Reddit embracing all out enshittification
arstechnica.com
Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts
"We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don't usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search," ReplyGuy's website reads.
It should be illegal to misrepresent an ad as a post or comment. This exact thing should be against the law. The boundary between advertising and social media is so thin at this point. It has to stop. It's dangerous for consumers. Corporations should have to clearly label themselves at every turn. The usage of AI to intermingle advertising and social media should be blanket illegal.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments. I don't see why that shouldn't also be applied to social media posts.
The law does apply to social media posts.
The social media company has to mark sponsored content and give users the means to do so themselves (when the partnership is between the user and a third party rather than the social media company).
Unfortunately it’s hard to prove and profitable to lie.
social media corporations can be made liable under the law, well how about here in Lemmy, where the instance owner may not even know that companies are creating bots and posting discrete advertisements, or hiring trolls/shills to advertise for them?
Is it difficult to prove that's what's explicitly being sold in this case?
It's hard since it could theoretically also be an actual user who used that website themself.
In which countries, though? That's a key point that seems missed from a lot of responses discussing "the law".
Laws vary quite significantly from nation to nation, and without that key context, there's not much that can be garnered.
The US, for one, which pretty much makes it apply universally anywhere on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, as they're all US companies.
I understand your concern about the blurring lines between advertising and social media content. Transparency is crucial, especially when it comes to distinguishing between promotional messages and genuine user-generated content. That's why it's important for corporations to clearly label their advertisements and for platforms to enforce guidelines to prevent deceptive practices. On a lighter note, have you heard about Bachelor Chow? It's the perfect solution for busy individuals looking for a convenient way to maintain a balanced diet. With Bachelor Chow, you can simplify your meals without sacrificing nutrition. Check it out today!
OMG are you me?!? I too can't get enough of Bachelor Chow! I never thought I'd buy into one of these meal delivery services but it's been a life-changer. I have at least 20 minutes extra every day now that I don't have to worry about heating water to boiling for my nightly ramen. Think of what my employer can do with those extra 20 minutes?! Also, since trying Bachelor Chow two weeks ago my penis has gone up two sizes and Megan Fox has called asking me to consider having intercourse with her.
I just can't give Bachelor Chow up! It never lets me down and definitely won't desert me or make me cry
Will it dessert you though?
Wine me dine me dessert me.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Bachelor Chow
Bachelor Chow
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
🤔
Are these alleged "sizes" universal? Or is it like shoes where a 12 in the US means 45.5 or some shit in EU?
Twice. I did it twice.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Bachelor Chow
Bachelor Chow
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot!
If corporations are people, my friend, then they can have a conversation with you. What’s the harm in that?
Still waiting on the first corporation to get thrown in jail
It's already illegal in the EU, several influencers have had trouble with the law because of this in my country (France)
This is what people like Musk are concerned about when they claim to be "free speech absolutists". This is where their concern for that freedom begins and ends: their ability to use it to profit.
I've been on Lemmy ever since the reddit API fracas. To date, I have not seen a reason to return. I have, however, seen many reasons to stay away.
There are just certain communities that haven't picked up over on Lemmy. D&D, Pathfinder, LFG, and I'm sure many others. I hate reddit with a passion but there is still stuff there.
Not for long. It's about to be non-stop Bots and models just talking back and forth to each other.
I can't wait for it. Couldn't happen to a better corporation.
Something new will rise from the ashes. We might already be on it.
Yeah of course you can find everything on Reddit and clearly not that much on Lemmy.
But Lemmy is the perfect alternative for me. I only go on Reddit through web search results on Ecosia. It’s really only useful for when I’m looking for a specific answer to a specific subject.
About that, how do we get good search results from Lemmy? I feel like the most important thing to me is finding info through google searches
Lemmy topics are now found in search engines but I’m almost never specifically looking for something in Lemmy as I’m just browsing through my feed.
Fuck id kill for Grimdank on here.
There's already one. Just be active in it and cross posted some stuff from reddit if needed
Whats it called cause I cant find it when I search grimdank or even something as simple as 40k?
I'm surprised you didn't find it. It's the first and only hit on lemmy search https://lemmyverse.link/c/grimdank@lemmy.world
Huh, my search must be fucked. Great.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !grimdank@lemmy.world
Good bot
bad bot
Time to open a D&D instance!!
running your own instance is not a trivial matter. There's plenty of well run and underutilized instances that could be used instead.
I'm kind of surprised that factorio community here is so inactive. I thought there would be significant overlap between lemmy's technical audience and factorio players.
Yea, I pray this gets better. The only really active non-tehnical communities I have seen here are political and... woke ones. I really hope at least some gaming ones would switch.
As a woke person I just wanted to let you know I upvoted you. I too wish there were more communities than just woke ones, Star Trek, and Linux. 🤣 I enjoy those but we need more.
The larger engagement is a potential reason..lots of smaller niche lemmy communities users won't engage or comment..I just lurk on Reddit with an API modded sync client. If they ban my throw away or block the API I'm done
Reddit wasn't built in a day either
Larger engagement requires people to make and join communities/subs and we all need to help that happen. It took years for reddit to have what you're talking about and it'll take time here too. Sadly we're at a point in internet history now where many people have tried their hand at being mods and admits and most of those discovered how much it can suck. We're past the point of it being some exciting new thing so I think a push for better tools and options for those that might consider it is needed. People also have less time and mental energy to take on such roles now than 10-15 years ago.
