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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#661

Post by strogonoff »

prophesi wrote: post #592
WolfeReader wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike a lot of communities, yours at least started on the correct side. Better to ban outright, than to slowly realize that you should have banned it.

When it comes to slow forum content, I think it's a fool's errand to try to determine if someone is using AI for their responses. Any of the tell-tale signs of AI are easily skirted by mentioning in their prompt to not do so. It goes back to how you can't sanitize human language which has been an issue with LLM's from the beginning. Encouraging a culture of not using AI works to an extent, but I also tire of threads…

Barriers is what makes a community; by definition, if there was truly zero barriers, there would be one ambient global pot. When barriers are eliminated, communities either erect new barriers or die.

The barrier of rejecting LLM content is a basic pre-requisite of any community of humans directly engaging with other humans in good faith.

There are always ways to achieve that: long vetting process and in-person meetings, high membership price, trusted computing verification, etc. It’s an arms race, but you only have to make it not worth it to the attacker.

Therefore, communities will either die, become much less accessible, or delegate human verification arms race to a service—most likely paid solutions provided by the very industry that is providing the products killing those communities[0].

[0] For example, see Altman’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain).

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#662

Post by MSFT_Edging »

pocksuppet wrote: post #471
seanw444 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tin foil hatters are always told they're making slippery slope fallacies until they're proven right a few years later. Over and over again.

Sometimes. Other times they're just wrong.

Even if they're wrong, erring on the side of caution will have a net positive effect in this case.

It's like someone saying "hey this war with Iran might be based in lies, remember Iraq?" then someone saying "no its different this time" and eventually needing to backtrack.

Many try to be the voice of caution, while others are too trusting and then try to pretend they were always against . Just like how getting scammed on a crypto rugpull is shameful and prevents people from speaking out, getting scammed by another obvious national security lie or walled garden lie makes folks feel like fools too.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#663

Post by sanderjd »

bayindirh wrote: post #626
dspillett wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins Where there are certainly strong examples of this, a lot of people mistake enforcing the rules as zealotry. Part of the point of SO was that if things don't change then there is a completed state for SO too - no need to ask duplicate questions like on platforms where a post is less long-lived. Unfortunately people take things like “this is a dup”, “provide more…

You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1]…

Yep, the first killer app for AI was, "hey, I'm having this problem and I'm not sure what's going on, can you help me figure it out?", and being told "sure!" instead of "this is a dupe, use the search function you idiot" or "this is not the right kind of thing to ask here". SO has always been incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at the same time.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#664

Post by bayindirh »

dspillett wrote: post #656
bayindirh wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1]…

> don't feel like part of the community Maybe I'm off because I wasn't there for community, I don't really do the online community thing. I was one of the biggest contributors in terms of answers to a couple of the areas (SU, SF, DBA) in the early days and I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends. I also don't get on with remote work because I don't feel connected to names and faces on scr…

> I liked helping people, but I certainly wasn't there to make friends.

SO was not structured to make friends, and I didn't expect anything similar to that end. However, I expected a more friendly (or neutral) conversation, like between colleagues or two people who just met in a conference.

Being put down for programming style, language choices or other nitpick is just bad. I have seen enough flamewars and rude people in my life. I wanted to ask a questions and I got low-key insults or "duplicate!" warnings for things not duplicate, in fact.

I also like learning and helping people, but I don't like to be bullied. I endured that thing enough (5+ years if anybody wonders). I neither want more, nor have time for that, nor young enough to don't care for that.

So, I reverted to consulting documents and finding my own path. At worst, the code doesn't work and/or compiler shows what I did wrong. Even GCC 4 is more polite than some of the people in SO or SE.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#665

Post by bayindirh »

sanderjd wrote: post #663
bayindirh wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. The problem was so small that SO only had to make a site-wide survey, make a couple of public statements, big administrative changes and a big campaign to earn hearts and minds back. Even after that, I still feel sour about the site. Talk about burnt bridges. Moreover, in 2025, 46% of the survey participants told that they don't feel like part of the community. That number was 44% in 2024 [1]…

Yep, the first killer app for AI was, "hey, I'm having this problem and I'm not sure what's going on, can you help me figure it out?", and being told "sure!" instead of "this is a dupe, use the search function you idiot" or "this is not the right kind of thing to ask here". SO has always been incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at the same time.

The fun part was not searching before asking. I always did that. Also, not being told to ask better questions. We need to ask good questions and read ESR's guide on that.

The fun(!) part is spending an hour searching the site and meticulously crafting a question which ticks all the SO guideline boxes, and being yeeted out for a "duplicate question which even doesn't meet the guidelines".

At least give a link to the well-aged question, so I can see what I missed. Of course the answer is no, because there's no such question and/or answer.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#666

Post by kijin »

TitaRusell wrote: post #660
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.

There will soon be a point when you cannot even tell if the post comes from a human or AI model.

Don't worry, every country seems to be moving toward a future in which you need to present government ID to use any online service whatsoever.

This will solve the problem of automated signups ... until AI models start getting valid government IDs, too. /s

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#667

Post by plewd »

fragmede wrote: post #390
Jblx2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good use of AI is when it enables people to do something they couldn’t do before, to contribute to a community when they couldn’t before. There are two separate things here that are getting silently conflated. > A good use of AI is when it enables people to do something they couldn’t do before This could be good on an individual level, if say, a doctor wants to vibe code an app of some sort for his individual pra…

Because of the convenience. Why should I have to go and spend my time prompting an AI, if someone else has already done that for me. Same thing with food. I know how to cook a chicken risotto, but sometimes I like having someone else do it for me.

Personally, in almost all cases I think it'd be more convenient to just prompt AI myself (and maybe get the original prompt) instead of having to sift through overly-verbose AI output from an unknown prompt.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#668

Post by mock-possum »

protocolture wrote: post #366
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.

>shrug off around 600 AI content creator accounts monthly. >I fear losing the battle. I was in a small niche creative writing community for a while. Circa 2021\22. AI wasn't why I was there but I demo'd a few LLMs to a lot of the users in the Off Topic section because people were curious. Even with an explanation of how they operated, almost everyone was at least interested. One author told me how he operated similar…

Yeah I’ve seen similar anti-AI-gen witch hunts crop up over the past few years - in artist and even non-creative communities, and it’s such a disappointment every time. My respect for people who engage in moral panic absolutely plummets, it’s cringe and I wish there was something I could do about it, but it take so much work to try to deprogram someone who’s been demagogued.

As you say, unfortunately, sometimes the best thing to do is to just wait it out, and hope that shouting into the echo chamber is all they end up actually doing about the ‘problem.’

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#669

Post by mock-possum »

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.

I think the opposite is happening.

Those of us who can distinguish the bots are sick of them and are leaving - the ones who can’t tell the difference and appreciate being pandered to stay. Instead of driving them away, bot posts drive them to engage.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#670

Post by lukan »

ricardobayes wrote: post #638
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.

I always find the most difficult is to deal with users who are not actively breaking any rules but are toxic and hurting the conversation. Given your experience, what's your take on handling this?

It really depends on the community and the exact guidelines, but if someone is clearly toxic, I start with a direct message, then mute, then kick and ban.

You can spend endless time with internet weirdos, the trick is acting early and also being open to reverse a decision (also saying sorry if a moderation misstake was made, it can be easy attribute something to malice that was in reality really a newb misstake - and then you say sorry, explain that you are not paid and have also the real world to deal with at times and then all is good and with those who are really bad, well, one should not be light skinned and be able to tolerate some vague and concrete threats).

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