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Previously, spam has been reported and filtered via "flag" and "report" buttons. Why is that not sufficient for site operators to separate "AI Slop" from other

Previously, spam has been reported and filtered via "flag" and "report" buttons. Why is that not sufficient for site operators to separate "AI Slop" from other articles? If existing sites choose to tolerate "AI Slop" (why doesn't HN have this problem?), does that create a market opportunity for competitors with better filters?

jgalt212 2y ago
Before LLMs, the cost to generate spam content was non-zero. Now, it's effectively zero. These infinite supplies of AI Slop should be handled differently and more aggressively that legacy spam.
doe_eyes 2y ago
Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything. LLM-generated content is not distinguishable from human content by any simple rule, so you lose the ability to police the platform that way.
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  > Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything. Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns.
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    > Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns. It probably drives engagement, so there's no need to interfere. Perhaps it should be encouraged even..
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Uehreka 2y ago
A lot of the time, AI slop is difficult to discern from authentic content until you’re somewhere in the middle, at which point something starts to feel off about it. At least, that’s been my experience coming across AI-written Blender tutorials on YouTube. All this makes it difficult to quickly report as spam. There’s also a lot of plausible deniability since a lot of people have developed a hair-trigger response to writing they don’t like or find compelling and just immediately go “It’s AI!” even when it isn’t. > why doesn't HN have this problem? HN comments aren’t easily monetizable.
- jerf 2y ago
  "A lot of the time, AI slop is difficult to discern from authentic content until you’re somewhere in the middle, at which point something starts to feel off about it." And it's only going to get worse. I don't know what the limits of LLMs are, even before we start discussing future architectures and capabilities, but it certainly seems to me that if they just scale a bit farther on their current trajectory it is going to be very hard to detect AIs simply by the content. One of the adaptations I've adopted is that if your content looks like it was generated from a simple prompt, no matter how long the resulting content, I just toss it. "Write me a beginner's tutorial for Python" isn't going to produce a document that the internet needs another copy of or that social media sites need to spend time linking to. Unfortunately that means even if the "tutorial" was human-generated, it's probably getting the axe too, unless it has a very interesting or unusual approach, but it isn't clear to me that that is actually a large problem.
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  > HN comments aren’t easily monetizable. Why isn't it? As far as I can remember, all the forums had lot of outright spam, even forums which are orders of magnitude less popular than HN. You can even see spam in usenet. Reddit/Discord is full of it. I wonder are dang/moderators the only reason for this?
simonw 2y ago
"(why doesn't HN have this problem?)" I've seen a few comments on HN that looked likely to have been generated by LLMs, but they tend not to get any replies or up-votes so there's not much incentive for people to keep on trying to post them.
unsignedint 2y ago
To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments, including this one. However, I put in substantial input by outlining my thoughts in detail, so I treat it more as a sophisticated grammar checker. As a non-native speaker, my writing is sufficient for business, but I don’t consider myself a strong writer. GenAI helps me convey my thoughts more clearly and efficiently, which has been tremendously valuable.
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  Out of curiosity, can we see the chat history that you went through to get to this output?
  - unsignedint 2y ago
    Sure, --- Please refine: To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments including this one. I do, however put in substantial input outlining my thought in detail, so I use it more like a glorified grammar checker. It helps me a lot as I'm not a good writer (as being non-native, just sufficient to be able to thrive in business environment, just not a good writer. It helps me tremendously to get my thought across efficiently.
    - init2null 2y ago
      Perhaps I'm naive or old fashioned, but I prefer this unpolished version. You clearly have an unclosed parenthesis that's attached to a rough sentence, but two minutes of rephrasing will serve you well in improving both your writing and your speech. If you must use it, I'd suggest asking for suggestions rather than rewrites. Writing is not just about syntax, but also about communicating who you are. This is your true voice.
      - unsignedint 2y ago
        Thank you—I understand where you're coming from. My interest in using GenAI stems from its ability to catch subtle implications or unintended double meanings in my writing. I've had plenty of "that's not what I meant" moments in the past, so using AI helps me align my phrasing with my true intent. It offers an objective lens, making it easier for me to convey my thoughts clearly, especially since I sometimes find it challenging to step out of my own subjective perspective. Some roughness in my recent writing comes from being on mobile, which makes reviewing even harder! My writing has improved, though, even when I’m working without AI, likely from exposure to better writing flows. I’d say I used to rely more on edits (20% input to 80% edits), but now it’s closer to 75% input and 25% edits. Hopefully, I can refine it even further.
minimaxir 2y ago
Websites have a perverse incentive to not remove AI Slop since it increases their UGC metrics. (e.g. amount of new content, engagement rate) In the case of blatantly false images like on Facebook, they get a surprising amount of organic engagement: https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1806416249259258189 https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1806416249259258189
TiredOfLife 2y ago
> why doesn't HN have this problem? Because it's already filled with russian bots.

