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AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

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Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#41

Post by handfuloflight »

doe_eyes wrote: post #8
walterbell wrote: post #5

Previously, spam has been reported and filtered via "flag" and "report" buttons. Why is that not sufficient for site operators to separate "AI Slop" from other articles? If existing sites choose to tolerate "AI Slop" (why doesn't HN have this problem?), does that create a market opportunity for competitors with better filters?

Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything. LLM-generated content is not distinguishable from human content by any simple rule, so you lose the ability to police the platform that way.

> Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything.

Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns.

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#42

Post by yifanl »

yungporko wrote: post #26
dcchambers wrote: post #22

> CEO Tony Stubblebine says it “doesn’t matter” as long as nobody reads it. It seems like the leaders of all of these online platforms are going to just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that this massive problem isn't one. This AI trend is absolutely going to destroy many (most?) of these companies. For better or worse, the new age of the internet is already here.

is there anything they can realistically do?

The same thing Amazon would have to do to detract fake listings: Add friction.

Of course, even mentioning the f-word is forbidden, so...

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#43

Post by handfuloflight »

unsignedint wrote: post #24
walterbell wrote: post #5

Previously, spam has been reported and filtered via "flag" and "report" buttons. Why is that not sufficient for site operators to separate "AI Slop" from other articles? If existing sites choose to tolerate "AI Slop" (why doesn't HN have this problem?), does that create a market opportunity for competitors with better filters?

To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments, including this one. However, I put in substantial input by outlining my thoughts in detail, so I treat it more as a sophisticated grammar checker. As a non-native speaker, my writing is sufficient for business, but I don’t consider myself a strong writer. GenAI helps me convey my thoughts more clearly and efficiently, which has been tremendously valuable.

Out of curiosity, can we see the chat history that you went through to get to this output?

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#45

Post by unsignedint »

handfuloflight wrote: post #43
unsignedint wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments, including this one. However, I put in substantial input by outlining my thoughts in detail, so I treat it more as a sophisticated grammar checker. As a non-native speaker, my writing is sufficient for business, but I don’t consider myself a strong writer. GenAI helps me convey my thoughts more clearly and efficiently, which has been tremendously valuable.

Out of curiosity, can we see the chat history that you went through to get to this output?

Sure,

---

Please refine: To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments including this one. I do, however put in substantial input outlining my thought in detail, so I use it more like a glorified grammar checker. It helps me a lot as I'm not a good writer (as being non-native, just sufficient to be able to thrive in business environment, just not a good writer. It helps me tremendously to get my thought across efficiently.

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#46

Post by scruple »

rootusrootus wrote: post #12

Definitely not just Medium. It's everywhere. I have noticed that someone immediately calls out pretty much every bit of content as AI generated, whether it obviously is or not. I guess this is a best case scenario. I do wonder what will spring up next to allow high quality content to be found.

Speaking of everywhere... My Google results are absolutely flooded with this shit now and it's driving me crazy. It won't be long before site searching (site:reddit.ciom/r/whatever, etc.) is similarly plagued. It's very frustrating!

SEO was annoying but there was still value in the results. Now, as soon as I detect or start to believe some result is AI bullshit I immediately close the tab out.

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#47

Post by handfuloflight »

jgalt212 wrote: post #6

YouTube allows one to report a video for 11 different reasons. A list below. Unfortunately, AI Slop is not one of them. Sexual content Violent or repulsive content Hateful or abusive content Harassment or bullying Harmful or dangerous acts Misinformation Child abuse Promotes terrorism Spam or misleading Legal issue Captions issue

Being in the AI game themselves, it wouldn't make sense for them to give AI negative perception.

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#48

Post by spwa4 »

minimaxir wrote: post #18
rootusrootus wrote: post #12

Definitely not just Medium. It's everywhere. I have noticed that someone immediately calls out pretty much every bit of content as AI generated, whether it obviously is or not. I guess this is a best case scenario. I do wonder what will spring up next to allow high quality content to be found.

That's more a consequence of "AI" becoming a synonym for "always bad" in creative spaces (and inversely "if it's bad, it must be AI-generated"), despite the fact that there's some nuance there.

You forget exactly who is complaining that AI is always bad, with no nuance. It's a bit like observing that in every book and movie writers have a very strong tendency to be rich superheroes with incredible morals and 50 admirers on every finger.

Re: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium

#50

Post by jameslk »

I’m waiting for the point in time when content platforms no longer try to downplay their generated content but instead simply embrace it and even go as far as excluding human only content.

Like for example a TikTok, but all the videos are generated by the platform itself using likes/skips to drive its algorithm to generate more addicting content. That seems like the logical conclusion of where all of this is going.

They can then drop the creator side of the market and a lot of moderation issues that come with it, while gaining full ownership, control, and monetization of the underlying content.

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