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Based on recent comments this feels like a discussion we should have. So..topic, basically.

I'm not looking to be chief noisemaker on this, but I stand by what I wrote in !privacy and what's in my post history.

https://lemmy.ml/post/48724623/26190950

Let's have at; do we want a [AI] and [NOT AI] tag. Why or why not?

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[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 1 points 1 hour ago

I think we should have an AI tag, and "not AI" should be the default (otherwise we add "non-" versions of every tag and post titles are a list of what something isn't instead of what it is).

Imo, a lot of the tools here have a high security requirement. Either because they handle personal/private information and/or are exposed to the public internet. AI use is a red flag to me that the developer hasn't properly considered all the security implications of their product.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Yes, it should. Just make it [slop] vs. no tag. Actual content shouldn't define itself by the abscence of shit.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 4 points 9 hours ago

What I am curious about is why this should be a negative for anyone, devs who want to use AI get an easy way to filter out the people who will kick back against it, the people who will kick back against it get a quieter existence, Lemmy should be happy.

I keep seeing how having to categorise will provide a perverse incentive to not disclose and I guess I don't understand why that would be the case.

It's not like they are tricking people into buying these free programs, it's not like they are soliciting contributions from other devs (they have an AI for that), and its not like there is some sort of score being kept (besides earning some sort of credibility on Github as a pro-AI developer through that star thing I guess).

So what would be the motivation to try to trick the community into embracing these sorts of projects? Open and enthusiastic disclosure and a community push to simply move on if you find that style of development distasteful would work better for everyone.

I have walked away from using a project that was developed with AI and I didn't feel the need to slam the developer for it, I just moved on. They didn't betray my trust because they don't owe me anything, and I didn't unfairly judge their work because I don't owe them anything. Everyone's a winner.

But that's just my humble opinion.

[–] Fedditor385@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

No, because it's about the what, and with or without AI is the how.

We don't have disclosures "built on a Linux/Windows/macOS machine" or "built using IntelliJ/Eclipse" so why is it important what tool was used to do something?

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

Some people have serious ethical and quality concerns about AI usage in code in a way that's just irrelevant to the OS and IDE used to code it.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago

I, like other respondents, don't care if AI is used, I only care if AI was trusted.

AI is a tool to enhance a workflow, and as long as a skilled human is reviewing it and fixing it, fine.

We would be better off defining a programmer's project vs an ametuer hour vibe coded monstrosity, but that won't ever really happen.

[–] replicat@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I think this is a major over generalisation that misses the main point of why people don't want AI projects. The real questions are:

  • Is this slop?
  • Does a human understand all of this code?
  • Did a human design this deliberately or is it completely derivative and uninspired?
  • Will a human take responsibility for bugs that come up?
  • Did a human write the docs?
  • Will this be maintained or just a weekend project with no substance?
  • Does this actually serve a purpose?

Idk how to address these things really. I could see the AI tag going both ways, but I do think it's painting with too broad a brush.

[–] pyr0ball@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 34 minutes ago) (1 children)

I'm in the process of launching a new business as a single dev, and I want to be upfront about my use of AI, but I notice as soon as I mention any LLM, most people assume what I've built is "vibe coded" without even looking at the applications themselves.

I spent almost two months just setting up the devops side of things before I even considered publishing. Feedback buttons in the apps automatically open issues on my Forgejo, push mirrors to GitHub and Codeberg, and I do weekly progress reports internally (I stopped posting to Lemmy after people felt spammed and now I just post on the site blog)

I'm just not sure how to make it easy to tell that I'm actually putting my heart and soul into building software that should help people.

If curious: https://circuitforge.tech/

[–] replicat@lemmy.world 1 points 14 minutes ago

I looked at your site. Realistically I think we're talking about two different things here. There are tools which were programmed with the assistance of AI and then there are AI powered tools. Your stuff is clearly the latter.

I think ai powered tools are a lot harder to sell people on right now. The ai powered area is where I see by far the most shovelware/slop.

