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Can we fix information overload?

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Over the past few months, I've been thinking about something that affects almost everyone who spends time online.

We have more access to information than at any point in history, yet finding something genuinely worth reading often feels harder than ever.

Every day, we're flooded with:

  • Endless social feeds

  • Newsletters

  • AI-generated content

  • Short-form videos

  • Clickbait headlines

  • Notifications

The problem doesn't seem to be a lack of information anymore; it feels more like a lack of effective filtering.

I've been exploring this while working on a small publishing project of my own, and it made me wonder whether we're trying to solve the wrong problem.

Instead of creating more content, should we be spending more time helping people discover better content?

I'm curious how others here approach this.

A few questions I'd love to discuss:

  • Where do you consistently find articles that are genuinely worth reading?

  • Do you rely on newsletters, social media, blogs, RSS, communities, or something else?

  • What makes you trust one publication more than another?

  • Has AI made discovering quality content easier or harder for you?

  • If you could improve one thing about how we consume knowledge online, what would it be?

I'm not looking to promote anything here. I genuinely want to understand how other makers, founders, and readers think about this problem before deciding which direction to take with my own project.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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I think this is definitely interesting to think about.

Personally, I almost immediately ignore AI-generated content if it's obviously AI e.g. em-dashes or just typical AI hallmarks.

I think with the emergence of AI, I have a new appreciation for real user content, especially YouTube videos where people get in front of a camera, don't use TTS and spend time and effort editing. It sounds crazy to think that this probably isn't something I would have applauded a few years ago.

Substacks are a good source of information for me. A lot of the time you have to pay to read that content, so the expectation is that it is high quality stuff.

 Thanks for sharing your perspective! I agree that AI has made authentic, human-created content feel even more valuable. The point about people appreciating the effort behind original writing really resonates with me. It makes me wonder whether trust will become one of the biggest differentiators for publications in the coming years.

I find social media is where I get most of my news, though this requires making sure I follow good accounts. Also, it's easy to ask an AI to summarize the latest news, whether it general news or news on specific topics.

Personally, what I'd like is an app that lists news from a lot of major publications and makes it easy to scroll articles and read without paywalls, with AI to summarize articles (an optional feature), but I'm pretty sure the news media industry would fight against something like that.

 That's an interesting idea. Having one place to discover articles from multiple trusted sources would definitely make staying informed easier. I also like your point about AI summaries—they're great for quickly deciding whether an article is worth reading, as long as they don't replace the original work entirely.