3 ms·

What a twist of fate! The social media generation companies built their success on aggregating other people’s content and offering new ways to interact with it.

by klabb3 4y ago

What a twist of fate! The social media generation companies built their success on aggregating other people’s content and offering new ways to interact with it. “No we’re just linking to what other sites provide for free”. Now, there’s a new leather jacket in town. “We’re just training on data that you already provide for free”. Of course it’s fun to watch a turf war, and we can all cheer for our favorite team and quibble about who deserves a punch in the gut. But, we also need to keep an eye on the horizon. This will change the world, even and especially the spaces that we currently rely on. Just look at what happened to legacy media when the aggregators came: it largely turned into blogspam and clickbait. Comment sections (like this one) aren’t perfect, but they’re a damn good pressure valve for regular people to interact with the world. What will happen to those, for instance?

brucethemoose2 4y ago
Theres plenty of incentive for people to shoot the breeze and shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same, especially with the amnesiac ones we have now. That being said, I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible, with the better part of it being old or in niche subs on niche topics (like fandoms or memes) that the LLM trainers are avoiding anyway.
- klabb3 4y ago
  > Theres plenty of incentive for people to […] shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same[…] I am concerned with the opposite, that LLMs will shout into our comment sections. For instance, building a convincing sentiment manipulating bit network will be dirt cheap and easy. Even here on HN there’s a financial incentive to flood the place with bots to promote tech products. > I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible That’s fine, but the important thing is that most comments are written by real people who wasted time to write it. Not just that, but language is used as a marker. You can tell when someone talks about a subject they know a lot about. This ability to judge for yourself, based on the content alone, will be eroded. Anything can sound convincing, even to the trained ear. This makes content-oriented communities like Reddit and HN particularly vulnerable.
  - brucethemoose2 4y ago
    Oh yeah that is a definite issue. Maybe mods/LLM bots in some niche subs can save them with very strict on topic requirements, which would reduce the incentive for most of spam, but the more general parts of reddit (and HN) are in trouble.
garryindiana 4y ago
That’s such generic logic it applies to society as a whole anymore. We just extend past effort. James Madison wrote about it, saying the future owes deference to the past by carrying on the benefits it inherits from it. I wonder if people could just social in place more; talk, make art, rather than stare at a glass obelisk all day should social media die. You think that’s ever happened in human history? I dunno.

by klabb3 4y ago

brucethemoose2 4y ago

Theres plenty of incentive for people to shoot the breeze and shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same, especially with the amnesiac ones we have now. That being said, I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible, with the better part of it being old or in niche subs on niche topics (like fandoms or memes) that the LLM trainers are avoiding anyway.

klabb3 4y ago
> Theres plenty of incentive for people to […] shout into the void on comment sections. Typing to an LLM just isnt the same[…] I am concerned with the opposite, that LLMs will shout into our comment sections. For instance, building a convincing sentiment manipulating bit network will be dirt cheap and easy. Even here on HN there’s a financial incentive to flood the place with bots to promote tech products. > I don't agree about Reddit comment quality... its just generally not horrible That’s fine, but the important thing is that most comments are written by real people who wasted time to write it. Not just that, but language is used as a marker. You can tell when someone talks about a subject they know a lot about. This ability to judge for yourself, based on the content alone, will be eroded. Anything can sound convincing, even to the trained ear. This makes content-oriented communities like Reddit and HN particularly vulnerable.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  Oh yeah that is a definite issue. Maybe mods/LLM bots in some niche subs can save them with very strict on topic requirements, which would reduce the incentive for most of spam, but the more general parts of reddit (and HN) are in trouble.

garryindiana 4y ago

That’s such generic logic it applies to society as a whole anymore. We just extend past effort. James Madison wrote about it, saying the future owes deference to the past by carrying on the benefits it inherits from it. I wonder if people could just social in place more; talk, make art, rather than stare at a glass obelisk all day should social media die. You think that’s ever happened in human history? I dunno.