To be blunt, when I see a new ai powered tool I assume several things:

  • This is low effort slop
  • A tech bro vibe coded this 100%
  • No one cares about this
  • It will either make a ton of money or be abandoned next week
  • If it's popular, anthropic will buy/clone it and everyone will use their version instead

I know this isn't true of every ai powered app but it's true of 99% of them right now. I really have no idea how you could convince people yours isnt slop.

One idea might be to stop using the term "AI". It's a buzzword with strong connotations. Some people hear it and think "gold rush", some people think "slop" or "data center".

Personally I would be a lot more likely to take a project seriously if they used the term "LLM" or "machine learning" to describe what powers the product.

Also, I don't see anything that looks like obvious AI art to me but DONT USE AI ART. AI art is already terrible on its own but when I see AI art mixed with AI text telling me about an AI powered app I'm 1000% done giving my attention.

[–] festus@lemmy.ca 11 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

What does it mean for a project to deserve the [AI] tag? This matters, because you may have a lot of projects where a developer may think "no" and someone else thinks "yes". Some examples from my day job:

  • Developer used AI to understand part of the codebase and suggest ways to accomplish goal. Developer incorporated that suggestion, though using their own knowledge deviated from AI's suggestion in parts. Developer wrote the code themselves. Is this project [AI] or [NOT AI]?
  • Developer used AI to review existing (human-written) code for quality and security purposes. AI noticed some issues and proposed fixes. Developer reviewed and accepted them. Is this project [AI]?
  • Developer knew they wanted to implement a feature, and while implementing it there was a boilerplate function. Developer asked AI to write this function, manually reviewed it, confirmed it worked, and added it to the codebase. Is this project [AI]?

In these examples the developer carefully reviews the AI's output, which I think distinguishes it from vibe-coded slop, which at least is what I want to ignore.

It's also worth noting that an open-source project may receive and incorporate a well-written contribution where the human developer used AI carefully like this. Unless they disclosed that they used AI, it may be unknowable to the project maintainers whether their project is [AI] or not, depending on how you define it. What tag should these projects use?

[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Sir, this is Lemmy. If you use AI in any way, you are clearly in league with the devil and deserve to burn.

I agree with all your points, BTW.

I posted this discussion because I wanted to explore both guard rails AND nuance around that sort of work flow, particularly for our new mod (and in light of several other scattered convos).

A lot of the diffuse FuckAI Lemmy crowd have poor understanding of code workflow. "AI bad" knee jerks so hard it's going to dislocate something.

I've tried to argue this point, because roughly... ooh...100% of code gen touches AI something. So, do we tag everything?

What people really want is a [SLOP] tag, which is both lazy / not doing your own due diligence and impossible.

In hindsight, I think the pragmatic approach is ultimately the workable (albeit blunted) one. Have the ai tag. It flattens everything but if stops brigading and slop, that's the least amount of moderation work.

I appreciate you posting btw.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago

Sir, this is Lemmy. If you use AI in any way, you are clearly in league with the devil and deserve to burn.

Bahahahahahaha!

[–] meltedcheese@c.im 2 points 20 hours ago

@festus @selfhosted Excellent examples. What the tag [AI] conveys is not what you really need to know, which is the quality of the code (component/unit), unit testing, and so forth. I assume there is some acceptance testing done at the project level. The human who submits the code must understand that flaws in their code is their responsibility, just as those who contribute/maintain the project are responsible at the system level. It is both an objective and reputational process. Does it really matter what tools are used if the work product passes the test, verification and validation criteria? Sloppy code is not unique to AI tools.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 3 points 16 hours ago

Software has gone many decades without the need of LLM assistance, I vote to tag “Ai” and “Non-Ai” assisted posts.

+1

[–] pory@lemmy.world 15 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Either ban vibe coded projects entirely or ban vibe coded projects that have less than a year of history. If allowing "mature" vibe coded projects, require the tag.

Spaces like this become so much worse when "i made this last week look at the shiny ui 🎉🎉🎉🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀" projects that will never ever see any form of maintenance are allowed.

[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

This is a rule that could actually be implemented and would help with the slop vs not-slop judgement call

[–] Folstar@lemmus.org 6 points 23 hours ago

I hate it when the default state is turned into the negative. Every time I have to specify "unsweet tea" I feel the sands of my lifeforce slipping away.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 18 hours ago

I mean if you do it should be a required dropdown to post since its one or the other.

