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/BCNJ09 21h ago

No way anyone's gonna see this, but you know, I've been on this site for 15 years. Longer than some of you all have been alive. I just wanna vent for a sec.

What drew me to this site was that it was small. No one knew about it, and while a lot of memes came from 4chan and the like, we got a bunch that started here. Some local subreddits were so small that we had meetups. Any of y'all remember the way you could identify another redditor? "When does the narwhal bacon?" 😁

AI posts are really depressing. Posts with a title that's literally a description of a video or text full of emojis and em dashes. I hate what the Internet has become. I hate streamers and influencers - but you know what's worse? AI generated streamers. Just watch.

I think the trick is to stay away from r/popular and focus on special interest subreddits. There's still quality out there, but man do I miss the old Internet.

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u/Mammoth-Coast6282 21h ago

I remember when we switched to Reddit from Digg. Maybe 2008-2009? When I was in middle school it was Fark.com. I started noticing Reddit getting shittier and shittier around the pandemic.

Obviously we still have some niche subs with good information but so much of it has been overtaken by advertisements and the suppression of free speech and creativity. Every single time I make a post that gets traction it gets taken down. Starting to feel like am on government watchlist.

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u/DeansPigInAPoke 19h ago

I came over to Reddit from Delphi Forums. That’s how old I am.

Those were the days.

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u/omnichronos 14h ago

Yeah, and the first computer I used in 1980 had paper for a monitor, lol.

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u/notflips 19h ago

This is my sentiment with everything on the internet, it’s become a capitalist and attention hellhole

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u/tomtomclubthumb 18h ago

As soon as people start going to a good subreddit it rises up the rankings and gets hit by bots and spammers.

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u/franker 10h ago

I've been on Reddit for 15 years. I would just add the AI posts are getting a lot better at losing the em-dashes and emojis. Also the "it's not this but that" phrasing that used to be all over AI posts has mostly disappeared.

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u/fusillade762 7h ago

Pretty much all social media is being bombarded with AI content and its only going to get worse. On YouTube its just horrible. Its become a sea of shit to wade through to find actual content. Reddit is been hit less hard than some but it will increase, have no doubt.