ignorant if mods are banning me for the quality of my work considering the the level of transparency and my engagement on discussions about it.
It’s a bit reductive to call it slop. I think i try harder than most in providing links, code and documentation. Of course I used AI… and it’s clearer for it. (you can find more detail on my profile)
i am of course sour from being banned, but am i wrong to think my code isnt AI slop? Some parts of my project are clearly lazy-ui… but im not sharing on some UI/UX/design sub. the cryptography module has unit tests and formal verification. if that is AI-slop and can result in me being banned, i simply dont have faith in that community to be objective on the reality of where AI can contribute.
while its understandable people dont want to review AI-slop… i think the cryptography/cybersecurity community needs to get on board with the idea of using AI to help in reviewing such code. am i wrong? is the future of cryptography is still people performing manual review of the breathtaking volumes of AI code?
deleted by creator
Some communities have “no-AI” rules. If you didn’t break any, maybe you’ve been targeted by moderators that partake in cancel culture?
If that’s the case, at least helps to sift through communities. And worse comes worst, maybe start a personal community to share what you make?
I think you need to speak to a mental health specialist, because AI psychosis can be really destructive. We all have problems, but using chat bots to make us feel better is dangerous for you and those around you, even if it feels good in the moment. These bots are designed to tell you exactly what you want to hear so that you become addicted to them.
I’m going to guess you didn’t accomplish much as a software engineer before AI? The personal deficiencies at the core of that are still there even if you use AI to tell you otherwise. I won’t speculate what those deficiencies are, but I just want you to engage in some honest introspection. Absolutely nobody will trust someone like you to handle such a sensitive topic like cryptography. Stop wasting your short time on this earth on something so stupid. Go make literally anything else.
wow thats deep analysis and advice. i generally think i do well.
i work on my project and cryptography because its interesting. i worked with cryptography long before AI… but like a “regular” developer on a sideproject, im going to use AI.
i actively seek advice about the code in my project. i only share my work after ive put what i think is enough time and effort. it clearly isnt enough that the project “works”. in cybersec its important for code to be audited or reviewed, that fundamentally isnt an option on a project like mine unless i share something that is described as “AI-slop”. that feedback is fine. it’s important that its open source.
it might not be fun for most, but this is something i work on because its enjoyable to me. its open source for transparency and critisism. i just want to take “AI” as a critisism, off the table because i cant quantify my involvement… which is a understandably wild thing to ask so i try to approach it with caution.
i work on several project that interest me. many but not all are open source. they exist because i woke up some day and decided i wanted to create something.
i generally think i do well.
What are some of your engineering or research accomplishments? Where is your linkedin or github profile showing projects before ~2022?
i worked with cryptography long before AI
What kind of work did you do with cryptography? It couldn’t have been much if you don’t see what’s wrong with what you’re doing. “I set up LetsEncrypt on a web server” doesn’t count as experience.
Any answer you provide to these questions are worthless unless you’re willing to reveal your identity here. That’s the only way to build any credibility, and without credibility nobody should trust you with something like this.
this is something i work on because its enjoyable to me
No, this is something you’re working on because you’re hoping to make money from it. I remember you posting about this project some months ago and you mentioned as much. If it isn’t AI psychosis, then it’s a grift and you’re a snake oil salesman. Idk what you’re expecting to hear? This is a programming community; it’s probably the last place you’ll get positive feedback for this obvious trainwreck.
Unless you invented some new form of encryption why are you generating so much ai slop?
Just reuse human made cryptography libraries that are battle tested. Then you won’t have to do disastrous things like putting ai to review your ai slop.