The day my modded Relay client dies will be a sad day. Lemmy is great but sadly a bunch of communities didn't make the leap here.
I wouldn't go back anyway because I don't want Spez to profit from my data
There is only one thing Reddit has (or had anyway) that I regret not having on Lemmy, which is a robust community for my U.S. state and a small one for my specific town. There's really no good place for discussions of that nature that approach anywhere near anything beyond flame wars anywhere else on the internet that I can find.
But I'm still not going back.
Amen. I should have seen it earlier, but the API debacle told me that Reddit is run by "my way or the highway" management. And they showed they didn't care at all about their users. I used to post spicy OC memes. Realized there's no point in adding value to a platform that does not value it's own people one iota.
The depressing thing about all this is that this stuff actually works. Most people will happily consume whatever shit is served to them.
I left in a huff when they jumped the shark and dropped 3party app support. I was a pretty heavy user / contributor and fully thought I might crawl back at some point. Turns out I'm doing fine without going back and the alternatives, while massively smaller, are so much less crappy feeling. I think a lot of people would feel the same way if we could just get them to try the green eggs and ham. I think it's great that Kagi is starting to index Lemmy, but the one gateway to get people over here that might actually work would be if Google searches started turning up Lemmy content. I think that would grab some attention.
Same! Also a Kagi subscriber. Hello! I thought Reddit might cave on the 3rd party thing for a while. Then they were doubling down and treated the developers of those apps like shit. I was a happy Apollo user, and I trusted what he said about how Reddit acted. I moved to Lemmy. It was confusing at the start but now I feel as at home here as I did in Reddit. If not more actually, since our user base is smaller, I feel like community is closer and has a little more tech know-how too. I do miss some fun Reddit things but I think Lemmy and the fediverse has a ton of potential and I want to be part of it ☺️
I was considering Kagi but the the CEO is a maniac
I don't actually think that's the case - my reading of that whole kerfuffle was that the blogger had overreacted.
Agreed, but they both did in my opinion. I’ll stick with StartPage and DDG, myself.
Really? Do you use this criteria for everything in your life? Show me a ceo that isn't a maniac and I'll show you someone that hasnt had a proper psychological screening. Lemmy has blown up the lore on this guy anyway. Not much evidence he's any more of an asshole than most ceos.
I literally only go back for one niche sub and only using that sweet, sweet adblock.
Agreed. I just bought a used Sony a7iii and the sonyalpha sub is a great place for knowledge.
Granted eventually that stuff will filter off reddit.. but in the mean time I'm only there on desktop with pihole and unlock origin.
Once old.reddit dies I'll never go back.
Sent from my boost for Lemmy app.
I'm the same way, but that's because I find the text formatting, comment layout, and page framing to be almost completely unreadable without it.
My ten year old monitor is at a nice 1980x1020 and when I view a post on base reddit, it crams the post into the middle of the screen, displays one or two comments below it, and then displays... other posts? Or something? It's mind-boggling, difficult to sort out what's what, and I can't figure out who's needs are being met with a layout like that.
When I click on a post, I want to see the whole post, laid out across the majority of my screen real estate, and I want all of the comments visible beneath the post, with multiple comment sorting options.
I just realized what I'm basically asking for is a forum layout.
You know, that thing that worked for decades.
I'm putting up with Lemmy even though I have a few minor gripes (mostly related to sorting and search) because the community is part of what's important to me, but the main reason I stick around anywhere is the ability to read content I'm interested in. When the on page formatting of that content sucks, I quit reading it.
I quit subscribing to newspaper websites (and ultimately quit visiting them for news entirely) when the on page advertising squeezed out the actual journalism. I could adblock, but the formatting is still a disaster and barely resembles a news article if you print it out and hold it up to a newspaper, so screw that noise.
I'm sometimes willing to be okay with being "the product" when it's my choice and I know what I'm trading for it and judge the value of what I'm getting in return to be acceptable.
When I do that, though, and major changes I don't like get made to what I'm "getting out of it" with no way for me to go back to what I did like, it's a rug pull and a breach of trust.
For all of the market analysis everyone is supposedly doing, you'd think at least ONE major player would figure out that noone likes it when their routine grinds to a screeching halt because someone decided to move the user interface around and now nobody can find anything.
Id do the same, but Im in a verry stupid situation, I dont have a reddit account and dont want to be advertising-group stalked due to being a sensitive subject.
plus it was already half taken over by ads because the sex industry is bad, some of the subs are just filled with "this is a thing you can buy, look how sexy!". I dont want what your selling, the way your selling it.
on lemmy, the subreddit is dead, minus some guy trying to revive it. Like many others, its owner posted 5 posts, and... nobody kept the pace up. 🤕
Same here, but I still use 3rd party mobile app, because both the site (unless you use old.reddit) and the official mobile app are garbage.
I still use my porn account, though it seems that I go to it less and less
lol is this a discrete Kagi Ad?
