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

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

#141

Post by dragonwriter »

neuroelectron wrote: post #26
bpt3 wrote: post #24

WTF happened to a16z? They used to be at the pinnacle of the VC sector, and now they seem to actively seek out the most toxic portcos possible.

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

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

People who get to what seems like infinite money only do so because they were seeking money as a means to power for which they have an insatiable desire in the first place, its not that getting to (even practically) infinite money triggers the desire for unlimited power, its that it is a symptom of it.

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

#142

Post by rixed »

pinnochio wrote: post #80
estimator7292 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBSes and forums have existed for literally longer than the internet

The demographics of who was online before the internet went mainstream matter a lot, here. It wasn't exactly a representative slice of the general population.

The demographics have nothing to do with that, the economic incentive is what changed when it becomes mainstream.

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

#143

Post by vintermann »

exasperaited wrote: post #20
coffeebeqn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I thought this type of business was illegal or at least a very gray area conducted on the dark web but looks like the VCs at this point have no morals left. Gambling? Amazing. Spam? Take my money. Ad fraud? Yes please

A16Z is basically funding toxic fungi growing on the face of society at this point. So much of what they do seems to be a bet that people will want to pay money to do antisocial things and avoid the consequences.

Surely this guy will never act as unethically to his investors as he does to his "audience", right?

I can only assume his VC funders have a bomb collar on him or something, otherwise I don't see why anyone would trust him with a penny.

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

#144

Post by oska »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #55
boh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not wanting to particularly defend Reddit but a controversies section on a wikipedia page is hardly a good metric, in my opinion. Wikipedia is often used to malign various entities (and protect others).

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

#145

Post by anovikov »

boh wrote: 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.

This is a good thing. More and more people will stop consuming it, going back to the mainstream media, so will perhaps become more sensible.

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

#146

Post by blep-arsh »

pinnochio wrote: post #136
rchaud wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums were still going strong a decade after the Internet went mainstream. They only started to fade after smartphones took off and many forums took years to introduce mobile themes. For sports teams however, forums never faded, there tens of millions of users on team-specific soccer forums for example.

That's a good point. I think a lot of forums were less vulnerable for a number of reasons. They typically don't have a large audience (not all, but most), which makes them less of a target. They're also organized around niche interests that don't intersect much with politics and cultural issues, off-topic forums aside. And they're probably more heavily moderated than social media and blog comments. I think the genera…

Forums also didn't have personalized content recommendation engines... usually, I think

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

#147

Post by Nextgrid »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #32

Why isn't this company sued for computer fraud and abuse?

When you're a company with funding and/or a network of benefactors behind it a lot of laws stop applying. And if all else fails, I hear pardons aren't particularly expensive these days.

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

#148

Post by tedggh »

qingcharles wrote: post #29
Hizonner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a few prison terms for conspiracy to defraud? And not for small fry like the "CEO" of this company either. Why not, say, 10 years for Marc Andreesen, personally? And, no, no "disrupting" it with serve-your-time-as-a-service, either.

I hate that Marc Andreesen' arc went from Mosaic to supervillain. It's easier to count billionaires who aren't supervillains. p.s. this is not a great photo of Marc on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Andreessen-9_(croppe...

A farm boy from the tundra of rural Wisconsin. That’s how he starts every single interview.

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

#149

Post by rsynnott »

tomhow wrote: post #58
nickphx wrote: 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 artic…

But the whole _point_ is "major VC funding spam outfit", surely? Like, who cares who the spam outfit is? There are lots of them. These phone farms are not exactly rare. The interesting bit is the involvement of a supposedly proper company.

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

#150

Post by hhh »

Noaidi wrote: post #18
hhh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we should not stop something that is inevitable. We should work with it to find ways that it fits into a productive society, such as anonymously verifying that you are a citizen so the cost of abuse is at least a felony.

Nothing makes this inevitable. People like you who want to do nothing about it makes it inevitable.

Why? Generic computation existing always means this will be possible. The cats out of the bag. You can’t regulate computation globally. You can only enforce it on the platform level.

I want to do plenty about it, I want to make the barrier to allow this shit online identity theft to make it too expensive to do.

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