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We're losing our voice to LLMs

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Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#331

Post by fragmede »

iwontberude wrote: post #297
krapp wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people on HN who advocate regulating social media don't only want to prevent those platforms from showing targeted inflammatory content, they want to make all algorithmic feeds other than strictly chronological illegal, as well as moderation of any legal content. From that point of view, Hacker News is little different than Facebook. One could even argue that HN's karma system is a dark pattern designed to breed…

At least HN karma is incremental and based on something approximating merit as opposed to being a slot machine where you never know which comment will earn Karma. More effort or rare insight, generally yields more karma.

That hasn't been my experience. How much karma you get is heavily dependant on how many people see the comment. The most insightful effort-filled comment at the bottom of a 4 day old thread isn't going to get you nearly as much, if anything, compared to a joke with just the right amount of snark at the top of a post currently at the top of the front page.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#332

Post by [deleted] »

gregates wrote: post #230
coffeecoders wrote: post #99

I actually think we’re overestimating how much of "losing our voice" is caused by LLMs. Even before LLMs, we were doing the same tweet-sized takes, the same medium-style blog posts and the same corporate tone. Ironically, LLMs might end up forcing us back toward more distinct voices because sameness has become the default background.

Also ironic is how the post about having a unique voice is written in one-sentence-paragraph LinkedIn clickbait style.

[deleted]

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#333

Post by anon7000 »

moooo99 wrote: post #283

I generally agree with the sentiment, but I can't help but feel like we're attributing to much of this change to LLMs. While they're certainly driving this change even further, this is a trend that has already started way before LLMs became as widespread as they are today. What personally disturbs me the most is the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok and quickly spread to other platforms - a…

> the self censorship that was initially brought forward by TikTok

I think that’s even too soon! YouTube has had rules around being advertising friendly for longer than TikTok has existed. And the FCC has fined swearing on public broadcasts for like 50+ years.

But I do agree, we’re attributing too much to LLMs. We don’t see personal, human-oriented content online because social media is just not about community.

1. Young people (correctly) realized they could make lots of money being influencers on social media. TikTok does make that easier than ever. I have close friends who make low 6 figures streaming on TikTok (so obviously they quit the low wage jobs they were doing before).

2. People have been slowly waking up to the fact that social media has always been pretty fake. I quit 6 years ago, and most of my friends have slowly reduced how much they use it. All of the platforms are legally incentivized to only care about profit and engagement. Capitalism doesn’t allow a company to care about community and personal voice, if algorithmic feeds of influencers will make them more money.

There’s still good content out there if you know where to look. But digital human connection happens in group chats, DMs, and FaceTime, not on public social media.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#334

Post by Animats »

tptacek wrote: post #287
vee-kay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just did another non-sequitur.. What is a graf? Is it journalism slang for "paragraph"?

Yeah, easier to type, easier to read, deliberately misspelled so it sticks out to copyeditors. I use it sometimes without thinking. An LLM would have caught that! :)

> copyeditors

Do those jobs still exist?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#335

Post by ryandv »

gregates wrote: post #230
coffeecoders wrote: post #99

I actually think we’re overestimating how much of "losing our voice" is caused by LLMs. Even before LLMs, we were doing the same tweet-sized takes, the same medium-style blog posts and the same corporate tone. Ironically, LLMs might end up forcing us back toward more distinct voices because sameness has become the default background.

Also ironic is how the post about having a unique voice is written in one-sentence-paragraph LinkedIn clickbait style.

You're absolutely right! Tell me more about how ironic is how the post about having a unique voice is written in one-sentence-paragraph LinkedIn clickbait style.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#336

Post by golergka »

lambda wrote: post #289
tptacek wrote: post #274

If you care about voice, you still can get a lot of value from LLMs. You just have to be careful not to use a single word they generate. I've had a lot of luck using GPT5 to interrogate my own writing. A prompt I use (there are certainly better ones): "I'm an editor considering a submitted piece for a publication {describe audience here}. Is this piece worth the effort I'll need to put in, and how far will I need to…

All of this sounds like something you could just do yourself after putting a piece down for a day or two and coming back to it with fresh eyes. What benefit is there of cooking the oceans with a bullshit generator? Like, sure, it's possible to do this with an LLM, but it's also possible to do it without, at roughly similar levels of effort, without contributing to all of the negative externalities of the LLM/genAI ec…

Anything you could automate you could do yourself. What’s the benefit?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#337

Post by officehero »

It's more that people who historically didn't have a voice now have one. It's often stupid but sometimes also interesting and innovative. Saw a channel where a university professor "I" comes to the realization she's been left-leaning/biased for decades, that her recent male students no longer dare engage in debate because of shaming/gaslighting etc. Then I click channel description and turns out it's "100% original writing". Now if it hadn't said that it would be strawman propaganda. But now it does... Not sure how to put a finger on it, there's some nervous excitement when reading these days, not knowing who the sender is, getting these 'reveal' moments when finding out whole thing was made up by some highschool kid with AI or insane person.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#338

Post by macintux »

krapp wrote: post #326
macintux wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're moving the goalposts. You said: > Most people on HN who advocate regulating social media...want to make all algorithmic feeds other than strictly chronological illegal I don't buy that, at all. I think they want a chronological feed to follow, and they want the end of targeted outrage machines that are poisoning civil discourse and breeding the type of destructive politics that has led to our sitting U.S. pres…

>Comparing what Facebook has done to the U.S. with HN's algorithm is slippery slope fallacy to an extreme, and even if HN's front page algorithm against all odds was outlawed due to a political overreaction to the destruction Facebook has wrought, I'd call it a fair trade. You're trying to discredit my comment but it seems as if your anger just led you around to proving me right.

You're failing to differentiate between "want" and "willing to settle for if the slippery slope is much worse than I think is realistically possible".

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#339

Post by everdrive »

pixl97 wrote: post #279
everdrive wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When video games first started taking advantage of behavioral reward schedules (eg: skinner box stuff such as loot crates & random drops) I noticed it, and would discuss it among friends. We had a colloquial name for the joke and we called them "crack points." (ie, like the drug) For instance, the random drops that happen in a game like Diablo 2 are rewarding in very much the same way that a slot machine is rewarding…

>If any game had anything like a scoreboard, or a reward for input, he'd say "it's crack points!" I don't think it's exactly wrong, you just have to look at it on a spectrum of minimal addictiveness to meth level addiction. For example in quarter fed games getting a high score displayed to others was quite the addictive behavior.

I think if you look at it this way then "addiction" is just the far end of spectrum that includes any repeated behaviors whatsoever.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#340

Post by harvey9 »

ryandv wrote: post #286
gordonhart wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that LLMs are accelerating [online] radicalization by commoditizing bland, HR-approved opinions. If you want to sound like a human on the internet, for better or for worse the easiest way is to say something that would make Anthropic’s safety team have a heart attack.

> commoditizing bland, HR-approved opinions. If you want to sound like a human on the internet, for better or for worse the easiest way is to say something that would make Anthropic’s safety team have a heart attack. I agree. LLMs are like blackface for dumbfucks: LLMs let the profoundly retarded put on the makeup and airs of the literati so they can parade around self-identifying as if they have a clue. If you don't…

"Every downvote signals to the algorithm that you prefer mediocrity."

Not on hn it doesn't.

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