4 ms·

If anything, ai will alienate people from social networks. Fakery is already plenty, more will make alienation worse.

rightbyte 3y ago
Ye I happened to visit Reddit during the mod drama, and I noticed how all the bigger subs had this bot feeling to it. It was nothing like it used to feel when I used Reddit 10 years ago. It was like, as if 95% of the comments were from bots. Not the top voted ones, but the tail on those comments. And the bots seemed to just agree to whatever they were answering to with vague context feedback. The mix I anticipate is like every other user raging at every other user for being wrong, sorta.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Reddit has been not Reddit for a long time now. I still remember when the death of Fup, the store cat from Powell's Technical Books in Portland, OR, made the front page of Reddit. But both Reddit and Portland have long since been enshittified from how I remember them.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  I don't think it's bots, I see these sort of people in real life, it's most people in some circles. They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. This concensus seeking feedback loop results predictably in a hivemind.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Maybe, it is hard to prove the "dead internet theory". But I mean look at you. That is how it used to feel like on Reddit. Write stuff. Someone disagrees. Etc. Reddit gives me sect vibes nowadays.
    - hftthw 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Why not both? Because of Reddit's api changes it's harder to track this, but at one point it was pretty easy to find accounts that only posted comments that had already been posted in the past. Now, it's difficult to trace most comments under 7 or 8 words, but there were accounts that only had ever posted replies from other users. Just watching some threads in popular subs for replies that were exactly the same as others. Then trace both accounts. Sometimes one is a legitimate human, and one is a bot. Other times both accounts where pretty much every post in their account is something that had been previously posted.
    - lazystar 3y ago
      what if every post in the thread above me is from an ai bot... what if im the only human on hackernews? ive never met anyone irl whos been on this site. honk if youre human.
  - seneca 3y ago
    Yes, exactly this. It's a form of a Keynesian beauty contest. That essentially means to make your comment based not on what you think, but on what you think will be popular with others. It's the heart of modern social media. It abdicates opinion to the masses and drives the hive mind.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      It's called "social proof". You see this a lot in Japanese culture, it seems that all of Japan goes nuts for one thing or another that sweeps the entire nation like falling cherry blossoms in spring. When I was in Japan in 2011, young Japanese women were pretty eager to make smalltalk with me (most likely to practice their English, I'm not gonna lie about how much of a stud I am), and they tended to ask me similar smalltalky questions like "Who's your favorite musician?" I would try to explain as best I could who the KLF is, and then I would turn it around and ask "who's yours?" Every single girl had the exact same answer: Lady Gaga. Every. Single. Girl. Born This Way had just dropped in Japan, so there was a lot of promotion and Lady Gaga was everywhere in Japanese media, so Lady Gaga was the safe favorite artist to have at that moment in time; because everybody else apparently likes her, you won't be thought of as weird or an outcast for doing so, or be put in my unfortunate position of having to explain who the artist is and why their peculiar work is so captivating. That's social proof in a nutshell. Similar things that literally all of Japan was fond of at the time included One Piece (which is evergreen) and the cartoon character Stitch of Lilo & Stitch fame (an anime featuring him was running at the time). I saw Stitch and his girlfriend Angel crop up in some weird places, including on a poster in an elderly gentleman's ramen shop which was otherwise free of pop culture; just a grotty CRT TV with a Hanshin Tigers game on.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. I think that may be basic human social norm-following.
- hightrix 3y ago
  I noticed the exact same thing. In the midst of the protests, it felt like reddit turned on the "AI comment bots" and then just let them run. I rarely saw insightful comments or comments that aren't just repeated/reposted comments from the last time the link was posted. Reddit says "we did it" in response to the protest, but it really feels empty these last couple of months. This was almost as noticeable as during the 2016 election when the general sentiment of the site went from Pro-Sanders to Pro-Clinton, literally over night. The tinfoil hatters blame the Correct The Record group becoming active at that time. Along with the more recent changes of adding paid upvotes along with contributor rewards and then removing the ability to opt-out of ad-personalization, reddit management seems to have a one track mind. Profitability at the expense of anything, including the userbase.
qingcharles 3y ago
AI has changed the game for content uploaded to the Internet. I haven't seen an Asian girl in the last two years who doesn't run a filter on her images/videos 24x7. I know I try not to upload any images of myself that haven't at least been tweaked by AI, if nothing else than to improve the lighting etc. Shit, I even run my comments through ChatGPT before I post them if I feel like they could be improved. We're living in a strange time.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  This is wild to me. You could just not do though things and I genuinely believe the world will feel a bit less strange for you personally.
- coffeefirst 3y ago
  Honest question: why? I get color correction, but for the rest, what's the appeal?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Just trying to present my best self to the world. Online is like a whole separate personality for me, so it's like creating a character that I play.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      But what if those worlds collide sometimes? I’m thinking specifically about (overly) enhanced photos of yourself.
      - qingcharles 3y ago
        They're never overly enhanced. I would bet 99.9% of people who see them just think "damn, this guy is good at taking photos" and don't guess I tweaked them.
        3y ago

