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A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

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51–60 of 178 posts

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "never pay a human again." > "Take proven content and spawn variation." It's almost refreshing how unashamed they are. I hate it, obviously, but I kind of like it better than companies that say something dressed up in marketing speak but actually mean what this site just says outright.

No, it's a calculated marketing, not them being honest.

>No, it's a calculated marketing, not them being honest.

It's obviously marketing. But their marketing strategy appears to be being unashamed about ripping off content and creating bot farms.

What are you suggesting they are lying about? They're actually doing it for the good of the world and just pretending they're a bot farm for hire?

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#53
post #33

AI is pretty much killing social media in the long term. Even pre-AI, a good chunk of posts/comment sections on sites were bots/paid. Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT. I guess there's still the Onion-verse.

Reddit died to me when they allowed private profiles this summer.

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#54
post #14
post #5

wow... honestly, reading the Twitter feed for Zuhair ("CEO" of DoubleSpeed) makes me sick. https://x.com/rareZuhair and https://www.zuhair.io/ . If you want more photos of his phone farm... it's all on his twitter page: https://x.com/rareZuhair/status/1961160231322517997 "Accelerating the dead Internet"? Why are we, as a community, encouraging the acceleration of enshitification of our common spaces? So weird to me..…

He sounds like an intelligent but misguided teenager. Maybe he's not a bad kid, and just needs better role models than the companies he mentions. If we never do things that later make us cringe and want to correct, we're not reflective and self-critical enough.

I think he's old enough to be tried as an adult here. He architected the product, it was no silly accident. I think his choice of role models may be a reflection of his character...

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#55
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced you can have an impromptu global conversation to any positive end. Humans are not well suited to this task and an unsupervised mostly anonymous forum plays to those weaknesses and provides no support to generate positive outcomes. It was never a particularly good idea at the scale it's currently deployed at.

Reddit was pretty solid before people started cultivating their personal "brand"/only fans page/crypto pick.

Reddit has been an absolute dumpster fire from the get-go. Its Wikipedia page has one of the largest “controversies” sections of any publicly listed company. Many of the controversies are so significant they have their own Wikipedia page.

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#56
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I agree with you. I think that great role models are sadly in short supply these days.

I don’t think they are in short supply, but the vast majority of them aren’t the super-successful so we don’t see their names often. They are the teachers, coaches, and engineers. The problem is the anti- role models are the ones who get all of the media: Andrew Tate (mysogenistic pyramid schemer and pimp / sex trafficker of high school girls), Joe Rogan (his mind is so open that his brains fell out), Jordan B Peters…

Exactly, concentration of attention onto singular figures as role models should be avoided; kind of like how we agree that it is healthier for the EU citizens to have a more diverse market than concentrated monopolies.

We do have to recognize that we have societally dropped the ball by allowing media companies brainwash the population into thinking that money and fame is unquestionable success; this has allowed the corporate mouth pieces to blow so much hot air into the bullshit they spew, that turds end up floating to the top.

What is clear as day is that we live in a world where Brandolini's law is being exploited constantly: that there is a constant fight to DARVO the heck out of our perceptions is undeniable.

We need to normalize bringing receipts to back your claims...

How to teach the average person not to follow the siren's song of populism and rage baiting?? That, I have not yet figured out.

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#58
post #46

why was the original title edited to remove the reference to a16z? why hide investment into socially unacceptable product? if you are going to be a scumbag weasel, own it.

Edit: Fine! I found a way to get a16z in there and keep it to 80 chars.

Both for length reasons and because it was clickbait.

The original title doesn’t even have the actual company’s name in it, only the name of the investor, which is intended to elicit just the kind of ragey reaction you’re exhibiting in this comment.

On HN, titles need to be more neutral and factual (I.e., include the name of the company the article is primarily about).

(Also, you seem to be implying some conflict of interest? Doublespeed and a16z have nothing to do with HN/YC.)

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#59
post #33

AI is pretty much killing social media in the long term. Even pre-AI, a good chunk of posts/comment sections on sites were bots/paid. Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT. I guess there's still the Onion-verse.

I'm not convinced you can have an impromptu global conversation to any positive end. Humans are not well suited to this task and an unsupervised mostly anonymous forum plays to those weaknesses and provides no support to generate positive outcomes. It was never a particularly good idea at the scale it's currently deployed at.

BBSes and forums have existed for literally longer than the internet

Re: A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote

#60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have infinite money, you tend to want infinite power next

I don't disagree, but lighting money on fire hyping NFTs and whatever other random fad strikes them as interesting doesn't seem to be the way to accomplish that. My actual guess is that they got way too big, both in terms of headcount and fund size, to limit their investments to what is expected to be the best of the best in terms of financial return and societal impact.

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