Oh man, you just cannot tell anymore...
I was very similar, heavy Reddit user that quit over thr 3PA shitshow last year. Not sure if you've noticed the same effect, but my attention span has gone way up.
I think there was a post a while back where someone found Lemmy posts on search results. I think it's still being drowned out by bigger platforms but it's good to see it happening!
They do show up in DDG occasionally but I was troubleshooting a jerboa problem. The results are there, they're just buried deep.
Just gonna suggest searxng as an alternative to kagi if you want something open-source, free, and still customizable.
Most searxng instances also index lemmy.
I'm unfortunately on Reddit regularly, but that's only because it still has decent tech support search results. Haven't logged in since the APIpocalypse
I still visit smaller subreddits when looking up technical fixes (like unraid) but I no longer post and got rid of all my old posts.
Hopefully as Lemmy grows, I can leave that shithole for good.
I still miss many of the nice communities though, Lemmy is fine, but it has less users in total than many of my niche communities. I still visit Reddit sometimes to find something out about my interests, although that might slow down if bots really take over Reddit
When you're constantly inflicted with advertising it's the fish not seeing the water story. Fuck advertising propaganda and malware networks. Fuck advertising without consent in public spaces. And most of all fuck reddit for betraying their mods and users and treating them like pieces of shit because they can get away with it.
Homie, most people in my office don't read fucking books. Half the people in my life before I was an adult have grown to never touch a book or educational material in their adult lives. We're fucked. By and large people just want to not care about anything it seems. I still get scoffed at when mentioning google and they're under an antitrust lawsuit right now. We are not going to last unless education comes to the forefront.
Gross.
Jfc people came to Reddit because up until now they were getting replies from real people with that have no financial interest in the outcome. This completely subverts everything people valued about Reddit. This fucking guy.
Yes, but by completely destroying that they can make the line go up for 2 quarters, so worth it. Also, corpos would actually prefer users not having access to these discussion spaces and the free information they provide, so you would have to rely on overSEOd shit content and ads. I hate what the internet has become
All true, and I hate it too
They think that the entire reason the Internet exists is to sell things. To make you want to buy things. And if you tell them it's not, they laugh.
these people make me so fucking sick i cannot
i cannot believe this site i spent so many sad years posting on in high school, with pure heart, posting purely out of a desire for interesting interactions and the potential to make insightful, peer-reviewed contributions that others could enjoy, has turned into such fucking dead-eyed garbage.
It makes me so mad...it's like a company butting into a conversation me and a friend are having in person.
"how do we turn our users into money"
What research is telling them that people come to Reddit to talk to corporations about products? Where was the survey? And what the fuck is a "high-intent product conversation"? These people are making shit up.
Edit: so, I looked up what a "high intent product conversation" is, and this is the answer I got.
So this man really thinks that people come to Reddit looking for shit to buy, because we have problems and desires and they want companies on Reddit to be right there hawking their snake oil cures to all our little problems via their AI marketing reps?
Where did he get that idea? Did he ask actual Reddit users? Was a survey mailed out? What was the sample size? What were the questions on the survey? Did they do a focus group?
I remember seeing threads like "What was the best purchase that you made for under 100" or some variation every once in a while. I'm sure those got corpo eyes real interested if they weren't advertising in them already.
also remember the ineeeedit sub? they initially nuked it due to companies using it to secretly sell products then reddit realized they themselves can do it.
See Also: r/thisiswhyimbroke
Oh look, another what "bought for life" thread.
So they started by making polls and surveys not obvious? That makes sense. If people know that a survey is a survey, especially on a site like Reddit, the users will tell each other and attempt to fuck with the results
Yeah, that's marketing for you.
Based on that quote, AI might have already taken over the leadership also
Full of corporate speak BS
Yes, because insert smoking company name here are all having an intense beutiful pipedream relationship with the nice folks at those pro-smoking subreddits.
hey, this is a joke btw
Ew.
I wish I could get all the mods from the subreddits that rolled over in June/July in a room and slap each and every one upside the head.
why?
Because they thought if they just folded to the site admins that everything would be okay in the end. "Oh, we built a community! We don't want to lose it, so we're opening back up so daddy Spez doesn't take away our power!"
Most facepalm reaction tbh. If only they had some spine they would have switched immediately to lemmy, but most were just doing it to go along and never had any intentions of doing anything significant.
Even as someone that's still active here, this would never happen. Neither lemmy or Kbin were ready to replace reddit in either features, stability or support, not then and not even today. It's unfortunate but reddit is not going to go down when there is no actual competition available.
When reddit fuck up again, the alternatives are already pretty mature, at least compared to last year. Back then the only app we have was jerboa (and it was pretty shitty back then too, unlike now). Now we have gazillion of lemmy apps that can suit everyone taste.
lemmy is to reddit right now is what reddit was to digg when reddit first started. Eventually reddit will go a step too far.
Reddit was always better than Digg too. I prefer the smaller community.
