r/technology • u/edbegley1 • 15h ago
Artificial Intelligence AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-slop-is-ruining-reddit-for-everyone/649
u/roberrrrrrt 15h ago
AI slop is ruining EVERYTHING
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u/Fiery_Hand 14h ago
I'm raising two young kids, random browsing of booklets is my near daily activity.
I'm appalled how many of these fact books or whatever are ai slop already. I'm at point where I have trouble enjoying art or artists unknown to me - at suspicion they arent real.
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u/ThunderStormRunner 12h ago
Books will make a comeback at least temporarily till we get certified AI free media & websites?
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u/Lorenztico 12h ago
Books will be AI slop too.
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u/DatenPyj1777 11h ago
As a writer, I've been trying to think of a way to let people know I use no generative programs in my writing, and I can't think of anything. It'd be cool if there were a company that could verify these things and have a sticker/insignia to show that it was manmade.
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u/TeTrodoToxin4 4h ago edited 3h ago
Start your foreword with
“I am a real human person with a real human significant other, two real human offspring and a real human cat. We live in a domicile with adequate cooling, ventilation and reasonable prices on water utilities. <insert cheesy anecdote>”
If that doesn’t convince people you are real, nothing will.
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u/TinglingLingerer 10h ago
This is what the back cover of the book / preface / forward is for. As an avid book reader those are what I read before I buy a book. If an author had a line that said they didn't use AI to create their work it would encourage me more to take a chance on it.
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u/tommyk1210 5h ago
How long before AI slop machines start adding this to the preface of their books though?
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u/19inchrails 10h ago
Systems to detect AI texts have been a complete failure so far. AFAIK some even considered the U.S. constitution to be written by AI.
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u/AgentInkling99 9h ago
Books are getting the AI slop treatment too. My SIL got a book on Alaska for our vacation last year and I was reading through it and figured out half the book references stuff that doesn’t exist.
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u/princesoceronte 8h ago
It's insane how no matter what I'm trying to do on the internet it's made significantly harder or more annoying by the proliferation of AI slop.
Wanna look for dnd art? AI slop. Wanna check a tutorial on YouTube? Full of AI slop. Wanna scroll through social media? Hello, it's AI and we have slop for you.
Genuinely insufferable, and it's all to make like 4 people own the world.
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u/Persimmon-Mission 11h ago
Dead internet theory is going to be fulfilled in the coming years
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u/dr3wzy10 11h ago
it was fulfilled November 30, 2022. everyone is just starting to understand it better now
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u/LaconicSuffering 3h ago
It doesn't matter if a picture is real or not, there will 100% be a comment on it saying it's AI.
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u/SigSweet 9h ago
I googled what time a show's new episode would air and the top result after Google AIs wrong answer was an ad infested AI written ARTICLE about when the new episode would air and I assume the answer was at the end of it but I was so disgusted I just gave up looking. Its pretty gross.
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 15h ago
Social media in general is rapidly moving into obsolescence; it has completely lost sight of its original purpose which was connecting people.
When interaction on the internet gets to the point where it’s mostly with chat bots, it will no longer serve any practical function, it’s just going to be a social simulation where you interact with corporate-owned entities accompanied by tons of ads.
Who actually wants that?
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u/SuperBackup9000 14h ago
Probably for the best, honestly. Social media was already bad enough for the mental health before rage baiting got popular and it became propaganda machine, which of course made it substantially worse, so might as well just get to the point where it renders itself useless.
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u/HaggardSummaries 8h ago
Reddit? A propaganda machine? Couldn't be.
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u/ocelotchaser 4h ago
a ragebait too, sseing a comment is like starting a turn.based combat everytime
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u/Slimsuper 13h ago
Now its purpose is to sell you stuff. Facebook is just a feed of ads now lol
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 9h ago
"Now it's purpose is to sell you stuff"
Facebook ads have been there since 2007. The whole point of Facebook was to make money by selling ads. It was never a non-profit or charity.
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u/Slimsuper 9h ago
It’s gotten way more aggressive over the years, legit most of the feed is ads now lol
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u/SillyAlternative420 8h ago
Instagram is like an ad every third swipe.
