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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#541

Post by pndy »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #201
Jordan-117 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's never forget the summer of 2023 when Reddit forceably removed mods from many major communities and replaced them with corporate shills. That was a major loss of dedicated people who cared more for their communities than Spez's pocket book.

The replacement happened somewhere around time Ellen Pao became interim CEO and site started sanitizing the controversial subreddits. It wasn't apparent at the first but around 2017 you could notice that some subs - especially ones set around large companies or media franchises, are having aggressive rules against controversial and "negative" topics. This hasn't changed much as for today.

---

One of subs I was visiting had some drama happening in ~2020 around supposed negative community behavior: people were criticizing creative works uploaded which personally I agree, weren't the best. Mods team decided that's a big no-no and this place has to be inclusive, welcoming and filled with positivity - so they started banning those who dared to criticize. Fast forward till now, there are only screenshots uploaded by bots, comments done by bots who also include screenshots along with 2 sentences in every thread.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#542

Post by intended »

iammjm wrote: post #537
rgblambda wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or applying for an account could involve sending a handwritten letter by post.

This is fucked and I hate it. Internet is (was?) about convenience and direct access. I understand there are challenges that need solutions, but this ain’t it

> was

Yep. Was.

This isn’t the internet you grow up on. This is an internet scoped for bots and organizations.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#543

Post by magic_hamster »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #55

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.

The battle is lost. You never had a chance. There's nothing you can do against the constant torrent of AI content that's only getting started. The online communities that we know and love are going to change and there's nothing we can do about it. You can't keep AI out of any platform no matter what the community guidelines say or even if it seems locked down with no bot access.

The only solution is in person meetups, bringing back the 3rd places, joining a club. Maybe it's not such a bad outcome.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#544

Post by HerbManic »

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…

Reddit has had a bot problem for well over a decade now but the sheer volume of it has exploded. It is also much more difficult to tell nowadays as the "quality" if you will is now at the good enough stage.

Alas, Reddit is basically dead to me because of this.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#545

Post by intended »

layer8 wrote: post #186
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.

If it can no longer be distinguished from real, why would it make people leave?

Underrated take.

Yeah, the “blast radius” for social media AI slop is 80%-99% of humanity. There’s many times even I cannot make out if something is slop.

Hell, AI slop is going to be even better than reality for a portion of humanity, so it’s More likely they will stay online.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#546

Post by friendzis »

friendzis wrote: post #530
m-schuetz wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I tried to sign up for instagram, but at the fourth captcha I gave up and left. How does instagram have any users with such a hostile sign-up barrier?

My profile picture is old enough to open an account on instagram

Fun fact. There is this threads twitter clone from meta. How do I login?

I "log in with Instagram", where "I log in with Facebook". Guess how well data recovery works when there is literally no password set. I'm surprised these systems work at all.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#548

Post by UberFly »

smcg wrote: post #88
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.

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.

You live in the Truman Show. Just enjoy it god damn it. Stop complaining already.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#549

Post by riffraff »

baxuz wrote: post #337
fidotron wrote: post #77

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. This seems self evident to me too. It's another factor in why I think the tech community needs to get ahead of governments on the whole "prove your ID on the Internet" thing by having some sort of standard way to do it that doesn't necessarily involve madness in the loop.

EU's ZKP implementation provides complete anonymity and untrackability: https://eudi.dev/2.8.0/discussion-topics/g-zero-knowledge-pr...

It does have the downside of requiring "trusted computing" (aka iOS and Android) on the client though.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#550

Post by bsder »

AuthAuth wrote: post #487
bsder wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are booming out. I cant believe suggesting a mailing list

You gave an ad hominem attack with no substantive response. I can do that too: "Your account is less than a year old and is AI slop farming."

Mailing lists are old, boring, boomer tech. Ayup. They are. And they work.

However, Zoomer, if you must have Teh Sh1ny(tm), then explain to me why a Discourse isn't a better choice?

Discord is the anti-Pangloss; it is the "Worst of All Possible Worlds".

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