Search tool that only returns content created before ChatGPT's public release

A new browser extension promises a time machine for your searches, showing only content made before ChatGPT’s public release on Nov 30, 2022. The pitch is simple: dodge today’s AI slop—the flood of machine‑made text, images, and videos—by rewinding the web. It works by using Google’s search tools to filter results to that pre‑AI date. But the comments turned a simple plug‑in into a full‑blown internet soap opera.

Skeptics stormed in first: johng waved a red flag, warning the filter “could be gamed quite easily,” questioning whether crafty sites could fake dates and slip through. Practical folks like 1gn15 asked the real pain point: does it nuke those SEO blogfarms that polluted Google long before bots did? Then swyx went philosophical, comparing pre‑AI text to “low‑background tokens” (like rare low‑radiation steel) and even dropped a write‑up on latent.space—cue the brainy meme. Meanwhile, k_roy brought the chaos meter to 11, arguing the slop panic is worse than the slop itself: tech evolves, just like airbrushing and Photoshop, and AI is here to stay. The crowd even workshopped names: anticensor pitched “Predecember,” riffing on the old “Eternal September” joke. Verdict from the peanut gallery: fun idea, spicy vibes, and lots of yelling over whether we’re saving the web—or just cosplay‑time‑traveling.