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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#251

Post by zahlman »

bsder wrote: post #239
order-matters wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public* online communities are dying. Discord is thriving

I really don't understand the folks fleeing to Discord. A mailing list does 99% of the same thing for most of the communities. Sure, if you want to chat while gaming, that's the whole point of Discord. Ganbatte. But, for everything else, Discord is such a horrible misfit that I don't understand why it's the default.

> I don't understand why it's the default.

Because it equally well supports real-time communication.

And it looks shiny.

And some people use it to e.g. watch a video together, or other social purposes.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#252

Post by vlod »

vohk wrote: post #30
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…

I think it's going to effectively kill public chat communities without either proof of identity or attestation through a web of trust. Or rather turn them into little better than comment sections on news sites; thriving but worthless. I'm active in a number of online communities that are doing just fine but the difference is those all involve ongoing relationships, built over time and with engagement across multiple…

> without either proof of identity or attestation through a web of trust.

Let's put aside the idea whether it will be the end of all privacy as we know it (I'm not sure if I personally think it's a good idea), but isn't Sam Altman's World eye ID thing supposed to do that? (https://world.org).

How does it work (like OpenId)? Do I have an orb on my desk, or some sort of phone app? I still want to use my desktop to login to HN.

Would it stop this sort of "get human id", past it into .env, so agents can use it?

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#253

Post by mr_toad »

janice1999 wrote: post #110

Question for web devs - are captchas effective any more? If Reddit required a captcha on every comment, would it actually decrease bot comments?

> Question for web devs - are captchas effective any more?

They’re effective at annoying humans. Driving traffic away from your site. Reducing conversation rates.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#254

Post by traderj0e »

Jordan-117 wrote: post #169
nickff wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a tragedy of the commons, many have done it, but no one user did it.

I'd argue that Reddit leadership, which insulted, hobbled, and wrote off its mods and power users (destroying projects like /r/BotDefense) while doing little to crack down on the proliferation of bot repost content, had a major role in encouraging this. They might even like it better this way -- lots of extra fake engagement boosting traffic stats without messy human drama, which they can then ironically sell back to…

It was bogus even before that. I heard complaints at some point that API changes broke bots, which actually sounds good.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#255

Post by jrflowers »

roysting wrote: post #99
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-re…

> America really did not have the self-respect or confidence anymore to enforce the Constitution online.

“Mods are Unconstitutional” lmao

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#257

Post by krapp »

mr_toad wrote: post #253
janice1999 wrote: post #110

Question for web devs - are captchas effective any more? If Reddit required a captcha on every comment, would it actually decrease bot comments?

> Question for web devs - are captchas effective any more? They’re effective at annoying humans. Driving traffic away from your site. Reducing conversation rates.

And training LLMs.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#258

Post by traderj0e »

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…

It's easy to botspam Reddit because even the real users always acted like bots. The big subreddits were the worst, but contrary to how the users keep saying "it's good if you find the right subs," no it's not. Wrote that place off like 10 years ago.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#259

Post by transcriptase »

teraflop wrote: post #240
transcriptase wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

It used to be super common that when you spotted a bot post and clicked through to the user's history, you'd see very average, human-looking activity from years ago, followed by a long gap of inactivity, and then a flurry of obvious bot comments. It's very obvious that these accounts were abandoned and then either bought from their original owners, or more likely bought from someone who compromised them, because of t…

That and locking down the API meant no more sites offering readily available visualizations of this type of thing

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#260

Post by LtWorf »

pjc50 wrote: post #234
michaelt wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP’s web of trust was kinda bad privacy-wise in some regards, as it basically revealed your IRL social network. If my PGP public key has 6 signatures and they’re all members of the East Manitoba Arch Linux User Group, you can probably work out pretty easily which Michael T I am. Are there successful newer designs, which avoid this problem?

The IRL social network is actually the important part of the trust structure. The only one of these I've seen that really worked was the Debian developer version: you had to meet another Debian developer IRL, prove your identity, and only then could you get the key signed and join the club.

You need to meet 2 actually :)
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