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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#91

Post by smcg »

noahgolmant wrote: post #41

There has to be room for an AI-driven project that expresses a unique idea, even if there's no community around it yet. Someone has to express it, and from now on that idea will largely be implemented with AI. > A good use of AI is when it enables people to do something they couldn’t do before, to contribute to a community when they couldn’t before. I agree 100% with the novel contribution aspect. But there's some nu…

Who is going to verify that an AI-driven project is a unique idea? How do you distinguish between a genuinely unique project, a grifter who is shilling their "unique" project, and a new enthusiast who is convinced their project is unique, but is not? This is an impossible moderation task. The only options I see for a community are to either totally ban AI-generated content, or be totally consumed by it.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#92

Post by fidotron »

lbriner wrote: post #87
carlgreene wrote: post #4

I have largely written Reddit off and no longer visit it after an experiment I did where I had an agent karma farm for me and do some covert advertising. As I went through the posts it wrote I realized that as a reader I would have NO idea that these were just written by a computer. Many many people (or other bots) had full on conversations with it and it scared me a bit. I am not quite there with Hacker News but I d…

Serious question: If there are so many LLMs on online forums, who is doing it? Is it just 1000s of research students or something more nefarious? Is it AI businesses building up evidence that their output is as highly scored as humans therefore "buy our software"?

HN has historically been gamed for visibility. The stakes for doing this can be quite high if you can pull it off.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#93

Post by smcg »

CM30 wrote: post #71

There's a lot of focus on tech projects here, but it's not just vibe written projects that are ruining communities now. No, it's a problem with art, text and videos too. Reddit was already becoming a creative writing exercise in many ways, with infamous subs like 'Am I the Asshole?' seemingly being about 80% fiction labelled as fact. But now you don't even need to know how to write to flood the site with useless 'con…

I think people like the blog author need to realize that this problem can't be dealt with content moderation or users trying their best to be honest. You just get a firehose with an on/off switch, you don't get free filtering or moderation with it.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#94

Post by arjie »

transcriptase wrote: post #38
10xDev wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless their account is <1 year I wouldn't assume they are a bot.

Reddit astroturfing firms and bot farms learned to buy/use “seasoned” accounts over a decade ago. I’d venture there have been countless bots just in a holding pattern harmlessly building up reputation and a human-like history of posts across different subs etc just to eventually be either activated or sold to someone else to “burn”

I recently spotted one unmistakable example of this[0]. It’s been a trick for many years now that duplicating a human post and its comments is a good way to appear human but this was quite the example.

0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-01-06/Is_The_Inter...

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#95

Post by thegrim33 »

lbriner wrote: post #87
carlgreene wrote: post #4

I have largely written Reddit off and no longer visit it after an experiment I did where I had an agent karma farm for me and do some covert advertising. As I went through the posts it wrote I realized that as a reader I would have NO idea that these were just written by a computer. Many many people (or other bots) had full on conversations with it and it scared me a bit. I am not quite there with Hacker News but I d…

Serious question: If there are so many LLMs on online forums, who is doing it? Is it just 1000s of research students or something more nefarious? Is it AI businesses building up evidence that their output is as highly scored as humans therefore "buy our software"?

We're in the middle of an active cold war where countries are trying to manipulate the citizens of rival countries to destroy their civilization without having to fire a single bullet. Anonymous, over the internet mass manipulation, all for some minimal electricity cost.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#96

Post by aliasxneo »

colechristensen wrote: post #36
agustechbro wrote: post #18

I kind feel this might be good. Bot writen comments and AI media that can no longer be distinguish from real, will make us human leave the social networks, which helped to separate Us humans. Going back to the real world were you can trully believe on what you see, and enjoy the tone, look and scent of of our fellows humans beings.

One of the paradoxical things that makes me hopeful is that there's going to be such an incredible amount of low effort AI slop content that it's going to drown out the low effort human-made content and generate a large amount of distaste for it. So much will be so bad that good taste and high quality will be rewarded more status as the people who will say and believe anything will be led astray and left behind. Mayb…

> So much will be so bad that good taste and high quality will be rewarded more status as the people who will say and believe anything will be led astray and left behind.

I really want to believe this will be true. However, I also suspect there's some external driving force, that I cannot readily name, which is making people incapable of consuming anything except this low-effort content. I mean, obviously it's working to some extent. Perhaps AI will be the thing that accelerates its death, but part of me thinks something else needs to happen beyond just an increase in useless content.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#97

Post by simsla »

lbriner wrote: post #87
carlgreene wrote: post #4

I have largely written Reddit off and no longer visit it after an experiment I did where I had an agent karma farm for me and do some covert advertising. As I went through the posts it wrote I realized that as a reader I would have NO idea that these were just written by a computer. Many many people (or other bots) had full on conversations with it and it scared me a bit. I am not quite there with Hacker News but I d…

Serious question: If there are so many LLMs on online forums, who is doing it? Is it just 1000s of research students or something more nefarious? Is it AI businesses building up evidence that their output is as highly scored as humans therefore "buy our software"?

Established accounts are worth money, often for scamming/propaganda.

Not too dissimilar to people bot-leveling in MMOs to the sell the accounts.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#99

Post by roysting »

carlgreene wrote: post #4

I have largely written Reddit off and no longer visit it after an experiment I did where I had an agent karma farm for me and do some covert advertising. As I went through the posts it wrote I realized that as a reader I would have NO idea that these were just written by a computer. Many many people (or other bots) had full on conversations with it and it scared me a bit. I am not quite there with Hacker News but I d…

On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being AI/bot and if I say things the mod doesn’t like and is not their favorite thing to hear I’m “flamebaiting” or engaging in personal attacks when pointing out specific things.

Frankly, online communities have been doing for many years now, when the censorship, anti-free-speech, tone policing mods and mobs started dominating online and America really did not have the self-respect or confidence anymore to enforce the Constitution online.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#100

Post by Keyframe »

carlgreene wrote: post #4

I have largely written Reddit off and no longer visit it after an experiment I did where I had an agent karma farm for me and do some covert advertising. As I went through the posts it wrote I realized that as a reader I would have NO idea that these were just written by a computer. Many many people (or other bots) had full on conversations with it and it scared me a bit. I am not quite there with Hacker News but I d…

How do we know now that this comment wasn't written by LLM?
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