Except instead of having an evangelizing atheist neckbeard problem, we have tankie problem. A lot of people that see unfiltered discourse on instances outside LW will think it's Voat 2.0.
yea because not accepting US propaganda and trying to uplift marginalized people and help workers not be trodded upon, is about the same as open fascism, bigotry and constant hate speech /s
It's just replaced with propaganda from nations that "tried" communism. I've seen plenty of people from tankie instances saying shit about how Ukraine should just roll over to Russia so that they solve their Nazi problem, how the Uyghur people aren't being ethnically cleansed, and other such wonderful talking points coming from the Russian and Chinese governments.
Claiming that you see these comments everywhere on lemmy, at the scale you see bigotry on Voat, is laughably preposterous. And that is aside the point that these comments are not even as bad as open fascism and hate speech.
Genocide denial and equating those fighting in a defensive war to Nazis is just as bad as hate speech. These people are just following fascist ideals, but replacing every instance of the phrase "right-wing" in fascism's definition with "left-wing." Flying a hammer and sickle doesn't make it any less authoritarian, regardless of what they're calling it.
I assure you it is not. One causes active harm to people in online communities and pushes the world toward normalizing fascist tactics, and the other is some terminally online tankie LARPing with no great effect to anything.
USA ignores the worst genocide ever commuted on the world, theirs, and nothing really changes. The rest of the world knows about it. Israel is committing one right now with the backing of the USA and it this denial is publicized everywhere, whereas hate speech is clearly banned.
I wasn't a mod, but I did participate in the blackout as a user and I did not immediately switch to Lemmy when it was over. It took about two weeks to get over the whole 'FOMO if I leave Reddit' and 'I've spent over a decade here' sunk cost issues.
So I don't blame anyone for not immediately switching to Lemmy, but if you haven't jumped ship from Reddit by now, especially if you're doing thankless mod work for people who don't appreciate you, I have little respect for you at this point.
And let me take this opportunity as someone who mods several lemmy.world communities to say that I do not feel that the .world admin are unappreciative at all. In fact, exactly the opposite. And they're working for free just like I am, so it is a whole different scenario anyway.
As someone who moved a million-users community to lemmy successfully, if those mods had already started moving their communities to lemmy during the blackout, many many more users would have moved already. But they never planned for that, so it was just a weak bluff that reddit called.
But that would have been to assume the blackout would fail, and I think a lot of people didn't think it would. I was dubious, but I think I was in the minority there.
Not really, I started moving /r/piracy when I saw spez doubling down. By that point the writing was on the wall.
I think you're really underestimating how people are pulled in by sunk cost. I think many people, especially mods, earnestly believed that because they had invested a lot of time and effort into Reddit, Reddit would listen to them if they protested.
That's not their fault, that's just human nature. You were able to overcome that, which is good, but I don't blame anyone for not being able to at the time. A year later is another matter.
It was obvious that Reddit wasn’t changing course at all. Especially with how they handled communication with Christian Selig and other 3rd party devs.
I came here during the blackout and deleted all my content on my account. The last day Apollo worked was the last day I used Reddit and I was a Reddittor since 3/10/2011
If there was better mod organization we could have better translations for the non tech and piracy related communities but I’m overall happy how we ended up.
It might have been obvious to you, but I really don't think it was obvious to everyone and I don't think you should assume that. I saw plenty of talk from people before it happened that were absolutely convinced it would change things.
i became a reddit user on almost the same day and i think i was slower than you to delete my content because i could no longer access my posts older than a few months when i tried; i always wondered if that was intentional and now i have evidence that it was.
i switched to reddit because my previous social media platform did the same thing reddit did (also at around a decade plus of using it); i'm still kicking myself for falling into the same cycle again and i really hope the fediverse doesn't do the same thing.
It took me months to delete all my content, as the API tools I was using (power delete suite) can’t access subs that are still dark. It took a bunch of manual deletions, additional scans with the tools and occasional googling of my username but I think I’ve got it all now.
I came to Reddit initially for the human conversation. The fediverse will benefit in that it’s never going to be a commercial product and so the human conversation will be the number one priority. Even as corporate entities like meta try to join, users can just tune them out by blocking threads.net on their account, or switching to instances that have defed from them.
I tried to get other people off the site before I left, but the mods decided to be douchebags about user retention.
If anyone looks up my profile there, it says something like 'Fuck Reddit! Reddit sucks! Go to Lemmy!' but that's the best I can do at this point.
I'm pretty sure it's why I didn't get an IPO buy-in offer despite having super high post and comment karma too.
They kept sending their IPO shit to me with no way to opt out. I reported them to the FTC for not having an unsubscribe on their email.
As much as I dislike iBleeedBullshit and AssholeTheTurtle, I can respect the fact that they pissed off Spez enough to nuke their accounts from orbit.
Mad props to anyone that managed to be a thorn in the site admins' sides, even briefly.
The style in which that post by Ophelia_SK is written seems exactly like chatGPT. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes me feel so strongly, but it’s something to do with how sentences and paragraphs are constructed. They always have the same cadence with the commas and how thoughts are laid out. It’s got that generically positive tone as well.
Kinda cool though, I feel like I’m becoming able to spot these. It’s like being able to spot a photoshop by the pixels. I’ve seen quite a few shops in my time.
