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AI slop is killing online communities

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Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#681

Post by 4ggr0 »

halyconWays wrote: post #447

What online communities? Ever since Reddit went all-in on censorship, actual conversation moved to the deep web, mainly on Discord and other places invisible to search engines.

i for one deleted discord a couple of months ago when news about age verification and palantir collaboration dropped. got too yucky for my taste. used it since 2016, now i just don't anymore.

event went so far as to try to delete all of my messages with an extension, took like 2-3 days to delete my account. even then, i don't trust them enough to think that they don't keep copies of deleted messages.

regret writing a lot of personal details and feelings in 1:1 chats, sometimes also in servers.

i yearn for a new-age of decentralized communities and fora...

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#682

Post by hylaride »

slidehero wrote: post #521
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.

presumably most people running these bots are doing it for some financial gain. as long gain > cost the issue won't go away. It'll stop the ones doing it for the lols, but I imagine they're a minority anyway.

Or swaying opinions on hot topics. It's interesting to see how much more often politics gets injected into forums (reddit or elsewhere) on completely unrelated topics. Sometimes it's subtle, like a "signature" promoting out of the mainstream causes that then slowly make it look more mainstream.

Almost all geographic subreddits (for cities/states) are overwhelmed by rage baiting posts and comment. This got worse when reddit did the moderation changes a few years ago when they went public. To them it probably just looks like more "engagement". I have no doubt various nation state actors are backing a lot of this.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#683

Post by RankingMember »

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?

Hackernews' approach is hellbans. FWIW that seems to work pretty well here at least.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#684

Post by renyicircle »

> I am not an AI-hater. In fact, I think AI-haters are on the wrong side of history. > It’s just that I know when to keep my crayon-drawings to myself ;) And I am getting increasingly sad and frustrated seeing communities that I value slowly wilting under the onslaught of shit

Disliking AI, even for reasons admitted by the author as valid, and on which they post rants, has become so low status that people now have to preface their articles with this. It's fine to be be happy with the good aspects of a thing and be mad at the bad ones. We don't need to split between sides of history (whatever that means) because of this. Eventually you might want to weigh the benefits against the damage though.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#685

Post by marcus_holmes »

nicbou wrote: post #587
marcus_holmes wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to be brutal about culling, uninviting and removing anyone who doesn't look like a good fit. Or have a two-stage process: run very public, very open events that anyone can sign up to an attend. And then invite specific people that you meet at those events that look like a good fit for your community to your private, community-only event.

This works if the goal is to create a funnel for making friends. I aim for something closer to Stack Overflow, where people gather to solve shared problems and help each other. The closest analog I can think of is community-run bike repair workshops. Some people are deeply involved in, and others just have a flat tire. The closest digital equivalent is the forums of old.

ok, but the same problem arises; how to weed out the people who are bad for the community.

I've worked in community-run bike repair workshops. The leader worked really hard to keep the place drama-free. Some people really like drama ;)

The forums of old were endlessly kicking and banning people, and that was before it was profitable to spam folks.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#686

Post by RankingMember »

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?

The :10bux: requirement did seem to do a good job of weeding out the lowest-level trash/spammers and encouraged people to toe the (sometimes very blurry) line. I remember how absolutely godawful some of the no-signup-fee SA-offshoots were (remember TheGunOwner's spin-off site "LivingWithStyle"?), to say nothing about 4chan.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#687

Post by lux-lux-lux »

solid_fuel wrote: post #424
pojntfx wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you head to Twitter right now, the vast majority of bots are blue checks. It seems to actually encourage the opposite, where you trusting that someone paying $8 for an account makes you even more likely to fall for slop

I think twitter is an odd-one-out here, twitter as a whole has been heading down hill ever since the acquisition, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of those blue checks are officially sanctioned bots. Especially given the way so many of them push the same narratives that Musk does at the same time he does.

It’s mainly an odd one out because bluechecks have access to monetization and get pushed to the top of replies. It’s basically a wishlist for bad actors.

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#688

Post by fl4regun »

sltkr wrote: post #348
fl4regun wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you nobody in the world "lives in" nor "depends" on reddit to live.

Explain how that's different from Hacker News?

I also don't "need" nor "depend" on hacker news to live. We're talking about websites like they are vital to living, that's not real. They are not. The closest thing to a website someone actually "needs" might be a government website (to report or file taxes maybe) or a bank website (assuming no brick and mortar locations near you). Let's not use words like "need" and "depend" to mean much lighter things like "is convenient" and "frictionless".

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#689

Post by gawkdev »

The actual damage comes from volume without accountability.. no attribution, no source no way to verify. The same problem existed with content farms pre AI it's just cheaper and rampant now. Communities that survived content farms did it with one rule.. cite your source or get removed. That still works. but again the irony is that the source could be some ai slop..

Re: AI slop is killing online communities

#690

Post by elevation »

nicbou wrote: post #553
elevation wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for whom no one can vouch Spot the fed

What are you on about

I didn't mean to suggest that OP was a fed.

I'm suggesting that if you build an online community of immigrants to the US and you allow accounts for whom no one can vouch, at some point this mechanism will bring you an ICE agent.

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