Big Technology Podcast How AI Is Changing Writing — With Tony Stubblebine
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Oct 29, 2025 
Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, dives into how AI is reshaping the writing landscape. He discusses AI-generated content and Medium's strategies to maintain quality. Stubblebine shares insights on how AI can assist rather than replace writers, emphasizing the importance of human thought in writing. He reveals data on referral quality from ChatGPT versus Google, highlighting the changing web dynamics. Stubblebine also shares his vision for Medium’s future and its commitment to supporting everyday writers amidst the AI surge.
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AI Slop As A Spam Problem
- Tony Stubblebine argues AI-generated low-quality content is a new form of spam that platforms must treat like traditional spam.
- Medium filters and hides such content from recommendations and search indexing to protect reader experience.
Block From Indexing, Not Always Deleting
- If you can't be 100% sure content is harmful, allow posting but block it from recommendations and search indexing.
- Prioritize what readers actually see over raw volume when policing content quality.
How Medium Shaped LLM Output
- Medium's corpus heavily uses em dashes because founder Evan Williams pushed that style, which influenced models trained on Medium.
- Tony says that pattern explains why AI outputs with many em dashes may reflect Medium's influence.