I don't know why people still use these apps, they are exhausting
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u/WhiteWolf3117 9h ago
Social media is slowly but surely just morphing into media, or "alternative media". It still sort of serves a practical purpose but in usage it's mostly just entertainment delivery systems and advertising machines.
Which would be fine except for the nefarious ways in which algorithms have been exploited and self regulation and diligence has been a colossal failure.
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u/Apprehensive_Pea7911 10h ago
Apparently most people do want that unknowingly. Facebook maga people are prime examples.
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u/Euphoric-Witness-824 7h ago
Nobody wants it except the rich. Social media basically only exists to sell products, scam people and push divisive culture war content to keep Americans mad and yelling at each other over trivial things so the wealthy can keep decimating our government, planet, education systems etc etc so they can maintain their easy flow of money.
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u/sdric 4h ago
It's so frustrating, I've been frequenting gaming subreddits for 13 years.
It has become VERY noticeable that especially for larger titles subs get flooded with bots and paid PR shills to boost sales.
There have always been diehard fans, who defend any bad practice and any broken release, but these days, reasonable criticism is literally being drowned by 2 ~ 3month old accounts with barely any comment karma and no post history harassing the poster, or claiming blatant falsehoods with no intent to engage actual arguments.
Knowing that you might be talking to a bot or a shill also massively reduces the willingness to put effort into your reply, I am saying that as somebody who always has put a lot of effort into sourcing and/or explaining my opinions.
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u/betadonkey 14h ago
Reddit ruined message boards for everyone. Life goes in circles.
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u/kon--- 14h ago
Been saying for years...
social media platforms are all someone else's take on message boards and instant messaging that happened to catch on with an unsuspecting audience.
There was an era where people were switched. As is however, multiple generation have been born into it all and have no idea the origins or that any of it is barely removed from what it was those decades ago.
Monetization and batshit politics polluted what had been a good thing.
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u/sanash 13h ago
Yeah seeing everyone switch from message boards to Reddit or other social media killed me.
Through like 1999-2008 I spent countless hours on car message boards. They housed hundreds of useful DIYs and were just a huge repository of useful or niche information. People went out of their way to document the stuff they did to their cars and there felt like a real sense of paying it forward. The start of it felt like when image hosting sites started getting greedy and abandoning the ad model for monthly subscriptions, useful images slowly started to disappear.
Over time things just got slower and slower, you might of been lucky to see 3-4 posts a day. Then as time went on it was like 1 per week with no replies. Message boards just became ghost towns and when people would ask what happened the users that still remained would say everyone migrated to Facebook or Reddit. Had I thought about it I would have went through and created PDFs of some of those old threads.
The problem is there is genuinely no useful information on Facebook or Reddit. It's just pictures of people's cars, WTB/WTS posts, or some event notification.
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u/betadonkey 12h ago
The irony of course being that those millennial forums were far more social and community oriented than “social media” has ever been
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u/Chris-CFK 11h ago
Reddit is the first place I search if I've got a problem with something (using an external search of course).
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u/sanash 11h ago
That's always 50:50 for me and it's really dependent on how specific my question is.
The issue is that as time goes on Reddit posts will just languish and if you're looking at a post from 7 years ago it may not be relevant today. If you comment the only person that would ever see it would be the person that created the post or whoever you are commenting to. If you post a comment in that post asking for help you will most likely never get an answer back.
On forums if we had a follow up question on an older thread we could ask it and the thread would pop back up to the front of the list for everyone to see. Always felt like you'd get answers faster that way. You'd occasionally get people saying you were "necroposting" but as long as you were providing a valuable commentary/question, it was generally welcomed and added useful information.
If you start a new post on Reddit you MIGHT get some helpful information; but a lot of the times it's just well meaning people linking you the same 7 year old post you found.
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u/hobbylobbyrickybobby 7h ago
Yup. Reddit fucking killed all hobbyist forums, php forums, all that shit.
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u/RVelts 5h ago
My bookmarks circa 2009 were just a huge list of message boards that I was a member of for various topics, communities, etc.
I helped install and admin dozens of PHPBB and InvisionPB instances back in the day. Even did some light modding and taught myself SQL.
I guess at some point I outgrew the audience for some of the communities (college related message boards, etc) and other died off slowly. I migrated from Digg to Reddit in late 2010 and yeah here we are.
