The Content Creator's Bargain: Trading Authenticity for Algorithmic Efficiency

What algorithmic adoption reveals about what we'd already surrendered

Notice how quickly admiration replaced horror. You scroll, pause at the composition, check the credit line, see “Created by Midjourney,” and the reaction is appreciation, not alarm. The double-take has become a daily reflex, and what that reflex reveals is unsettling: we’d already trained ourselves to evaluate content by its effect rather than its origi…