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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#671

Post by isodude »

protocolture wrote: post #526
protocolture wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Genuinely dont know how this made at least 3 people angry enough to downvote but not suggest why.

I saw your genuine post and upvoted since it seemed unfair.

I am mostly against all usage of LLM because the treadmill is moving too fast. But if it's thoughtful usage and a lot of tinkering I might change course. As such that includes other things than LLM obviously.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#672

Post by goatlover »

mock-possum wrote: post #668
protocolture wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 b…

I don't know why not wanting AI-generated content to swamp communities is a moral panic that people need to be deprogrammed from. Seems like a legitimate concern.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#673

Post by randusername »

TFNA wrote: post #343
dwaltrip wrote: post #224

Like 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…

Well that's kinda the trade-off isn't it?

Centralization normalizes, but a very large reasonably similar group of people is an ideal target for infiltration by outside interests.

Decentralization incubates eccentricity or extremism, but are more likely to be beneath the notice of outside interests.

I think these trade-offs are more visible in online spaces where the scale of reach or opacity is exaggerated in comparison to physical space.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#674

Post by Forgeties79 »

roysting wrote: post #99
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…

On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being AI/bot and if I say things the mod doesn’t like and is not their favorite thing to hear I’m “flamebaiting” or engaging in personal attacks when pointing out specific things. Frankly, online communities have been doing for many years now, when the censorship, anti-free-speech, tone policing mods and mobs started dominating online and America really did not have the self-re…

> On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being AI/bot and if I say things the mod doesn’t like and is not their favorite thing to hear I’m “flamebaiting” or engaging in personal attacks when pointing out specific things.

Mod powertripping nonsense happens, but banning people is a very easy way to kick up a small shit storm so most of us generally avoid it unless somebody has repeatedly been an issue or just flagrantly breaks the rules.

I’m not saying you aren’t telling the truth, but I’ve seen and heard this exact story a thousand times and the few that actually end up sharing proof (most refuse to) of what happened had a very skewed idea of how things went down.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#675

Post by cactusplant7374 »

hexaga wrote: post #405
Tanoc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, they aren't good at creating new material. But many discussions in comment section are simply regurgitations of existing material, which they are good at rearranging. New novel discussions in places like this are actually a very rare thing, as many comment sections are simply people who already know informing those who don't. I'm doing that right now, funnily enough.

No, they aren't even good at rearranging existing material. They produce bad writing that only superficially looks good in a lowest-common-denominator sense, and falls apart under any close examination. Everything is wrong with it, from the sentence structure to the rhetorical forms to the substance. AI 'writing' is a loose collection of cheap tricks that score well on A/B.

Precisely. People here are claiming that everyone is being fooled and that LLMs are amazing at casual writing. It's very silly.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#676

Post by kyusan0 »

spoiler wrote: post #632
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eagerness.. you let them work through a endless labyrinth of forms. While the human drops out after the 2nd form- the ai is willing to go all the way always.

Don't you lose really users by making it easy for bots to complete a sign up, but hard for humans?

I'm not familiar with the specific example, but as a first hunch, if I had to implement such a system, it'd be part of the flow after the successful signup, not during.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#677

Post by michaelcampbell »

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]…

> 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.

The SO population decline started before LLMs, too.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#678

Post by quickthrowman »

ishouldstayaway wrote: post #280
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Jeffery of YOSPOS bought it before Lowtax overdosed on mangosteen and it’s still operating.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#679

Post by cassepipe »

ryandrake wrote: post #219
jmyeet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on the Internet for decades at this point and one thing I've noticed is that communities that, for example, ban political topics actually mean "positions I don't like" as "political". This is somewhat related to the Overton window but really a bunch of (mostly conservative) ideas get normalized so aren't deemed "political". I see the same thing with "AI Slop". Yes, there is AI Slop but (IME) it's pretty eas…

> I've been on the Internet for decades at this point and one thing I've noticed is that communities that, for example, ban political topics actually mean "positions I don't like" as "political". This happens on HN all the time. For a lot of downvoters and flaggers, there are two kinds of opinions: "Things I agree with" and "Too political for HN."

And yet if that was entirely the case, HN wouldn't be such an interesting place. This sounds very much like someone making fun of the attempts of rationalism/effective altruism "because humans are not rational but emotional beings". Yes, it is mostly true but not entirely true and that's what makes a difference.

I am certainly guilty of downvoting (not flag) people I disagree with but I also read the guidelines and will downvote or flag a comment that seems to originate from one of my ingroups that would violate those norms because I value this place.

And I have also been able to nuance my own opinions by reading a well-behaved (respecting HN norms) comment even though I don't like its vibe.

I didn't see the flag system being abused. The flagged comments I have seen were most egregious norm violations. Whereas posts are generally flagged when they inherently highly flammable. It's generally a edge case and some of those make it through with a little moderation warning as top comment.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#680

Post by chao- »

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?

Depends a lot on the community's topic, purpose, and size.

However, a sign that someone needs to be removed is if you find that the community writ-large treats them as a Missing Stair [0]. If they have refused direct requests from community moderators/leaders to address their behavior, or regressed after a short period of improvement, and if most of the community is required to do work to actively manage their toxicity, that is not sustainable.

It is a mistake I once made in managing a community. There was a person who was able to present as "pleasant enough" when the situation called for it, but who was often toxic when something didn't go perfectly (especially in a 1-on-1 setting). I allowed them to stay for too long, and the community as a whole suffered from the ambient sense of tension and hostility.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair

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