Is the Internet Still Real? (with Ross Thorpe, founder of Rooverse)

This week on The Sunday Draft, Raj sat down with Ross Thorpe — founder of Rooverse, a social media platform built on one radical rule: no AI, ever. Every post is human-verified. Every image, video, and piece of text is checked and blocked if it's AI-generated.

We get into why he built it, whether a platform that refuses to use AI can actually survive as a business, and the bigger picture: research on how LLMs are quietly reshaping our ability to think, why dating apps are getting dystopian, and why Rooverse backs its data up in space (yes, literally).

Episode synopsis:

71% of images uploaded online are now AI-generated. Over half of all internet traffic isn't human anymore. And the average 18-year-old will spend 25 years of their life scrolling. Ross Thorpe isn't just worried about it — he built something to fight it. In this conversation, we dig into the research behind AI's effect on how we think, what "authentic" even means anymore, and whether a human-only corner of the internet is a real business or a beautiful idea that can't scale. It's a conversation about trust, attention, and what we're actually giving up every time we open an app.

If you've ever felt like the internet stopped feeling human — this one's for you.

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🎬 Watch the full episode on YouTube.