Yay we’re developing the uncanny valley for AI generated content
And so the Turing test lives on! /s
The full url written out is a good clue, but beyond that, AI sounds off-puttingly positive because it's always trying to be as inoffensive and appealing to everyone as possible.
Every commercial model has a positivity bias baked in, it makes it hard to use any of them as a cowriter because your villains all end up really nice and accommodating. Finetuning can break this but sometimes it creeps back in. Very annoying.
That's what I hate about it the most. Why can't it tell me I'm a fucking idiot sometimes?
It would be much harder to tell it apart from real people that way!
And also because people trying to cheer you up adopt a casual tone that is completely absent here, so it sounds as fake as corporate "apologies".
You are dead on. That post absolutely fucking reeks of AI. I want to say if you can't smell it a mile off you're an absolute cretin, but there are probably millions of people who've never really spent much time with LLMs and would be easily fooled by this garbage
Perhaps you're noticing the lack of deixis?
Without going too technical, deixis is to refer to something in relation to the current situation. For example, when you say "Kinda cool though, I feel like I’m becoming able to spot these.", that "these" is discourse deixis - you're referring to something else (bots) within your discourse based on its relative position to when you wrote that "these".
We humans do this all the bloody time. LLMs though almost never do it - and Ophelia_SK doesn't, that's why for example it repeats "debt" and "job" like a broken record.
EDIT: there's also the extremely linear argumentation structure. Human text is way messier.
Plus it explains like the reader is kinda dumb
Oooh, I think you’re onto something here. That’s definitely part of it.
Let's try something. I've reworked Ophelia's text to include some deixis, and omit a few contextually inferrable bits of info:
::: spoiler reworked text It's understandable that you're feeling anxious and overwhelmed with this, just know that you aren't alone facing it. Many people have experienced similar struggles and found ways to overcome them.
Firstly, it's important to address your debt situation. I recommend relief options that may help against some of the financial burden. One to consider is visiting the website [insert link], they offer an American debt relief program. It's worth looking into, to see if you qualify.
In terms of finding a job, it's great that you're considering part-time options that won't negatively impact your mental health, as it's important to prioritize your well-being. You may want to explore opportunities that align with your interests and skills, and consider reaching out to local resources like job centres or career counselling services for guidance and support.
Remember, it's okay to take things at your own pace and focus on your mental health. Seeking support form loved ones, therapists, or support groups can be also beneficial during this challenging time. :::
If my hunch is correct, this should still sound a bit ChatGPT-y for you (as I didn't mess with the "polite but distant, nominally supportive" tone, nor with the linear text structure), but less than the original.
You see all over the place in Amazon reviews too. You basically can’t trust the reviews anymore.
It's because of the soulless soulless emoji at the end. LLM developers have been adding them to the ends of all GPT conversations because they statistically trick people interacting with them to think they are having emotional connections with the chat bots 🤖
The AI doesn't have an emoji in its text, that's a real user that used one (as far as I can tell from their post history).
The account is now suspended. Interesting.
Ophelia_SK is, yeah. You'll see that a lot when there's a screenshot of an obvious bot shill, since what they're doing is against reddit's rules.
Tbh I honestly write replies in a style similar to Ophelia_SK (ChatGPT?) except for the www. part, when I am giving paragraphs of genuine advice. Am I bot?
Edit: Looking at it again, it's too long and flowery even for my long form replies.
Oh no, forming your ideas into comprehensible essay format with intersentence connectivity and flow, maybe even splitting into paragraphs, isn't even close to LLM speech.
I do form long, connected, split texts and comments, too, but there is a great difference between mine and an LLMs tone, cadence, mood or whatever you wanna call these things.
For example, humans usually cut corners when forming sentences and paragraphs, even if when forming long ones. We do this via lazy grammar use, unrestricted thesaurus selection, uneven sentence or paragraph lengths, lots of phrase abbreviations e.g. "tbh", lax use of punctuations e.g. "(ChatGPT?)", which also is a substitution for a whole question sentence.
Also, the bland, upbeat and respecting tone the bots mimic from long-thought essays is never kept up in spontaneous writing/typing. Dead giveaway of a script-speech than genuine, on-point and assuming human interaction.
Us LLMs can't do these with rather simple reverse-jenga syntax and semantics forming, with simple formal pragmatics sprinkled, yet. The wild west, very expansive, extended pragmatics of a language is where the real shit is at.
This is a phrase an AI (as they are now) would never use. To these LLMs, something is either a fact or it thinks it's a fact. They leave no room for interpretation. These AIs will never say, "I'm not sure, maybe. It's up to you." Because that's not a fact. It's not a data point to be ingested.
Oh, feel ya.
MFW proper spelling and comma usage means it's an AI post.
But really though. <- and that is a sentence that AI would never use because it references too complex of an idea and is too casual.
Humans are much more dynamic than these LLMs, especially because companies need their LLMs to be as uncontroversial as possible.
It's like a corporate memo as an AI
It reads like the script for a customer service rep.
Yes! I talked a bit to ChatGPT about my mental health to see if it would help (sometimes I just want to scream into a void that I'm stressed, and having the void talk back sounded amazing. But it never helps).
It always responds exactly like this, with exactly the same expressions. I'm kind of sad for the other user now.