Ye I happened to visit Reddit during the mod drama, and I noticed how all the bigger subs had this bot feeling to it. It was nothing like it used to feel when I used Reddit 10 years ago. It was like, as if 95% of the comments were from bots. Not the top voted ones, but the tail on those comments. And the bots seemed to just agree to whatever they were answering to with vague context feedback. The mix I anticipate is like every other user raging at every other user for being wrong, sorta.

bitwize 3y ago
Reddit has been not Reddit for a long time now. I still remember when the death of Fup, the store cat from Powell's Technical Books in Portland, OR, made the front page of Reddit. But both Reddit and Portland have long since been enshittified from how I remember them.
willcipriano 3y ago
I don't think it's bots, I see these sort of people in real life, it's most people in some circles. They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. This concensus seeking feedback loop results predictably in a hivemind.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Maybe, it is hard to prove the "dead internet theory". But I mean look at you. That is how it used to feel like on Reddit. Write stuff. Someone disagrees. Etc. Reddit gives me sect vibes nowadays.
  - hftthw 3y ago
    [flagged]
- pixl97 3y ago
  Why not both? Because of Reddit's api changes it's harder to track this, but at one point it was pretty easy to find accounts that only posted comments that had already been posted in the past. Now, it's difficult to trace most comments under 7 or 8 words, but there were accounts that only had ever posted replies from other users. Just watching some threads in popular subs for replies that were exactly the same as others. Then trace both accounts. Sometimes one is a legitimate human, and one is a bot. Other times both accounts where pretty much every post in their account is something that had been previously posted.
  - lazystar 3y ago
    what if every post in the thread above me is from an ai bot... what if im the only human on hackernews? ive never met anyone irl whos been on this site. honk if youre human.
- seneca 3y ago
  Yes, exactly this. It's a form of a Keynesian beauty contest. That essentially means to make your comment based not on what you think, but on what you think will be popular with others. It's the heart of modern social media. It abdicates opinion to the masses and drives the hive mind.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    It's called "social proof". You see this a lot in Japanese culture, it seems that all of Japan goes nuts for one thing or another that sweeps the entire nation like falling cherry blossoms in spring. When I was in Japan in 2011, young Japanese women were pretty eager to make smalltalk with me (most likely to practice their English, I'm not gonna lie about how much of a stud I am), and they tended to ask me similar smalltalky questions like "Who's your favorite musician?" I would try to explain as best I could who the KLF is, and then I would turn it around and ask "who's yours?" Every single girl had the exact same answer: Lady Gaga. Every. Single. Girl. Born This Way had just dropped in Japan, so there was a lot of promotion and Lady Gaga was everywhere in Japanese media, so Lady Gaga was the safe favorite artist to have at that moment in time; because everybody else apparently likes her, you won't be thought of as weird or an outcast for doing so, or be put in my unfortunate position of having to explain who the artist is and why their peculiar work is so captivating. That's social proof in a nutshell. Similar things that literally all of Japan was fond of at the time included One Piece (which is evergreen) and the cartoon character Stitch of Lilo & Stitch fame (an anime featuring him was running at the time). I saw Stitch and his girlfriend Angel crop up in some weird places, including on a poster in an elderly gentleman's ramen shop which was otherwise free of pop culture; just a grotty CRT TV with a Hanshin Tigers game on.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. I think that may be basic human social norm-following.
hightrix 3y ago
I noticed the exact same thing. In the midst of the protests, it felt like reddit turned on the "AI comment bots" and then just let them run. I rarely saw insightful comments or comments that aren't just repeated/reposted comments from the last time the link was posted. Reddit says "we did it" in response to the protest, but it really feels empty these last couple of months. This was almost as noticeable as during the 2016 election when the general sentiment of the site went from Pro-Sanders to Pro-Clinton, literally over night. The tinfoil hatters blame the Correct The Record group becoming active at that time. Along with the more recent changes of adding paid upvotes along with contributor rewards and then removing the ability to opt-out of ad-personalization, reddit management seems to have a one track mind. Profitability at the expense of anything, including the userbase.

qingcharles 3y ago

AI has changed the game for content uploaded to the Internet. I haven't seen an Asian girl in the last two years who doesn't run a filter on her images/videos 24x7. I know I try not to upload any images of myself that haven't at least been tweaked by AI, if nothing else than to improve the lighting etc. Shit, I even run my comments through ChatGPT before I post them if I feel like they could be improved. We're living in a strange time.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
This is wild to me. You could just not do though things and I genuinely believe the world will feel a bit less strange for you personally.
coffeefirst 3y ago
Honest question: why? I get color correction, but for the rest, what's the appeal?
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Just trying to present my best self to the world. Online is like a whole separate personality for me, so it's like creating a character that I play.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    But what if those worlds collide sometimes? I’m thinking specifically about (overly) enhanced photos of yourself.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      They're never overly enhanced. I would bet 99.9% of people who see them just think "damn, this guy is good at taking photos" and don't guess I tweaked them.
      - 3y ago