You know that it lies, gaslights, writes or deletes production databases, tests etc as it pleases.
your right. my version of what your describing exists here: https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat
not AI slop, but slop of a different kind. purely a webpp and uses audited crypto primitives from the browser. webrtc is already encrypted, but there is a diffie-helman key exchange (you can share public key hashes to guard againt mitm sttacks). i put time and effort there and documented it to seek some kind of open source support. it didnt work out.
my plan was always to beef up the encryption. i wanted to add the signal protocol. i asked on eddit and i couldnt find something suitable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/1mi4ooa/looking_for_the_signal_protocol_in_javascript
i can ue AI to sweat it out myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/1orsjw2/signal_protocol_in_javascript
there is a great deal of effort that i simply cant quantify.
I’ve read some other comments and wanted to add.
You cannot use a LLM to verify its own work
They have no ability to think. Any intelligence they have is extremely limited. There a mostly automatic copy and paste machines. They pull code from their training data and online and attempt to compose the.
Using a LLM to verify its own work is like asking a criminal to run their own trial.
That’s just now any of this works. I think you should take a step back from the LLM and really start evaluating your work more critically. There is more to software then “it works!”
i stated off with a version i created manually without AI. i know how to do this old-school (i tried). that was a different kind of slop.
https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat
i use AI in a way i think is appropriate. i check as much as i can myself too. i post online about details and questions. i can iterate with AI. im may naive to think i know how to inpect what is created, so i share it online. im not sharing slop. this is the best i can do. of couse there are countless points of improvement, but there are only so many hours in the day.
youre sharing a valid opinion, but its difficult for me to quantify my efforts. im sure you dont think i just asked AI something basic (e.g. “verify this code is correct”).
I avoid slop code like yours because typically the user of the slop generator has no real idea of how things actually work, the slop is over-“engineered”, and it’s likely full of security issues. Further, it also wastes tons of resources just for poorly written slop.
I especially wouldn’t ever touch your cryptographic slop.
No matter how hard you pet your LLM, this project is not your work. LLM output attribution is a gray zone by design. Your assumption that vibe coding has overtaken software development is a big red flag imho. I wonder where you’ve acquired this belief. If you’ve been banned from multiple communities already I recommend you reflect upon this.
I can and I will.
AI-slop is easy to generate, but there needs to be a recognition that at some point ai-generated code is no longer slop. the failure to recognise that is the issue that seems to have got me banned.
at some point ai-generated code is no longer slop
That point is when you have a human expert validate that the ai-generated code is correct. If the community as a whole has given up on doing that, it does not retroactively make all LLM-generated code not-slop, it just means slop is the norm.
And obviously from the reception you’ve gotten, even that has yet to occur.
Even if that were true (and in some rare cases it probably is) the machine is trained on stolen data, ignoring all licensing or companies selling people’s contributions without their approval - and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
To call it slop is a great way to discredit it and to not support an unethical business/technology.
to call it slop just undermines the time and effort i put into the project. its not just code, i put efforts towards testing and documentation. but sure… if you want to believe you’re poking holes on big-tech’s practices here.
To focus on the supposed time you put into it ignores the massive and numerous problems people here pointed out in many responses.
I get you are hurt by being banned, I really do and I probably disagree with it. But the problem with this “tool” (as you repeatedly frame it, trying to make it neutral) is not centered on you or any other individual. I’m sorry, sincerely.
look I’m all for using LLMs for tedious or straight forward transformations of easily verifiable logic. The issue is they LLMs are sycophantic by nature and we are seeing a lot of newly freed “geniuses” who have promised “no no no. You see! I know the secret to using them for good!”
It’s like the one ring. If you start using it for doing anything beyond reformating, anything that requires critical thinking, you’ve already trapped yourself.
You’ll feel like your work is quality when it isn’t.
Personally I still think the quality of LLM code is crap for pretty much anything. Much better done by a well seasoned developer, which is harder to come by then people think. A LLM can help in some narrow cases but not many.
Cryptography is notoriously easy to get wrong. If you don’t know enough about it - you should not offload it to the hallucination machine, because you will not be able to verify it properly, and those who can - will not bother to.
This is not what a real audit looks like and it should not be presented as such. This “audit” is, in fact, slop.
