this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
20 points (100.0% liked)

Programming

28389 readers
255 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

“Workslop” is when your colleagues or bosses communicate with you by pasting big chunks of AI-generated text. The core problem with workslop is that the effort involved is asymmetrical, like a denial-of-service attack: it takes almost no effort to produce text with AI, but it still costs effort to read.

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] deHaga@feddit.uk 10 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

Just post the slop into Claude and send them the response

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

But you should add a disclaimer that you will not be held responsible for anything that is said in this communication, because you did not write it or read it

[–] deHaga@feddit.uk 3 points 1 hour ago

In white text

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

That might be a viable defense in one scenario, but as a global approach in the context of everything currently happening, it feels more like a "tools of the enemy" issue. Like combating misinformation with more misinformation, it will backfire sooner or later. And it profits the broligrarchy the whole time you're doing it.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Fair point, but an few emaisl more or less won't make a difference in the subscriptiin that my company is already paying for. The broligarchs won't profit of that. The misinformation is also minimal, since nobody will ever read any of it.

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 5 points 1 hour ago

Yeah but hear me out: using these tools also has an element of deskilling and what early research is calling "cognitive surrender". There's also a hazard of cognitive self-harm in willingly using them in place of thinking. When your boss slop-bombs you, try actually reading it and then talking to them in person. See if they even know what they said, they might get scared straight.

[–] Endmaker@ani.social 1 points 1 hour ago

That's exactly what the article suggested...

Another strategy is to use AI to fight AI. This is a good one for handling workslop from managers. You can do this in two broad ways. First, instead of carefully reading it, paste it into an LLM of your own and ask for a short list of the salient points. Second, you can sometimes simply ask an LLM for an entire response. In a sense, this makes you part of the problem, so I can see why some people might be uncomfortable with it. But it’s more sustainable than spending ten minutes of your effort for every ten seconds of theirs.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 45 minutes ago
[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I just ignore it.

[–] Endmaker@ani.social 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 43 minutes ago)

Nice read.

I also enjoyed reading one of the linked articles: predators