[–] AIBrainiac@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

No, because every developer who's worth anything these days uses AI. What you don't want is vibe-coded stuff, where the creator hasn't even looked at the code, or barely understood it. Although having said that, vibe-coded projects can be good for prototyping.

[–] thymos@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 21 hours ago

I'd prefer a [HUMAN] tag for projects without A.I. But yes, tags would be welcome.

[–] LucidNightmare@anarchist.nexus 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree with others who said AI tag for AI helped projects, no tags for normal projects.

[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 1 points 22 hours ago

I think you might need both for the tag bot to work properly but dunno.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 22 points 1 day ago (7 children)

No tag for not AI.

Only AI tags needed, which helps remind people that slop should be warned against. We don't need to warn for slop free apps

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 87 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I think [AI] tags would be good. That way a certain subset of members could just drive-by downvote without getting themselves dirty. [NOT AI] seems redudant since we've already defined [AI], but again for quick filtering purposes, I see no harm in both.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

That way a certain subset of members could just drive-by downvote without getting themselves dirty.

Honestly. I was fully on board with this until you brought that up. Yea that just 180'd my opinion on if it should be tagged significantly.

I don't want something to be tagged to be able to allow people to mass downvote it or hide it from sight, that's not productive to anyone. I wanted the tag to be able to filter it out when I didn't want to see it, but be able to see it if I felt I wanted to. Allowing for mass downvote on it will significantly hinder that.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t want something to be tagged to be able to allow people to mass downvote

I commiserate, but they are going to get downvoted one way or another

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Yea but a tag system will allow it to be seen from outside the community. a general requirement of disclosure of if AI was used and how I think would go a long way better in the long run, and requires the person to have entered the post and read it first.

I think I'm leaning more towards that style instead. if something interests me I can join it read it and if its AI and I don't want to see it I can go elsewhere, that requires people to put bare amount of effort instead of just seeing a [AI] tag from all[/active/hot] (idk what the actual lemmy endpoint is I use tess) and being like "oh ai downvote"

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

I get what you are saying. The downvoting doesn't bother me a bit. You can downvote me in to the stone age and I wouldn't give a shit. The curb stomping, anger, and animosity directed at anything AI tho, I think is out of hand. Every forum I've ever been in has a Rule 1. Few live up to that creed. I don't say this from any moral high ground or superiority whatsoever, but I find it a character flaw not to be able to control yourself as an adult and think 'Yeah I'm staunchly anti-AI. I have very, very strong opinions of it's usage in any circumstance. However, there are 8.4 billion other people who might not share my disgust with AI so I'll just skip on to the next thread.' Agree to disagree in other words.

[–] EmoPolarbear@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Having both an [AI] and a [not AI] tag allows immediate differentiation between a not AI post and a did not tag post.

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 56 points 1 day ago (5 children)

But it's annoying. Non AI should be default, AI has to be marked.

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[–] carlnewton@feddit.uk 8 points 1 day ago (13 children)

I think the reality is that people will downvote the AI posts, and that will incentivise people to not disclose it or outright lie. The other thing that came to mind here is the fact that I've been trying to set my RSS reader up to not show me anything if AI is mentioned. It turns out that I haven't been able to do that because it couldn't discern "AI" from "fair", "pair", "air" etc. but the sentiment was there because I'm sick of hearing about it, and I imagine a lot of people are. This could cause readers or whatever else is configured to block AI content to block the non-ai content too, just because it's mentioned. Additionally it does bring AI to the forefront, which doesn't help with that AI fatigue.

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[–] Ooops@feddit.org 53 points 1 day ago (3 children)

A mandatory [AI] tag? Sure.

A [NOT AI] tag? No, that's the default. Why normalise AI bullshit even further?

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I feel it's a little dangerous, because it would give a false sense of security in [no-ai] projects.

We have all seen tons of projects 100% written without any AI that are very poorly coded and full of insecurities.

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[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yes, please. I don't like seeing a "neat handy application" only to find that 95% of it was coded by Claude, the fact of which is either buried, or not even mentioned until you visit the repo and see that it's the top contributor.

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