Auditor: Security Analysis (Automated + Manual Review)
Do you not see the problem in this line?
The implementation uses real cryptographic primitives
Or this?
perfect. you get it. you understand that generating an AI audit is wild!
the AI audit comes after a long time of to-and-fro from the various communities that asked for an audit… of course they asked for a professional one… but those that ask, must know that they are all prohibitively expensive. especially for a solo vibecoding dev like myself.
i also understand that people would prefer a project with a team of experts… sorry to break it to you, a team of experts are not going to hire themselves on an unfunded project like this.
while the security audit, unit test, formal proofs and verification are not good enough when its done with AI, my hope was that it could serve as a starting point for anyone like ROS to perform an actual review. i cant offer more transparancy that open source, documented and discussions.
of course they asked for a professional one… but those that ask, must know that they are all prohibitively expensive. especially for a solo vibecoding dev like myself
then… vibe-code something else?.. why do you think that you should be making something you are not an expert in, that can potentially put your users into danger and make you liable for it? if it’s a learning project - great, go wild. but if it’s intended to be used, then sorry - this is just an irresponsible approach that should not be entertained by anyone. I get that you have “positive intentions” but pick some other venue that you can get right. or contribute to an existing project (being mindful of contribution guidelines).
i vibecode a lot of things. my project is not inherently dangerous. people can use any software irresponsible. in my project and all my communications about it, i make it clear to users to use it cautiously and that its presented for testing and demo purpose. its mentioned in all of my post and i also have terms and condition within my projects the explain as much.
nobody is being tricked into sharing sensitive information… in fact i made a proactive attempt to create something that doesnt need any personal information.
dont tell me what i should and shouldnt be coding. i put time and effort into testing and verifying. this is the issue about mentioning AI is that it undermines all other efforts. its the low-hanging-fruit of critisism.
then what is the point of it existing, if it can’t be used seriously? why should people spend their time on it, when there isn’t a solid base to build on? if you want to do something useful - contribute to an existing project. if you just wanna hack away at something - sure, do that, just don’t be surprised if other people happen to hate it when you try to present it as a serious project. nobody would bat an eye if you presented it as “I wanted a to try and implement Signal protocol, this is what I’ve learned and how far I’ve gotten”.
“I wanted a to try and implement Signal protocol, this is what I’ve learned and how far I’ve gotten”
way ahead of you: https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/1orsjw2/signal_protocol_in_javascript
im banned for AI slop, but that there is a small fraction of the complexity of my project.
i always try to post in a way so its clear the project is far from finished.
In my opinion, slop is slop. AI tends to result in slop, but it doesn’t have to. But to ensure it’s not slop, one has to put in effort and time. Which kind of defeats the purpose of using AI in the first place. So I think it’s obvious why most people default to AI involvement = slop.
AI involvement = slop
thats the part that seems disconnected from reality. im sure there are still people cranking out code manually, but lets be real; it isnt normal anymore.
in cybersec, there is scrutiny than most against the use of AI… i simply cant believe that the folks at Whatsapp, Signal or simpleX are not using AI in their daily workflow.
Yes we can. Watch me
I don’t think everything is getting called ai slop, but I would say if any part of your project is ai slop (like your “lazy uis”) I’d also immediately lose trust in the entirety of the project, especially if it’s intended to be around security. I do think most projects that use AI for code generation are slop though, I’ve seen far fewer examples of good use (i.e. where the output looks human written because the operator reviewed and refactored every part of it, or where it was used to write small parts of functions rather than entire functionalities)
Your last sentence I think provides a great argument for why people here (and more and more broadly in engineering) hate on ai generated code in general. It produces such vast quantities of code (and often unnecessarily) that it becomes infeasible for a human to review it, immediately requiring us to place trust in the machine to both generate it and review it, and to continue maintaining it while the human operator probably does not even have full understanding of what’s changing. A machine, that we all know hallucinates and generates often low quality garbage, including severe security vulnerabilities by design. According to GitHub, your project has millions of lines of changes on a weekly basis in the earlier days, that does scream slop to me.