jgalt212 2y ago

Before LLMs, the cost to generate spam content was non-zero. Now, it's effectively zero. These infinite supplies of AI Slop should be handled differently and more aggressively that legacy spam.

doe_eyes 2y ago

Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything. LLM-generated content is not distinguishable from human content by any simple rule, so you lose the ability to police the platform that way.

handfuloflight 2y ago
> Mostly because most spam isn't going to be reported. Traditional anti-spam works because once you have a handful of reports, you can probably generalize it to an entire class of spammy pages generated using a particular technique, and get rid of everything. Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns.
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  > Tell that to Elon Musk. He seems to unable or unwilling to stop a certain type of fake female bot spam on X that has extremely simple to spot and unique patterns. It probably drives engagement, so there's no need to interfere. Perhaps it should be encouraged even..

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Uehreka 2y ago

A lot of the time, AI slop is difficult to discern from authentic content until you’re somewhere in the middle, at which point something starts to feel off about it. At least, that’s been my experience coming across AI-written Blender tutorials on YouTube. All this makes it difficult to quickly report as spam. There’s also a lot of plausible deniability since a lot of people have developed a hair-trigger response to writing they don’t like or find compelling and just immediately go “It’s AI!” even when it isn’t. > why doesn't HN have this problem? HN comments aren’t easily monetizable.

jerf 2y ago
"A lot of the time, AI slop is difficult to discern from authentic content until you’re somewhere in the middle, at which point something starts to feel off about it." And it's only going to get worse. I don't know what the limits of LLMs are, even before we start discussing future architectures and capabilities, but it certainly seems to me that if they just scale a bit farther on their current trajectory it is going to be very hard to detect AIs simply by the content. One of the adaptations I've adopted is that if your content looks like it was generated from a simple prompt, no matter how long the resulting content, I just toss it. "Write me a beginner's tutorial for Python" isn't going to produce a document that the internet needs another copy of or that social media sites need to spend time linking to. Unfortunately that means even if the "tutorial" was human-generated, it's probably getting the axe too, unless it has a very interesting or unusual approach, but it isn't clear to me that that is actually a large problem.
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
> HN comments aren’t easily monetizable. Why isn't it? As far as I can remember, all the forums had lot of outright spam, even forums which are orders of magnitude less popular than HN. You can even see spam in usenet. Reddit/Discord is full of it. I wonder are dang/moderators the only reason for this?

simonw 2y ago

"(why doesn't HN have this problem?)" I've seen a few comments on HN that looked likely to have been generated by LLMs, but they tend not to get any replies or up-votes so there's not much incentive for people to keep on trying to post them.

unsignedint 2y ago

To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments, including this one. However, I put in substantial input by outlining my thoughts in detail, so I treat it more as a sophisticated grammar checker. As a non-native speaker, my writing is sufficient for business, but I don’t consider myself a strong writer. GenAI helps me convey my thoughts more clearly and efficiently, which has been tremendously valuable.

handfuloflight 2y ago
Out of curiosity, can we see the chat history that you went through to get to this output?
- unsignedint 2y ago
  Sure, --- Please refine: To be honest, I do use GenAI to help me format my comments including this one. I do, however put in substantial input outlining my thought in detail, so I use it more like a glorified grammar checker. It helps me a lot as I'm not a good writer (as being non-native, just sufficient to be able to thrive in business environment, just not a good writer. It helps me tremendously to get my thought across efficiently.
  - init2null 2y ago
    Perhaps I'm naive or old fashioned, but I prefer this unpolished version. You clearly have an unclosed parenthesis that's attached to a rough sentence, but two minutes of rephrasing will serve you well in improving both your writing and your speech. If you must use it, I'd suggest asking for suggestions rather than rewrites. Writing is not just about syntax, but also about communicating who you are. This is your true voice.
    - unsignedint 2y ago
      Thank you—I understand where you're coming from. My interest in using GenAI stems from its ability to catch subtle implications or unintended double meanings in my writing. I've had plenty of "that's not what I meant" moments in the past, so using AI helps me align my phrasing with my true intent. It offers an objective lens, making it easier for me to convey my thoughts clearly, especially since I sometimes find it challenging to step out of my own subjective perspective. Some roughness in my recent writing comes from being on mobile, which makes reviewing even harder! My writing has improved, though, even when I’m working without AI, likely from exposure to better writing flows. I’d say I used to rely more on edits (20% input to 80% edits), but now it’s closer to 75% input and 25% edits. Hopefully, I can refine it even further.

minimaxir 2y ago

Websites have a perverse incentive to not remove AI Slop since it increases their UGC metrics. (e.g. amount of new content, engagement rate) In the case of blatantly false images like on Facebook, they get a surprising amount of organic engagement: https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1806416249259258189 https://x.com/FacebookAIslop/status/1806416249259258189

TiredOfLife 2y ago

> why doesn't HN have this problem? Because it's already filled with russian bots.