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Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a

Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a fighting chance.

slumberlust 9mo ago
Reddit could pay the mods. Let us not act like spam accounts are undesirable for the lil piggy. MAU doesn't differentiate between real and fake users.
shevy-java 9mo ago
But one problem on reddit were the mods. It was why I retired. Bots and AI spam can be annoying but mods that lock you out of discussions are much worse.
- AngryData 9mo ago
  Yeah the reddit mod system is just ripe for abuse. They have little to no accountability, the people acting as police were the same people you appealed to and who acted as judge, there was a clear reddit mod political class with certain users or groups of users controlling significant swaths of subreddits, and with it judgements in 1 sub might get you banned from other subs. And if someone got enough mod shills in a sub they could oust original or well liked mods. And there is clear financial gains and benefits to doing all of that. Meanwhile regular users that built the site and made it a place people wanted to visit had basically zero say or influence on any of it.
- AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
  I remember your story differently. You were consistently trolling /r/programming from multiple accounts for years (shevegen, shevy-ruby, shevy-java). You relied on the fact that /r/programming pretty much wasn't moderated at all.
- intended 9mo ago
  I heartily recommend people volunteer for moderation. There’s tons of subs that need help, and the more diversity of voices in conversations like this, the better. Modding is a shit show, and being on the other side can be quite the experience. The more people who can chime in, the better as a society we can figure out what needs to be done. Right now it’s rough for users, and insane for mods.
embedding-shape 9mo ago
> give subreddit moderators a fighting chance Moderators are part of the problem really, there are a handful of moderators holding the reins over all the popular subreddits, and "smaller" (even big ones) subreddits suffer from the same problem. As an example, r/MistralAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and r/grok are all run by the same person. The only survivable places on reddit left are the subreddits with small amount of contributors that aren't trying to gain something by participating and organizing. But they're so few.
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
  > But they're so few. Given how many subreddits there, I have to ask if you have statistics to back up this claim. My intuition is that people have problems with a bunch of popular subreddits, but the vast majority of subreddits are just fine. I have no statistics to back up this intuition. Do you?
  - junofan 9mo ago
    There’s a whole vibrant industry of people you can pay to market whatever you want on Reddit. They can’t all be competing for the same few popular subreddits. They must be differentiated by targeting niche subreddits.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
      There's about 138,000 active subreddits. I don't believe that this industry is targetting even a majority of them.
      - bostik 9mo ago
        That number alone is a very good reason for the industry to target as much of it as they can / dare. You say "sudreddit". Marketing teams say "self-selecting target segment".
        9mo ago
crooked-v 9mo ago
Something Awful has retained a weirdly high level of quality these days by (still) charging :tenbux: to register an account.
- Bender 9mo ago
  Also survived the great cancellation [1] [1] - https://www.somethingawful.com/cliff-yablonski/i-hate-you-01/ https://www.somethingawful.com/cliff-yablonski/i-hate-you-01...
- isk517 9mo ago
  Also manages to sustain itself on it's own weird brand of whales, a handful of disgruntled users with enough money to just keep buying accounts using random characters as a username just to get immediately banned after their first post. Some taking a dump in the middle of your living room isn't so bad if they are paying your rent and you can just kick them back out.
alisonatwork 9mo ago
$1 is far too low to discourage abuse. Spammers and scammers will still make exponential returns. PR agencies are paid tens of thousands to craft narratives for their clients. With institutional actors the sky is the limit. Even just your average basement dwelling troll might consider it worth their while to pay a dollar for a sock puppet account.
- rchaud 9mo ago
  Requiring a valid payment method before posting will take out 99.9% of spammers and trolls. Newspapers discovered this when they went behind paywalls. SomethingAwful discovered this 20 years ago when they required $10 to create an account.
leptons 9mo ago
Lol, I guess I'm glad I checked-out from reddit before the whole "AI" thing took off. My life is honestly way better without reddit. HN isn't far behind though, honestly. The less time I spend here, the better for everything else going on in my life. HN has at least been somewhat useful for my day-job and employment future.

Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a fighting chance.

slumberlust 9mo ago

Reddit could pay the mods. Let us not act like spam accounts are undesirable for the lil piggy. MAU doesn't differentiate between real and fake users.

shevy-java 9mo ago

But one problem on reddit were the mods. It was why I retired. Bots and AI spam can be annoying but mods that lock you out of discussions are much worse.

AngryData 9mo ago
Yeah the reddit mod system is just ripe for abuse. They have little to no accountability, the people acting as police were the same people you appealed to and who acted as judge, there was a clear reddit mod political class with certain users or groups of users controlling significant swaths of subreddits, and with it judgements in 1 sub might get you banned from other subs. And if someone got enough mod shills in a sub they could oust original or well liked mods. And there is clear financial gains and benefits to doing all of that. Meanwhile regular users that built the site and made it a place people wanted to visit had basically zero say or influence on any of it.
AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
I remember your story differently. You were consistently trolling /r/programming from multiple accounts for years (shevegen, shevy-ruby, shevy-java). You relied on the fact that /r/programming pretty much wasn't moderated at all.
intended 9mo ago
I heartily recommend people volunteer for moderation. There’s tons of subs that need help, and the more diversity of voices in conversations like this, the better. Modding is a shit show, and being on the other side can be quite the experience. The more people who can chime in, the better as a society we can figure out what needs to be done. Right now it’s rough for users, and insane for mods.

embedding-shape 9mo ago

> give subreddit moderators a fighting chance Moderators are part of the problem really, there are a handful of moderators holding the reins over all the popular subreddits, and "smaller" (even big ones) subreddits suffer from the same problem. As an example, r/MistralAI, r/LocalLLaMA, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI and r/grok are all run by the same person. The only survivable places on reddit left are the subreddits with small amount of contributors that aren't trying to gain something by participating and organizing. But they're so few.

PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
> But they're so few. Given how many subreddits there, I have to ask if you have statistics to back up this claim. My intuition is that people have problems with a bunch of popular subreddits, but the vast majority of subreddits are just fine. I have no statistics to back up this intuition. Do you?
- junofan 9mo ago
  There’s a whole vibrant industry of people you can pay to market whatever you want on Reddit. They can’t all be competing for the same few popular subreddits. They must be differentiated by targeting niche subreddits.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
    There's about 138,000 active subreddits. I don't believe that this industry is targetting even a majority of them.
    - bostik 9mo ago
      That number alone is a very good reason for the industry to target as much of it as they can / dare. You say "sudreddit". Marketing teams say "self-selecting target segment".
      - 9mo ago

crooked-v 9mo ago

Something Awful has retained a weirdly high level of quality these days by (still) charging :tenbux: to register an account.

Bender 9mo ago
Also survived the great cancellation [1] [1] - https://www.somethingawful.com/cliff-yablonski/i-hate-you-01/ https://www.somethingawful.com/cliff-yablonski/i-hate-you-01...
isk517 9mo ago
Also manages to sustain itself on it's own weird brand of whales, a handful of disgruntled users with enough money to just keep buying accounts using random characters as a username just to get immediately banned after their first post. Some taking a dump in the middle of your living room isn't so bad if they are paying your rent and you can just kick them back out.

alisonatwork 9mo ago

$1 is far too low to discourage abuse. Spammers and scammers will still make exponential returns. PR agencies are paid tens of thousands to craft narratives for their clients. With institutional actors the sky is the limit. Even just your average basement dwelling troll might consider it worth their while to pay a dollar for a sock puppet account.

rchaud 9mo ago
Requiring a valid payment method before posting will take out 99.9% of spammers and trolls. Newspapers discovered this when they went behind paywalls. SomethingAwful discovered this 20 years ago when they required $10 to create an account.

leptons 9mo ago

Lol, I guess I'm glad I checked-out from reddit before the whole "AI" thing took off. My life is honestly way better without reddit. HN isn't far behind though, honestly. The less time I spend here, the better for everything else going on in my life. HN has at least been somewhat useful for my day-job and employment future.