Sloptimized

For 25 years Google organized the web so you could find the page you needed. Now it answers for you, buries the links, and sells a spot inside the answer.

Ed Bennett and Chris Boyer take on Google going AI-first in search, from AI Overviews shoving the blue links to the bottom to ads that pay their way into the response and agentic checkout that skims the transaction. Then the back end, by way of a new Atlantic piece and the show's first Jargon of the Week, sloptimization. Brands like Shopify publish their own ranked listicles so chatbots cite them as fact, and the web quietly shifts from connecting humans to connecting machines.

The SNAT Book Club hits Chapters 5 and 6 of The AI Con by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, on AI hype across art, journalism and science, and the doom-and-boom circus that keeps everyone looking away from the harm already here.

In the AI Stump, Claude argues both sides of whether AI spells doom or boom, and the two answers share a premise, a hinge and one telling blind spot.

Search is buried. Art is borrowed. The doom is a distraction. Surprise, it's not a toaster.

References & Further Reading

• The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

• "Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized" — The Atlantic — https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/google-search-ai-optimization/687495/

• Google has seriously leaned into AI enshittification lately — The Register / The Kettle podcast — https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/25/google-has-seriously-leaned-into-ai-enshittification-lately/5245365

• xkcd, "Microsoft" — https://xkcd.com/

  Find Us

  • Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/
  • Ed Bennett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edbennett/
  • Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com
  • Chris Boyer on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social
  • Ed Bennett on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/edbennett.bsky.social