Does any body know of an open-source reddit alternative? God, I wish that existed :/
yeah it's called Lemmy and....
Oh. I get it.
But even Lemmy isnt safe.
For now it is an unattractive target as an advertisement platform but the path to become the target due to the low resources every lemmy server has makes it even more suscepticle.
Yes. I'm so tired of how easy it is to shoehorn advertising into any post. That's why I use the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn.
This post makes it seem like the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn actually makes it harder to shoehorn, when the opposite is actually true!
I love my Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn!
It's easy because the Sichumaria (4.4 out of 5 stars) Long Handle 24.6 inch Shoe Horn makes it easy!
[Scrolling through my own post history.]
[Side-eye monkey meme.]
The prompt for an AI Lemmy advertising bot woult start with "You love Linux and strongly favour the Arch distro..."
Does anyone know of an open source reddit alternative which is also comprehensible when trying to make a new account?
I don't understand, was making an account on Lemmy difficult? I have a Lemmy.world account as well and making an account was super easy. Maybe you'd like Kbin or Mbin better?
I don't know if matters have improved any, but back when I created my lemmy.world account specifically it had some kind of bugout about what I'd entered, but it output this to the developer console and not on the page itself. Had I not thought to press F12 I would not have discovered that it had its panties in a twist about whatever it was, I think characters in my email address or something. I forget exactly what its problem was.
So yeah, I can definitely seeing that baffling the average user.
And yet...
I love how marketing people are so abnormal that they need tips on not sounding like a bot.
Which is funny because the marketing speak screams at me through that entire post. I recognized it as spam not only from the link, but from the "In terms of finding a job..." as well. I know those kind of responses. I've written those kind of responses. Those responses now repel me.
I'm looking forward to their "Dynamic Product Ads" system to coming back to bite them in the ass when ads for Nestle products appear next to posts talking about whatever horrific thing Nestle is doing this week (and similar things).
And now ensues an arms race, in which advertisers attempt to plant adverts into comment sections naturally, while reddit attempts to stop them doing it for free.
No company with shareholders can ever avoid enshittification.
Coca Cola would never do anything like this.
Neither would McDonald's®. Makers of the legendary BigMac™.
I wouldn't bet on that
Next stop: advertisers pushing product placement into generative images, and generative images with product placement littering image searches. It's a pandora's box we can't close
Even without becoming public. This was unavoidable and had to happen at some point due to how valuable reddits knowledge was/is.
You mean 'native advertising'? that is something r/hailcorporate was pointing out for years, I wonder if it's been banned yet
Will it apply to porn subreddits?
“Hey u\i_love_big_tiddies, we noticed that you love big tiddies. Could we interest you in our new product: AstroCam Super Binoculars, so you can look at big tiddies from as far away as a quarter mile?”
Try not saying "our product" and I think you have them in the bag! Err--the commenter, not the big tatas.
Just wait till the onlyfans chicks get a hold of it.
I know it's a real problem and all, but dear lord does Lemmy in particular love that word.
Too much. Reminds me of that time not long ago where every lie was “gaslighting” all of a sudden.
It wasn't. That's just you.
Why you little…
Or how a favorable opinion is propaganda. Like, ok, we get it, you don't like that one thing. 🙄
Enshittification has been enshittified.
It's a word that encapsulates our times very well. But I hear ya.
The word really started to become popular last year, especially regarding Twitter and Reddit.
It's a very accurate word for what is continuing to happen in this instance. This is not a bad use at all.
Yeah. I'm glad that people seem to have more interest in and understanding of rent seeking behaviors, but can we stop pretending this is new?
In this specific case, it's exactly the reason Cory Doctorow invented the word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Should we stop using a word because it describes reality too well? I see it everywhere these days, and it's an accurate descriptor.
I hate it. It's been used so much that it's lost all meaning.
Fixed link
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/reddit-sneaky-ai-spam-bots-compete-to-sell-you-stuff/
Woops, thx. I enjoy the comments people make on AT as much as the news stories.
Well, I just stopped using reddit so this is good timing.
Welcome to the light side! We have beans!
What made you stop?
The mods and adm8ns using all bots for everything now and the ads.
I also got suspended for 3 days for harassing a bot by replying "Hahaha" to an automated message from a r/teslalounge automod telling me I'm banned because I commented in another sub making fun of the Cyber Truck.
Whem laughing at bots is harrasment, its time to run. Reddit is a joke now.
I think it’s harder to post to Reddit as a human being than it is as a bot. You have to read like six paragraphs of text (which doesn’t show up on old Reddit) to make sure that your post is formatted correctly, and then a mod will look through your comment history and ban you because they read everything you’ve ever posted and discovered that you own a car or something.
Power-tripping mods are the bane of the modern internet.
I really would like to quit Reddit but I have to admit that Reddit has a lot more variety in terms of content, so I'll keep using it until Boost for Reddit finally breaks for good.
50% of the content on Lemmy falls into four categories:
You're forgetting star trek discussions and memes.
(Hey, at least I'm trying.)
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !pocketknife@lemmy.world
What else do you need??
Cat videos?
Let me see that pussycat gurl
Warhammer 40k obviously.
