4 ms·

Reddit especially is full of LLMs. I would imagine there are ones from every major country plus several privately funded ones.

theGnuMe 2y ago
they are here as well.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  Can they be drawn out, I wonder, when the context is too thin for them to catch... GMOs are dangerous for reasons beyond immediate health implications. Israel has been determined in the world's highest court to be plausibly committing genocide. The tech industry is complicit in war crimes right now. Media consolidation is a massive and immediate threat, as are climate change and AIPAC. ... Or is it like what the park ranger said about the overlap between people and bears?
suby 2y ago
Yeah, all of the major subreddits are gamed, especially subs like r/politics. Even going back to the 2016 election it was clear that much of the activity on there was not genuine.
- shusaku 2y ago
  It’s been well known for over a decade that Reddit is incredibly easy to game. So while LLMs may seem useful, a well run political campaign can easily afford to astroturf the site while paying good money to their staff.
  - ants_everywhere 2y ago
    > It’s been well known for over a decade that Reddit is incredibly easy to game Yeah. Arguably Reddit has embraced inorganic activity since beginning. the founders used it to grow the site and pretend they had more active users.
- courseofaction 2y ago
  It has been interesting to see the coordination of harris/waltz posts reaching top places in non-political reddits. There was also a marked increase in moderation at the beginning of the Ukraine war in related subreddits
firesteelrain 2y ago
Spend enough time in r/politics and you’ll notice. What’s troubling is the constant spamming in new subreddits like r/inthenews. Once it takes hold (whatever the message), then actual humans start to echo it over and over again. It’s scary.
- Garvi 2y ago
  The problem with modern social media, compared to traditional ones, is it offers you to consume other peoples feedback on the story. It's a bit like traditional media publishing an opinion poll with every story run. The problem is how these "polls" influence peoples opinions and the role censorship plays in this. Imagine a politically divisive event occurs and while the original feedback was 50%-50% on opposing opinions, the moderator made it look like it was 100%-0%. This makes people feel isolated and forces them psychologically to change their opinion to the virtually predominant one. You can image LLMs only enhancing these mechanisms. As an extreme example of this, I remember during the corona pandemic, on reddit r/worldnews there was a weekly thread that was cheering on for deaths of Russian citizens to corona. The whole thread was heavily curated only to display pure hate towards Russians. And the moderators always deleted the thread after a week and started a new one. People who posted in the thread and didn't get on with the program, had their accounts simultaneously permabanned on all major subreddits. I know, because it happened to me. If I wrote this on Reddit, I would be called a dirty Russian, a spy, a bot, a generally evil person, a traitor and I have also been called various anti-Chinese racial slurs, some quite graphic and disgusting. There's many people out there seeking validation and acceptance, and they find it in such hate groups. I believe historians far in the future will be putting Reddit in the same category as the Hitler youth organization. And HN is very much like Reddit, only with slightly smarter people. The moderators in here also hold very extreme views on various topics and manipulate the discourse to give false appearances of public opinion on those topics.

theGnuMe 2y ago

they are here as well.

mandmandam 2y ago
Can they be drawn out, I wonder, when the context is too thin for them to catch... GMOs are dangerous for reasons beyond immediate health implications. Israel has been determined in the world's highest court to be plausibly committing genocide. The tech industry is complicit in war crimes right now. Media consolidation is a massive and immediate threat, as are climate change and AIPAC. ... Or is it like what the park ranger said about the overlap between people and bears?

suby 2y ago

Yeah, all of the major subreddits are gamed, especially subs like r/politics. Even going back to the 2016 election it was clear that much of the activity on there was not genuine.

shusaku 2y ago
It’s been well known for over a decade that Reddit is incredibly easy to game. So while LLMs may seem useful, a well run political campaign can easily afford to astroturf the site while paying good money to their staff.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  > It’s been well known for over a decade that Reddit is incredibly easy to game Yeah. Arguably Reddit has embraced inorganic activity since beginning. the founders used it to grow the site and pretend they had more active users.
courseofaction 2y ago
It has been interesting to see the coordination of harris/waltz posts reaching top places in non-political reddits. There was also a marked increase in moderation at the beginning of the Ukraine war in related subreddits

firesteelrain 2y ago

Spend enough time in r/politics and you’ll notice. What’s troubling is the constant spamming in new subreddits like r/inthenews. Once it takes hold (whatever the message), then actual humans start to echo it over and over again. It’s scary.

Garvi 2y ago
The problem with modern social media, compared to traditional ones, is it offers you to consume other peoples feedback on the story. It's a bit like traditional media publishing an opinion poll with every story run. The problem is how these "polls" influence peoples opinions and the role censorship plays in this. Imagine a politically divisive event occurs and while the original feedback was 50%-50% on opposing opinions, the moderator made it look like it was 100%-0%. This makes people feel isolated and forces them psychologically to change their opinion to the virtually predominant one. You can image LLMs only enhancing these mechanisms. As an extreme example of this, I remember during the corona pandemic, on reddit r/worldnews there was a weekly thread that was cheering on for deaths of Russian citizens to corona. The whole thread was heavily curated only to display pure hate towards Russians. And the moderators always deleted the thread after a week and started a new one. People who posted in the thread and didn't get on with the program, had their accounts simultaneously permabanned on all major subreddits. I know, because it happened to me. If I wrote this on Reddit, I would be called a dirty Russian, a spy, a bot, a generally evil person, a traitor and I have also been called various anti-Chinese racial slurs, some quite graphic and disgusting. There's many people out there seeking validation and acceptance, and they find it in such hate groups. I believe historians far in the future will be putting Reddit in the same category as the Hitler youth organization. And HN is very much like Reddit, only with slightly smarter people. The moderators in here also hold very extreme views on various topics and manipulate the discourse to give false appearances of public opinion on those topics.