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Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

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Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#21

Post by the_snooze »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #10

All publishers are grappling with this where they want generally higher quality content (defined as more engaging, intrinsic quality is something else) and less low effort spam or retreaded concepts. AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam, and they're saying: "Hey if you're pushing out 1000s of articles a day on a topic and we look at it and it's insane gibberis…

>AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam

For all the potential good utility AI has, my current outlook is that it's primarily going to be used as a noise-generator at scale. As long as there's money (or influence) to be had from clicks and advertisement, the near-zero cost of AI-generated content means people will take advantage of that arbitrage opportunity.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#23

Post by iainctduncan »

felideon wrote: post #5

How is this policy enforceable? There aren’t any reliable ways to detect LLM-generated text, are there?

They have years of data on how fast a regular account can generate content. If you are producing 100 times more content.... or content 100 times faster....

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#24

Post by dandesim »

felideon wrote: post #5

How is this policy enforceable? There aren’t any reliable ways to detect LLM-generated text, are there?

The policy is enforceable through moderation. They're probably looking for multiple indicators then doing a manual review. The only way to monetize Medium is through the partner program, which is reliant on high volume of posts or a post to go viral. It's unlikely an AI generated post will go viral, but it is very likely people will spam the system and start posting 3-5x a day to get a few dollars. I don't think they're as concerned with someone using AI as an assistant to write a few posts a month, but rather AI slowly draining their payouts from real people.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#25

Post by barfbagginus »

aldarisbm wrote: post #4
endre wrote: post #2

it's medium that should be banned

Honest question... Why? I understand that medium is not absolutely necessary and ideally we would have an open source tool that is easy to deploy. In the meanwhile, I use medium quite a bit.

When we use medium, we tell our audience we don't care if they get bombarded with bad UX, like subscription popups. And we tell our accessibility activist audience that we don't want them to read us at all.

I immediately nope out of medium articles. I black list medium on my search engines. And I criticize medium authors on HN instead of reading their articles. This is all with the hope of bringing back more accessible old school blogs.

If I wrote a blog in 2024, I would use a free GitHub Pages site, and use a markdown based blog generator. This distributes my message for free, without attacking my audience's attention with sign up screens.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#26

Post by dandesim »

neverokay wrote: post #17

Hmm, I didn’t consider this. Anyone actually generating AI articles on these types of platforms and profiting? Thanks for letting me know Medium lol.

Just like many of these schemes, the first person to do it will probably make a good amount of money, but every nth person after that will make much less. There has always been a large group of people trying to spam their way through the Medium partner program.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#27

Post by skywhopper »

hk__2 wrote: post #7

> Any story using AI help must clearly mention this within the first two paragraphs. What’s AI here? Is the spelling correction tool in Google Docs "AI"? Are the suggestions from my iPhone "AI"? This is the kind of very vague sentence written by someone who doesn’t understand AI.

They mean "entire posts generated by LLMs". They aren't going after AI-assistance. They are telling you not to set up your content spam farm on Medium.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#28

Post by taneq »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #10

All publishers are grappling with this where they want generally higher quality content (defined as more engaging, intrinsic quality is something else) and less low effort spam or retreaded concepts. AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam, and they're saying: "Hey if you're pushing out 1000s of articles a day on a topic and we look at it and it's insane gibberis…

The real issue isn't 'insane gibberish', because that's quickly and cheaply discernible. The real issue is eloquent, well written text that looks like a new contribution but is actually a re-hashed mixture of the same six talking points as the other 1000 articles published by the same entity, because you have to actually read and think about it to realise that it's wasted your time.

We're not fighting against random noise, we're fighting against manufactured pap.

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#29

Post by MSFT_Edging »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #10

All publishers are grappling with this where they want generally higher quality content (defined as more engaging, intrinsic quality is something else) and less low effort spam or retreaded concepts. AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam, and they're saying: "Hey if you're pushing out 1000s of articles a day on a topic and we look at it and it's insane gibberis…

> use Grammarly Pro to rewrite your sentences into coherence

Is it just me or is this a bizarre practice for someone who is actively making money on writing?

Like, shouldn't you be expected to at least have competence in your craft? Writing with correct grammar should be the baseline of someone writing for profit. Or even "help with an outline", if you can't write an outline of what you're trying to communicate, and you need the averaging machine to help you, do you actually have a unique understanding of the topic? Or are you merely rehashing existing content that's been fed into the averaging machine?

Re: Medium bans AI-generated content from its paid Partner Program

#30

Post by bee_rider »

the_snooze wrote: post #21
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #10

All publishers are grappling with this where they want generally higher quality content (defined as more engaging, intrinsic quality is something else) and less low effort spam or retreaded concepts. AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam, and they're saying: "Hey if you're pushing out 1000s of articles a day on a topic and we look at it and it's insane gibberis…

>AI-generated content has really dropped the floor on how cheap it is to produce niche blogspam For all the potential good utility AI has, my current outlook is that it's primarily going to be used as a noise-generator at scale. As long as there's money (or influence) to be had from clicks and advertisement, the near-zero cost of AI-generated content means people will take advantage of that arbitrage opportunity.

On the bright side we’ve desperately needed a noise filter for, like, a decade or so. At least these LLMs are a big noticeable discontinuity to make the problem obvious.
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