- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Generative AI has really become a poison. It’ll be worse once the generative AI is trained on its own output.
You’re two years late.
Maybe not for the reputable ones, that’s 2026, but these sheisters have been digging out the bottom of the swimming pool for years.
Doesn’t mean that the fediverse is immune.
News stories and narratives are still fought over by actors on all sides and sometimes by entities that might be bots. And there are a lot of auto-generating content bots that post stuff or repost old content from other sites like Reddit.
Especially since being immune to censorship is kind of the point of the fediverse.
If you’re even a tiny bit smart about it, you can start hundreds of sock puppet instances and flood other instances with bullshit.
I try to avoid talking about how indefensibly terrible Lemmy’s anti-spam and anti-brigading measures are for fear of someone doing something with the information. I imagine the only thing keeping subtle disinfo and spam from completely overtaking Lemmy is how small its reach would be. Doing the same thing to Reddit is a hundred times more effective, and systemically accepted. Reddit’s admins like engagement.
Put in those tickets. It’s a community effort y’know.
It’s an arms race and Lemmy is only a small player right now so no one really pays attention to our little corner. But as soon as we get past a certain threshold, we’ll be dealing with the same problems as well.
Can’t some instances make some sort of agreement and have a whitelist of instances to not block? People would need to register to add their instances to the list, and some common measures would be applied to restrict someone from registering several instances at once, and banning people who misuse the system.
That wouldn’t solve the problem, but perhaps would make things more manageable.
You can’t block people. Who would you know, who registered the domain?
What you’re proposing is pretty similar to the current state of email. It’s almost impossible to set up your own small mail server and have it communicate the “mailiverse” since everyone will just assume you’re spam. And that lead to a situation where 99% of people are with one of the huge mail providers.
you’re right, the matter is more complicated than I thought…
It’s extremely complicated and I don’t really see a solution.
You’d need gigantic resources and trust in those resources to vet accounts, comments, instances. Or very in depth verification processes, which in turn would limit privacy.
What I actually found interesting was bluesky’s invite system. Each user got a limited number of invite links and if a certain amount of your invitees were banned, you’d be banned/flagged to. That creates a web of trust, but of course also makes anonymous accounts impossible.
The only reason reddit was valuable was because it was from real people who weren’t paid off. Well that’s ruined now.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that a bit lately anyways. Maybe I’m looking up stuff that has less of a community on Reddit, and thus has less discussion, but I have absolutely noticed some comments have a single product name-drop with little clarity for why they liked the product. It starts to feel like they’re just ads (generated or otherwise) meant to trick you into thinking Reddit users are liking the product.
AI is going to just make it worse, and cause Reddit to not be a good goto for actual reviews and discussion on pros/cons.
Exactly. Usually there’s a conversation or a quick consensus on one or two things. But I’ve been seeing lots of single answers or just ads
There’s an excellent chance that even some of the “authentic” discussions you see are word-for-word reposts of old posts and comments, created by bots to build up karma in order to be sold to spammers and influence peddlers down the line.
I wanted to figure out what game hosting sites were good and Google pointed me to reddit…every thread was full of boilerplate ads for different sites. The comments were the most obvious, marketing-approved sentences I’ve ever seen
Everything I can find online seems to be advertisements or paid reviews (Also advertisements) when looking for anything anymore. Businesses are terrified of an open honest conversation about what is good and what is not
If you’re terrified of honest conversations, your product is probably shit.
Marques Brownlee had a video recently about the question “do bad reviews kill products?” that highlights the issue well
Exactly. Every company is terrified of honest conversation since it makes putting out shit harder.
I so don’t understand how to run a business.
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Spend $Billions shoving advertising down everyone’s throats? Absolutely!
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Just make a good product and provide good customer support? It will never work!
Option 1 is easy and any idiot can throw money at it to solve the problem. Option 2 requires talented people and real effort.
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It’s gross, but also inevitable. If there’s an untapped niche to make money from, somebody’s going to try it – plus if they want to waste their money on generating accounts only to have them be banned, then so be it.
Makes me kinda thankful that this community is smaller and less likely to be targeted by this sort of crap.
When the internet is eventually oversaturated with smartbots, where will the humans go.
Peer-to-peer systems? Systems where you have to do physically be at the location to get data maybe, so cyber cafe like things. Or back to the old system and go to the regular bars, repair cafés or hobby places.
Group chats.
To a new social media platform where you have to send in a DNA sample to create an account.
( ͡°╭͜ʖ╮͡° )
That creates a market for morticians and midwifes creating preauthenticated accounts to sell to bot farms
I appreciate the mostly benign neglect we had for awhile. Now that they’re paying attention it’s just all bad. Or would be, if I was there. HA.
That’s just for small players. Big corps probably been doing it for years.
Oh, I would have thought Reddit themselves would offer such a service
Don’t give spez ideas
Reddit is past the point of no return. He might as well speed it up a little.
He’s got to get them from somewhere. They certainly aren’t coming from his little piggy brain.
That would be an unmarked ad. I don’t think that’s legal in many places
Probably.
So, we complain to a regulatory body, they investigate, they tell a company to do better or, waaaay down the road, attempt to levy a fine. Which most companies happily pay, since the profits from he shady business practices tend to far outweigh the fines.
Legal or illegal really only means something when dealing with an actual person. Can’t put a corporation in jail, sadly.
Correction - AI is poisoning everything when it is not regulated and moderated.
Reddit has been poisoning itself for a while, what’s the difference? Just AI borrowing from the shithead behavior?
Lol, you think regulation and moderation aren’t poison themselves.
The regulations we implement are written by the Sam Bankman Frieds and Elon Musks who can capture the regulatory agencies. The moderation is itself increasingly automated, for the purpose of inflating perceived quality and quantity of interactions on the website.
Get back to a low-population IIRC or Discord server, a small social media channel, or a… idfk… Lemmy instance? Suddenly regulation and moderation by, of, and for the user base starts looking much nicer.
Lol, you think allowing people and businesses to do whatever the fuck they want is a good thing.
How exactly are they poisoning a pool of toxic waste?
Pissing into an ocean of piss.
Now it’s not only toxic, it’s also acidic and instead of killing you, it’ll also melt you.
Well, that was the last bit of usefulness I used to get out of google. I’ve been on yahoo for a while now
Yahoo is still alive?
Yeah this isn’t new.
Ever wonder why you are such a fan of shitty played out franchises?
This market; expected to replace the same market that just used bots to achieve the same thing
Wow this is gross. I’m gonna wash it down with some MOUNTAIN DEW ™
If only people moved to an open and federated platform. I mean I don’t have to say that I hate reddit since I’m here but still whenever I Google a problem reddit answers are one of the most useful places. Especially about something local.
This isn’t a problem that can be solved with a technical solution that isn’t itself extremely dystopian in nature.
This is a problem that requires legislation and criminal liability, or genuine punitive civil liability that pierces the corporate legal shields.
Don’t hold your breath for a serious solution to present itself.