How is Boost still working for you? I just get a failed to refresh message
If it's like reddit sync you'll need to patch it with revanced
The break down of the content isn't my biggest issue. The problem is that there just isn't enough content.
Thankfully some mobile apps besides the official still work and Old Reddit still works on desktop.
Was banned on Lemmygrad for exactly that - said Stalin's policies had both up- and downsides.
Was apparently enough.
(For the record, I'm a full-blown communist)
add comics and complaining about the world to that list and you’ve got 95% of lemmy content
There's something sad about society losing a such a unique source of knowledge, but hopefully we've collectively learned something about the dangers of trusting proprietary solutions.
Anyone found a reliable way to search across Lemmy instances they can share?
narrator voice
They have not learned anything about the dangers of trusting proprietary solutions.
It has definitely become more noticeable on Reddit that huge numbers of either compromised or sold accounts are being used by bots to sell shit. They are in basically every thread now, getting upvoted to appear more legit until someone calls them out and they delete their content.
Reddit is definitely on the way down. And a decent amount along the way. But unfortunately, it still is the best option for a modern day message board. I want to use Lemmy more, but there just isn't enough content being posted by enough people.
I've gotten very used to the amount of content on here and using the different sorting options to find active discussion. It's not even close to the amount of content on Reddit, but that's not a bad thing imo.
For small communities that don't have a significant lemmy presence? Sure, for now.
I'm never going back to a community that can remove news-related posts without a modlog. That's just asking for censorship and abuse by bad actors.
That's a principled stance.
Bot spotted!
It's understandable that you suspect InvaderDJ as a bot, but rest assured that InvaderDJ is not a bot. This is a troubling time for you, so it is important that you reach out to friends and family members to ensure your safety in learning of this news.
I implore you to consider reaching out to the website https://www.totallylegitrecommendation.org to further test if other users you suspect are bots or not, they only require a $54.99/month subscription but is well worth it. Free and confidential.
In terms of detecting bot accounts, it is important to consider the worthiness of detecting bot accounts to begin with. From there, you can then determine which financial advisor you should seek out so that you are able to be financially stable during this troubling time whilst also supporting my overlords on https://www.totallylegitrecommendation.org who make use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to determine with a 99.77% success rate, if users you find on the internet are bot accounts.
thank you so much. your response means a lot to me, and definitely helps me feel less burdened by the struggle 🥹
i'm just glad im aware of the issues and it's not too late to take action and help myself
Echo chambers were literally the biggest issue with that site. Now it chatGPTs itself?
All communities have echo chambers, including those of Lemmy.
Agreed. Reddit now has ai generated echo chambers.
Yeah, I'm done with it.
The only remaining use for reddit for me is basically being a Stack Overflow for non-technology stuff (want to find the best bidet, there’s probably a review post on reddit that someone put together).
Now that comments might be well-hidden marketing attempts, there’s legit no trusting that information anymore.
Way to go, Reddit. In a few months, I’ll no longer have any reason to look at a post from 2024 or later.
Same, plus porn. I haven't run across active communities on lemmy that cater to what I'm looking for, but reddit still going strong in that regard.
Other than that, I haven't visited in months.
When reddit bans porn, it will truly be over
I gave up even on that a long time ago. Every subreddit was overrun by softcore pics from women with onlyfans.
I use the (hidden?) rss feed that every sub has, to get a chronological order of posts. Then when I find a user I like, I'll add their (again, hidden?) user rss feed to a category of users I follow. It was a huge pain in the ass to start but now I have a pretty steady flow of users whose content I like. All this is wrapped together via FreshRSS, which I self-host. This has the unexpected side-effect of capturing images/links that may be taken down by picky/overbearing mods, but because I still have the source link (not just the reddit post link), I can usually still access it.
When they silently axe that feature, it's the end for me.
Definitely not every...
Every one I was subscribed to. Or at least that's what showed up on my front page feed, because they were the newer posts and in greater numbers.
So... is it safe to assume reddit is suppressing it and handing out bans?
I would be more surprised if they weren't.
Pretty sure they really don't like ads they don't make any money from.
I would think the other way around. Complaints get you banned. They got a history of supressing negitive stories and running bots in secret.
Basically, the situation right now...
Unbelievable. I mean look at this...
goatse.png
Err. Hmmm.
Edit: The joke in my comment no longer makes sense. Please disregard.
Dang
Like Barbie(tm), now available on Blu-ray and select streaming service!
Thank you, Oscar-winning actress Margot Robbie.
Thanks actress Margot Robbie!
Yeah, the average redditor won't throw abuse at you for suggesting they use google to find out what something is.
I sincerely hate the "let me google that for you" condescension that rears its head sometimes. It is a discussion thread and makes up a lot of what google results will show so why dont they just help someone out and talk about whatever was asked.
Those redditors are insufferable. Giving someone some info and pointing them in te right direction is not the same and is the best way to go about things
there's a time and place for it. if it's a conversation about detailed opinions then no. but when someone basically asks for a simple definition then yes.
I think the idea is that the reddit user must think the research is THEIR idea. If I can get someone to Google "best in class widget shaver" without forcing them to do it, a) they will feel like an unbiased human helped them out and b) the whole process of moving from reddit to search engine, to check out line will feel natural.
