I wonder when things get so bad that we end up filtering content made by accounts created before the release of ChatGPT.
Won't help much, botters can just buy old accounts.
Gets harder with all the 2FA stuff involved
AI slop is killing online communities
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Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#372At this point, I see no identity verification or proof of some kind of humanity working.
I think what we need is the equivalent of what was done for CORS: client/server cooperation.
That is, APIs should mark that they are human only, and harnesses should cooperate with such flags and prevent calling said APIs.
It's not perfect, as it's client side enforcement, and one could still theorically build their own harnesses without, but that's the only way forward.
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#373I wonder when things get so bad that we end up filtering content made by accounts created before the release of ChatGPT.
There are already some sites where you're much better off if you have an old account. Like I have a super old Twitter sitting there for random stuff that requires it. I tried making a new one a few years ago, didn't post anything, and it got banned within 2 days for "bot activity." The old one has never been banned.
It was also so much easier to make a dating app profile back when I was single, like one click. Recently was watching a friend set one up, and now they not only want like 3FA but also proof that you're a human. Assuming the old accounts are grandfathered in.
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's definitely the most insidious use, but I think the larger portion is advertisers and karma farmers (who later sell to advertisers).
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election... If Russia is willing to spend cash like that, then of course they're willing to run massive bot farms to pollute any forums they can. I'd be shocked if the US was not doing the same in any way they can. You have to ask why Trump killed Radio Free America as well when it was clearly not an big expense.
> You have to ask why Trump killed Radio Free America as well when it was clearly not an big expense.
The obvious answer to that question is "because he's a Russian asset". But that doesn't mean the obvious answer is also the correct one.
IMHO, we're seeing another and much more concerning trend at play here... the utter and complete rejection of anything but violence by the far-right. Diplomacy? Development aid? Cultural exchange? All sorts of soft power have been under attack for decades now, and not just by the far-right but (especially when it comes to development aid) also by mainstream centrist parties across the Western world. And it's always pseudo-masculine / "strongman" BS backing the sentiment - Bernd Höcke, German AfD mastermind, comes to my mind with "we have to rediscover our masculinity" [1], so do Hungary's Viktor Orban and his denouncement of LGBT or Trump's entire Œuvre.
I'm not saying that violence or at least being prepared, ready and willing to use it is automatically bad. Far from it. But all the various forms of "soft power"? They have a lot of value, value that the far-right is all too willing to just burn for entertainment.
[1] https://blogs.taz.de/zeitlupe/2019/03/24/die-auferstehung-de...
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#375Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I do know for a fact that many "users" here are LLMs. HN autokills comments it detects as LLM. I think maybe you're not giving HN enough credit. :)
HN front page is about 25% LLM written blog posts at any given time.
There’s no rule against submitting LLM-written—ahem, “cleaned up my notes”—articles, just comments.
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#377Like many modern woes, it’s a problem of trust. The baseline level of trust in an online interaction has been eroded significantly by LLMs. The question is, how can we reverse this trend and increase trust? I have a sneaking suspicion that it would help enormously if the stock prices of the largest companies in the world were not tied to how effective they are at hijacking as much of humanity’s time and attention as…
> Maybe the fediverse can (eventually) help? It’s been a while since I looked at it. The fediverse has been around for well over a decade in some form or another. It never caught on with society enough to make a difference. And unfortunately, the fediverse has now developed such a distinct culture of its own, Highly Online people with distinctive political and social shibboleths, that it even alienates many tech idea…
The general public isn't alienated from the fediverse because of its distinctive political and social shibboleths, the general public simply doesn't know that it exists.
As far as the "tech idealists," a lot of them seem to want every space to be 4chan where they can be racist trolling assholes without consequence. And those folks have Nostr.
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#378Earlier 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.
> The IRL social network is actually the important part of the trust structure.
For Debian-style applications that are 100% about openness and 0% about secrecy, sure.
But if you want to secure communications between pro-democracy activists in China, or you're a Snowden-like whistleblower wanting to securely communicate with journalists - y'all probably don't want to be vouching for one another's keys.
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
It did more to break bots that were fueled by righteousness than it did those that were fueled by money. That's antiproductive, in that it promotes survival of only the worst bots.
I'd want any/all the bots dead if I were still using that, so at least killing some of them is better than not. The "helpful" ones were just annoying.
That sounds pretty great. If we could just flip 1 switch to accomplish things in absolutes, then that'd be awesome.
I'd like to flip the switches that absolutely end poverty globally, absolutely eliminate guns from the US, and absolutely remove bots from Reddit,
If you can show me where these switches are located, I'll cheerfully go flip them and accept full responsibility for the results.
(Over here where things don't work in absolutes: Some of those bots that got killed were countermeasures to help keep the bad, well-funded bots at bay.)
Re: AI slop is killing online communities
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that "attestation through a web of trust" means something like needing an invite from an existing user. It doesn't have to mean mass surveillance.
Then how can you have a community that is welcoming to people who are not part of the ingroup? I want to create a community for immigrants. How would I make it welcoming to recent immigrants for whom no one can vouch? A web of trust is a wonderful tool, but it's exclusive by design. This is a problem for some communities, even though it makes others much better.
> for whom no one can vouch
Spot the fed