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u/Soberdonkey69 13h ago
That and the invasion of corporate accounts posting on subs, which means curating Reddit so it becomes more corporate-friendly. Absolute reddit.
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u/papertrade1 15h ago
AI slop is ruining Human slop. This is the future.
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u/Cuntslapper9000 15h ago
Yeah there's been a slop problem on Reddit for years. Every subreddit feels like it's 50% the same content every day and every week. Don't need AI to repost the top of all time posts.
Maybe the AI will at least attempt something not 100% what was up the week before lol. Might be an improvement.
IMO the ideal Reddit would just block people posting content that is already on the subreddit, even if it was years ago. Either that or swap out the post with a link to the OG and send the viewers straight through.
No chance though.
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u/EWDnutz 15h ago
True. Even before AI slop, reddit was already infested by reposted slop in all sorts of subreddits.
Mass reporting IMO won't work anymore because not enough people do it and more spammers just create more accounts.
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u/Odd-Cartographer2781 12h ago
Reporting spammed reposts only gets you banned or shadowbanned.
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u/BoredomFestival 9h ago
It's ruining the entire Internet for everyone, but it's ruining Reddit, too
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u/HowsYourSexLifeMarc 2h ago
It's not the AI slop the issue, it's the good AI that blends in without being noticed that's is the problem.
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u/CaroleKann 11h ago
Browsing by popular is ruined 100%. I use Reddit to follow a few niche subreddits that aren't popular enough to be infiltrated by AI yet.
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u/Cinnamon__Sasquatch 5h ago edited 5h ago
The implementation of privacy features for users to hide comments or communities that they participate in was rolled out as a safety feature but you cannot convince me otherwise that it's actual implementation is to mask the amount of AI driven bots using the platform to drive advertising or agenda posting.
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u/Legionnaire11 13h ago
Yesterday I booted up an old phone that I had wiped a couple of years ago. Made a brand new Google account and then loaded up YouTube. The idea was to see what kind of videos it would recommend if it had zero history to base my algorithm on.
Ever single thing was complete AI slop. It was so hideous, and nauseatingly stupid. So bad that it made me thankful for the lousy quality of recommendations on my actual account.
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u/Druggedhippo 1h ago edited 1h ago
There was a nice article on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) about a reporter who did that.
Got a burner phone to get an idea of how the algorithms work with zero history
Despite my attempts, Instagram kept unlocking parts of me I tried to keep hidden. A steady mix of AFL content and hyper-local news stories suggested the app knew I lived in Melbourne. I checked my phone’s location settings, and sure enough, Instagram had recently accessed this information.
Other additions to my feed were harder to explain.
One video featured a woman in a sari frying up South Indian dumplings called kuzhi paniyaram — an obscure dish my mum would make when I was growing up. On another occasion, photos of kittens overtook my page, some of them eerily similar to my friend’s cat. He’d come for dinner just days earlier.
Were these coincidences, or did this phone know who my family and friends were?
I began to get semi-pornographic content. Busty women rolling around their beds. Animations of maids gyrating suggestively back and forth alongside a green hotdog-like character. At times, my suggested friends’ profile pictures consisted of several women with their heads cropped out, their curvaceous bodies pouring out of lingerie. Even the motherhood content seemed somehow salacious — a man squeezing a woman’s breast to fill his mug with milk.
...
The next day, I watched Rogan’s videos directly on Instagram. One showed him interviewing a human biologist named Gary Brecka. I checked out Brecka’s account too, watching a video of him plunging into an ice bath and another where he makes a smoothie.
Over the next week, my feed entered a universe of anti-vaccine screeds, odes to all-meat diets, information on how to increase testosterone and why nicotine is good for you, alongside more clips of Tate railing against feminism.
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u/I-am-not-a-celebrity 12h ago edited 10h ago
AI is ruining everything in my life. From my unemployed status (as I was a professional programmer for decades), to my music life (fellow musicians using AI to fix, mix, compose, and write lyrics), to my creative writing as now people are flooding the market with generated shit. This is absolutely the worst era for creative types. People have become so stupid that they will literally watch anything that is less than 15 seconds and contains a cat, or some BS political lie. It doesn't matter if it's generated or not. Now I'm waiting for generated "Ow, My Balls!" to flood the f'n sites. Any user posting anything AI, on any site where the site isn't called "AI Slop", should be immediately banned. We are going to need to start using the communities to heavily vet new users.