Why are people still on there?!
Because up to now it's still a site where you can go talk to actual people. This value was preserved not intentionally it seems.
Lets see how that holds up if half the people are AI bots now.
Just like Twitter where most people are entirely ignorant to what's happening and they continue to use it because everyone else is. It'd be nice if they died like Digg back when that site went to shit just like reddit and Twitter have.
i'm learning as i age that this is the reason enshittification happens anywhere and to anything; i wish i could learn how to accept it.
Well, Twitter is actually based now. Before Elon bought it there were a bunch of feds working behind the scenes to censor and move the needle. When Elon cleaned house he removed a lot of that. Elon said he "bought a crime scene" basically.
Keep telling yourself that.
Just as one example: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter-bots-republican-primary-debate-tweets-increase
Use of Twitter in the US alone has slumped by more than a fifth since Elon Musk bought the site. 23% less usage is a big drop in general, let along from a single country.
So now it is similar to the dead internet where a fair amount of engagement is fake. I logged on a few weeks back and I had dozens of comments and messages from Stacys, Jessicas, Amandas, Jessicas, and Laura's. Funny how I attract only women with those names.
Just because elon isn't their guy doesn't mean he's for the people.
I went back yesterday just because Lemmy is way less active, and also I still don't actually know how it works a year later.
It sucks because I use reddit as a source to find out info about products . Now I won't.
So ultimately I might buy less?
We all knew this day was coming. And, I suspect, knowing this is precisely why most of us are here.
It's just incredibly funny that the site that tried to fight spam and ad bots because it harms user experience is now implementing spam and ad bots to harm user experience.
Obviously that's okay because it's their spam and ad bots!
What the hell is a high-intent product conversation?
People talking about topics the marketing-droids feel is likely to result in the sale of a product, i.e., "What is the best X to buy?"
Via context clues I think this means conversations that have a high likelyhood of buying something.
Like a thread asking for a phone recommendation is likely going to end in a sale. But it's written by a PR drone and thus doesn't look like English.
High chance of product purchase.
I'm still waiting for the day when actual ads across the internet drown in AI-generated advertisements pointing to no real product or service. Perhaps that'll make attention industry collapse?
If you're looking for a side project idea, here's one.
This is a similar idea to culture jamming, people would put subversive books in libraries and book stores, change labels on products in supermarkets, etc. It's not a bad way to draw attention to something people are already accustomed to seeing.
Sounds like a bubble that's perfect for the corporations to profit from before it pops and they skate away with their golden parachutes
Incredible news for us! Thanks, Reddit! 🎉
Yep, the faster the better. The worst thing would be a slowly boiling frog effect where people don't notice and stay put.
You couldn't make this stuff up
We should welcome new refugees after a new exodus ; good.
Twitter does the same thing and it's horrible lmao
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, it expanded on that practice with a new ad format that aims to sell things to Reddit users.
Simultaneously, Reddit has marketers who are interested in pushing products to users through seemingly legitimate accounts.
In a blog post today, Reddit announced that its Dynamic Product Ads are entering public beta globally.
Reddit's Dynamic Product Ads can automatically show users ads "based on the products they’ve previously engaged with on the advertiser’s site" and/or "based on what people engage with on Reddit or advertiser sites," per the blog.
The stance has been increasingly clear over the past year, as Reddit became rather vocal about the fact that it has never been profitable.
In June, the company started charging for API access, resulting in numerous valued third-party Reddit apps closing and messy user protests that left a bad taste in countless long-time users' and moderators' mouths.
The original article contains 494 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I've seen these same kinds of posts, obviously ads and less obviously by AI on Lemmy every once in a while which started maybe a month and a half or so ago? Makes me wonder if they were testing their shit over here.
I would not be surprised at all if small scale testing occurred here. It actually (unfortunately) makes sense since the Lemmy API is free to use. They could just trickle out bot comments and gauge reaction.
Scary but true..
Lemmy Flood Gates right now.
The control room has alarms going off and on the main screen it just says “LET ‘R RIP” in blinking red letters.
Jesus Christ it's like how you know that skull fucking grandma would be awful, but actually seeing it happen is a whole different level of fucked up.
The sad thing is, I'd probably still be using it if I wasn't one of those hit with a "Site-Wide Ban because we love power tripping!"
Did they hit you with the one that even monitors the IP you're coming from, so even a completely new email address won't let you create a new account? That's what forced me to migrate here about a year ago!
Naw, I heard they're really good at sniping Ban Evasion, so I didn't even try
fire is hot, water is wet. More news at 10
Oh, don't sell em so short. Like sell em short, but they deserve a bit more credit. I'm pretty sure at this point they're birthing entirely new forms of enshittification over there that we haven't even realized yet.
It was mildy uplifting to downvote those things
These editorialised post titles are so stupid.
Once my narwhal stops working (haven’t updated and I’m not giving a penny to Reddit) I’ll likely never go back.
Narwhal is trash compared to Apollo by the way, I only use it for one subreddit. I wish that sub would migrate over here so I can browse using the Voyager app.
@tearsintherain I see repost bots on the front page all the time now