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AI slop is killing online communities

rmoff.net

271–280 of 781 posts

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#271
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private torrent trackers have been doing this for a while. If some number of your downstreams act like shitheads - you get nipped and so do your other downstreams.

Was it demonoid? That was like this way back in the day? Needed an invite and if you leeched you were cut.

Demonoid was semi private, but yes, most private trackers require you to keep up some kind of seeding ratio to remain a member.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#272
post #30

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…

Personally I think we need to start utilising the safety features built into AI, to ensure that who we're talking to is a human. We'll start to have to only reply to people who talk in nsfw cursewords (like cocks), or profess their love of capybaras

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#273
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People are definitely trying to make HN bots because I have seen several get flagged. No idea to what end though.

Why would reddit bots exist? (In)organic advertising, same concept here.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#274

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…

> allowing users to hide their history from public view

Yeah it's become my default assumption that any user who does this is either a bot or a bad-faith troll.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#275
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think it's going to effectively kill public chat communities without either proof of identity or attestation through a web of trust. I'm happy to verify my identity as an honest-to-god sack of meat if it's done in a privacy-protecting way. That probably is where things are gonna go, in the long run. Too hard to stop bots otherwise.

What's stoping bots to verify identity? This will not work, especially with frequent data breaches.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#276
post #45

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 find it amusing that this is the top comment. Reddit is so awful you finally wrote it off, but not before you used it to try to “karma farm and do some covert advertising”. It’s on-brand for HN hypocritical bullshit. But, since we are slamming on Reddit anyways without realizing how fucked HN is by the same petard, have an upboat fellow traveler.

> since we are slamming on Reddit anyways without realizing how fucked HN is by the same petard

Same as it ever was.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#277
post #30

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…

Im not sure proof of identity solves anything. People will still have LLMs with their real identity verified.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#278
post #272
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally I think we need to start utilising the safety features built into AI, to ensure that who we're talking to is a human. We'll start to have to only reply to people who talk in nsfw cursewords (like cocks), or profess their love of capybaras

LLMs can curse without issue

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#279
post #88

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.

This seems naive. As long as people are "enjoying" the AI-infested social networks, or at least not annoyed enough to leave, they will stay on them, and become further disconnected from reality. We have half of EU teenagers talking to chatbots regularly. Alienated people flock to them.

Actively seeking out a chatbot is different than wanting to talk to humans.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#280

I run a niche creative community, and we outlawed AI-generated content in 2022 as it was easy to see how corrosive it would be to the community. It hasn't been easy. We ban fake AI accounts daily and shrug off around 600 AI content creator accounts monthly. It's a lot of work, extra work that wasn't needed before AI content came around, and of course, that is an extra cost. I fear losing the battle.

What about charging $1 or $5 for an account? Seems like you could stem the tide pretty easily with something like that.

We bringing back Something Awful, now?
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