Last, AI is more and more hated due to the increasing number of horrible impacts it has on our world, personally I’d not support AI generated projects just on that principle alone.
in the recent post that got me banned it was a copy of this post here:
i make a point in all my posts to be clear with the caveats. im not promoting this to replace anything. details to find out more is there along with advice to not use it for sensitive data.
for me messaging app, the caveats are similarly mentioned: https://positive-intentions.com/docs/technical/p2p-messaging-technical-breakdown
my projects are reasearch and development projects which i make sure to make clear when i post about them. im fairly consistent with advice around cautious use… knowing full well that it will deter people. im proactively seeking critisism in order to improve it.
It produces such vast quantities of code (and often unnecessarily) that it becomes infeasible for a human to review it, immediately requiring us to place trust in the machine to both generate it and review it, and to continue maintaining it while the human operator probably does not even have full understanding of what’s changing.
bingo!.. youre framing as a negative understandable, but unless im mistaken, that the way its going to have to go. software development broadly speaking (for better or worse) is going to be AI generated. the tooling and methodologies have to keep up.
horrible impacts it has on our world
thats pretty vague, im sure it does some good too. AI is a tool. its easy to talk about how AI is impacting people badly. personally ive been unemployed for the past few months. its a horrible experience to go through countless interview thinking i aced it, but still come up with a rejection because the field has become so competative. but i dont blame AI on that. its a tool that i need to be learn how to use. perhaps others use it better than me.
I don’t know the context around you getting banned, unless there’s some specific rules you violated. I am not in support of that, but it’s also not the focus of my message.
I disagree with development having to go that way. If anything, the hatred towards ai is a sign that it’s actively not sought after, or at least not with LLMs. If they managed to develop actual AI that is on par with senior engineers, maybe? But we don’t have that. What we have is faulty and inherently flawed. Why would we have to push ahead forcefully with it…?
I didn’t include a list of why ai is harmful as the post was already long, but displacing workers is just 1 point.
- massive waste of resources (as in water, electricity) for tasks which can already be achieved without AI for a fraction of the compute cost (think, search engines as an example). Also consider the environmental impact here in a society where a lot of our power still comes from burning fossil fuels.
- a war on consume hardware (all compute components “sold out” for 1-2 years ahead making everything expensive for average people)
- destruction of the workforce pipeline (even if only junior roles got displaced by ai, we will simply not have a pipeline of new staff to step in once seniors had enough, in any industry this is catastrophic, especially when the machine doing this is not actually able to fully replace staff)
- building a dependence of closed source subscription based tooling or end up locked out of your own codebase because it’s infeasible to do it without once you started
- theft of intellectual property ignoring all licensing for training data, or companies selling individual contributions
- the entire thing being funded by imaginary money propped up by a circle of loans driving us towards yet another financial collapse across the modern world
I’m sure there are even more.
Not all of these are the fault of the technology, but I’m more than happy to throw the entire technology and everything around it under the bus if it means it makes it easier for people to unite against these companies - which I think it does.
Saying “it’s a tool and provides value” is like saying “force feeding chickens in a tiny cage” is a tool that provides value. True? Yes. Valid? No.
using AI is now common practice for developers of all levels
is not a fact.
but one person standing in front of their (in part) dice-rolled “work” is not a welcomed sight is one.
any dev much rather would brown their own greenfields than help you regreen your AI-brownies…
Was the AI you’re using trained like most; scrapping the internet and disregarding the licenses of code?
i used opencode (various models), cursor (claude, composer)
how these models are trained is arguably not ethical. the disregard of licences of code is not something i can influence.
It absolutely is something you can influence.
That’s the entire point. You can not use the slop machine.
boys dont cott anymore? then how about a girlcott?