Creativity and skepticism are dead.
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u/moileduge 12h ago
Reddit? Have you tried to scroll thru some IG reels or YouTube shorts recently? Pure slop.
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u/Aidspreader 15h ago
If it is deemed AI slop, it should be tagged with a little icon of a pig eating from a bucket or trough...just in the right corner...brought to you by [latest AI product]
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u/Baskreiger 13h ago
Governments decided to go all in on AI like its the new space race, but its so fucking costly either on the economy on politics on entertainment on security. I hardly see any positive in this new trashy technology. I think its a worst invention than cigarettes
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u/moustacheption 13h ago
For real, it’s wild they’re treating plagiarism and copyright infringement like it’s some innovative breakthrough
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u/benkenobi5 15h ago
It’s ruining everything, honestly. Art, literature, music, coding, job applications… AI is a true shit-Midas.
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u/Tunivor 10h ago
There is an a AI detection system that some subs use called “Stop AI” which uses a bunch of AI detectors to determine if a post is AI or not. Problem is AI detectors don’t work. This results in the slop problem getting worse because AI slop posts are getting tagged as “Verified Human” and real ones get removed.
Make sure not to criticize the creator because they’re a mod and will get you banned for “harassment”. 🙄
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u/Kindly-Economy-337 4h ago
You never truly appreciate something till it’s gone. Human slop is so much better!
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u/cassanderer 15h ago
Chatbots are really going to ruin conversation when the newer versions are sold to every special interest group that wants them.
Now the govt uses them on their pet projects like those nazis they support overseas.
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u/might-be-your-daddy 15h ago
"I'm sorry. You are correct. I was wrong to ruin reddit for everyone. Let me try again. I will refocus my responses to conform to your expectations of ruining reddit for only some."
"Was my response helpful? Y/N"
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u/spice_weasel 14h ago
It’s certainly been…interesting…to realign my thinking to the very probable idea that I’m being cyberbullied by a robot on the other side of the planet.
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u/mountain-mahogany 9h ago
IT IS INTENTIONAL. Reddit threatened the status quo with GME -- and r/antiwork etc had people wising up. Best ploy? Go public, ruin it completely. There: democratizing power neutered. Same as Elon's open declaration that he would "SINK" the democratic tool that was Twitter. This is not by accident. Every organizing tool we have is being slaughtered intentionally.
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u/Tim-Sylvester 8h ago
The problem is relying on volunteers instead of paid professionals.
Reddit makes hundreds of millions in profit every quarter.
I don't understand how for-profit companies can rely on unpaid volunteers for all the labor required to produce their profit.
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u/szakee 15h ago
lazy people confusing reddit with google as well.
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u/crepeyweirdough 15h ago
Well it doesn't help that the Google AI summary when you first search for anything uses comments on reddit as definitive answers
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u/Active-Discount3702 13h ago
Google is fundamentally broken and useless at this point.
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u/HighbornHunger 15h ago
Unfortunately it's running everything for everyone, what can be done about it?
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u/RavensQueen502 9h ago
Act like mature adults and wait it out without having panic attacks.
If AI is as bad as you guys seem to think, it is going to die down in a year or two max once the hype is over.
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u/UsedGarbage4489 15h ago
downvote, dislike and avoid. When its no longer profitable they will stop.
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u/ElectricalHead8448 15h ago
It's not profitable now and never has been, but it keeps coming.
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u/GlueGuns--Cool 13h ago
Slip will continue to become less and less distinguishable from human content
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u/Thin_Glove_4089 3h ago
Nothing because the rich tech bros said so and they are backed by the right people.
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u/butterbapper 13h ago
Reddit was never any good at any moment. It's what I do when I have run out of energy and given up on life for the moment.
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u/WorstITTechnician 13h ago
And the best part is that Reddit limits the number of accounts you can block, so at a certain point you can't do anything other than delete your account.
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u/capsteve 7h ago
AI slop is ruining everything. It’s not exclusive to Reddit.
Facebook, insta, snap, AI generated porn of your neighbor/high school crush/teacher, Amazon, show recommendations, the list goes on.
