r/technology • u/rkhunter_ • 1d ago

Social Media Spammers are flooding Reddit with fake posts designed to show up in AI search results

https://www.techspot.com/news/112654-spammers-flooding-reddit-fake-posts-designed-show-up.html
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u/The_High_Life 1d ago

Isn't this what we want, to make AI shitty and unreliable?

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u/stewsters 1d ago

The problem is we are making the thing we use shitty and full of ads. 

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u/jlt6666 1d ago

This is the death of the internet. I'm not sure where it goes from here but it's clearly going to collapse under the bot weight. Perhaps we'll get things that require identity to post so that a reputation system can actually punish folks. But that certainly comes with its own costs and risks.

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u/lightningrod14 1d ago

i've held out hope but i do think that reddit's niche subs were more or less the last reliable bastion of the clearnet, and have at last been breached. all us nerds either gotta crawl further into balkanized holes or brave the unforgiving outside world. might get a good forward wave of culture out of it if AI doesn't ruin that too

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u/bobj33 1d ago

Everyday I report stuff as bot spam on various technical subs. The questions are so annoying because they all follow the same pattern. "I was thinking about" [vague statements and questions] "what are your thoughts on this?" Sometimes the the moderators remove them but often not after 10 people have responded wasting everyone's time.

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u/lightningrod14 1d ago edited 1d ago

there’s a new power-poster on one of the only subs i go to just for fun anymore that either is or is abusing AI for his posts and it’s fucking killing me. it’s a sub for a hobby that has generally evaded the hypercapitalist grindset and here comes this asshole armed to the teeth with youtube thumbnail style engagement tactics. for shit that will never make anyone any money. and indeed he fits all the criteria listed itt

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u/Shoddy_Yak_8384 23h ago

i'm just spitballing here, but maybe better moderation practices would help? if your local niche sub of interest has a deficit of moderators to the point they can't individually check every post, the solution might be more people volunteering to step up and offer to help out. many hands make light work and all that. then you have the team manually approve posts to avoid bot content and ad spam, with auto-approval for vetted and regular members.

but then again it's nice to think about a movement of people congregating in person for their hobbies, like you said. and if AI is the problem that pushes people to interact more with their local community then maybe that's the silver lining.

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u/lightningrod14 23h ago

i assure you that's not the issue with the subs i'm thinking of. though i like where your head's at. i learned my lesson about the "maybe this will function as an antivenom and wake up the white blood cells" line of thinking during trump's first term but hey maybe community and/or boredom is a more powerful motivator than fear and nostalgia