I wish there were sanctions for internet pollution
I believe in using optimization techniques that provide value to users rather than just manipulating search engines.
I am even working on an AI-powered SEO product that aims to help businesses responsibly. Our goal is to promote holistic SEO with AI - without sacrificing quality, ethics, or harming user experience.
But it seems some in the industry have lost their way.
I’m seeing more and more SEO hustlers on 𝕏itter claiming they can steal massive traffic by auto-generating articles based on a competitor’s site map or scraping their content structure. They use AI tools to quickly pump out pages to outshine competitors, not helping readers.
This approach was critiqued by @pete_tnt, who said, “I wish there was sanctions for internet pollution.” This person hit the nail on the head.
These AI tactics pollute the internet with low-quality, machine-generated pages to manipulate rankings.
It puts numerical gains like impressions and traffic above user experience. By auto-generating content without human curation, there’s no way to ensure the information will be genuinely helpful to people searching. This practice makes it harder for high-quality content to emerge and be discovered.
From an ethical standpoint, auto-generating articles purely to outrank other sites borders on plagiarism, as AI models effectively copy content patterns without adding value. It also disrespects search engines’ work to surface the most authoritative information—work that is undermined when AI tries to game the system at scale.
The internet is meant to be an informative resource for people, not just fodder for short-sighted “hustles” or selfish SEO manipulation.
Yes, Google is okay with AI content as long it’s helpful. But there must be deterrence for those giving AI + SEO a bad name through spammy, self-serving tactics. Real improvement comes from respecting user needs and creating sites people genuinely want to engage with—not disposable content that leads nowhere.
The health of the open internet is at risk.
image: remix of a flork of cows comic panel.