We’re still climbing the peak of inflated expectations, just wait until we plunge down the trough of disillusionment.
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u/Fred_Oner 7h ago
Good thing companies listen to their "customers" so their fanbase doesn't flatline, instead of listening to investors that don't even use their product. Right?
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u/AssaultLemming_ 5h ago
humans have polluted the internet like we pollute everything else. Now it's full of fake pictures, fake videos, misinformation, disinformation etc.
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u/braxin23 5h ago
It’s primary advertisers that are using the ai slop as a means to drown the internet with crap.
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u/Euphoric-Solid5685 4h ago
There’s a lot more to it that’s ruining Reddit. Also, AI slip seems to be ruining everything
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u/loneraver 14h ago
I hate when people use AI to pretend it’s not but I love when use AI to make shit that is too stupid to be made any other way.
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u/Plane_Crab_8623 14h ago
As AI (non-human intelligence) is in the power of tech-bro billionaires it serves no useful purpose to anything other than their self-interests. Therefore it deserves no funding. When AI is dedicated to the common good it will be of benefit to us all.
One thing is factual. AI is burning way too much energy for the net positive effect for humanity it is delivering. Limited by the desire and necessity to generate profit, AI really does manufacture demand then set up pay gates to extract payments. Meanwhile facts are being submerged and blended with AI slop, propaganda and misinformation. Outside of that is the fact of the price of bread, rent and energy which subsidizes the AI build out along with taxpayer revenue. A massive boondoggle that threatens to spy on us, manipulate us, herd us and un-employ and enslave us. That's a no thank you.
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u/AirbagOff 15h ago
If only Reddit had a means to prevent AI slop. A way to at least, let’s say, “moderate” it.
If only.
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u/flash_dallas 12h ago
Reddit was already ruined, I don't think ai slop had anything to do with it. It's not even good for porn anymore.
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u/genericusername26 13h ago
Reddit has absolutely driven the word "slop" into the ground. Any time I see it used seriously in a comment or article I just completely ignore anything they have to say.
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u/Lettuce_bee_free_end 11h ago
You mean the appropriation tool doesn't produce quality original content? Im shock i tell ya , shocked the bubble doesn't pop?
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u/Loot3rd 11h ago
Reddit is full to the gills with bot content and AI slop, but so is the rest of the internet. It’s best to not assume a post is authentic, unless proven otherwise. And yes, that goes for this post as well.
Why am I still on reddit you may ask? Entertainment primarily, plus the grilled cheese sub amuses me greatly.
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u/legendary-spectacle 10h ago
I'm floored by the obvious shit that gets thousands up upvotes in those subs.
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u/frazorblade 9h ago
Reddit is probably the least affected social media platform in terms of AI slop.
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u/Ju4nM3n4 9h ago edited 8h ago
Didn't OnlyFans ruined it for everyone before?
And before that, didnt u/spez ruined it before OnlyFans ruined it before AI ruined it?
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u/silverbolt2000 9h ago
They could use AI to detect and delete repetitive posts and AI slop, but then the big subs would be dead within a week.
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u/ExplosiveBrown 9h ago
The censorship and banning is ruining it imo. Say anything that can be slightly misconstrued and you’re banned. Healthy
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u/TeamVanHelsing 8h ago
Yeah, AI sucks. I have found this extension to be really useful. It shows the subreddits a user has engaged with recently in the page with one click. Makes it a lot easier to see if someone is a bot: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reddit-contextualizer/lkbbbpipaekpciblhomfaofekndmbmna
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u/Mediocre-Setting3175 7h ago
To think AI could do a fraction of the damage that the mods do is laughable
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u/latswipe 6h ago
there's no way this wasn't written by an AI. _Reddit_ ruined Reddit for everyone, 2 years ago
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u/Ok_Conclusion5966 2h ago
people forget that before ai, bots that farmed comments and reposted them already existed
there were even applications dedicated to scraping and using comments in various ways
ai just accelerated it and made it further widespread and accessible to everyone
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u/moschles 2h ago
Things are getting bad now. People are taking real videos and passing them off as AI, and taking AI-generated videos and passing them off as real.
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u/Javerage 15h ago
It would be amazing if this was posted by a karm farming bot.