Ye I happened to visit Reddit during the mod drama, and I noticed how all the bigger subs had this bot feeling to it. It was nothing like it used to feel when I used Reddit 10 years ago. It was like, as if 95% of the comments were from bots. Not the top voted ones, but the tail on those comments. And the bots seemed to just agree to whatever they were answering to with vague context feedback. The mix I anticipate is like every other user raging at every other user for being wrong, sorta.
Reddit has been not Reddit for a long time now. I still remember when the death of Fup, the store cat from Powell's Technical Books in Portland, OR, made the front page of Reddit.
But both Reddit and Portland have long since been enshittified from how I remember them.
I don't think it's bots, I see these sort of people in real life, it's most people in some circles.
They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. This concensus seeking feedback loop results predictably in a hivemind.
Maybe, it is hard to prove the "dead internet theory". But I mean look at you. That is how it used to feel like on Reddit. Write stuff. Someone disagrees. Etc. Reddit gives me sect vibes nowadays.
Because of Reddit's api changes it's harder to track this, but at one point it was pretty easy to find accounts that only posted comments that had already been posted in the past.
Now, it's difficult to trace most comments under 7 or 8 words, but there were accounts that only had ever posted replies from other users. Just watching some threads in popular subs for replies that were exactly the same as others. Then trace both accounts. Sometimes one is a legitimate human, and one is a bot. Other times both accounts where pretty much every post in their account is something that had been previously posted.
what if every post in the thread above me is from an ai bot... what if im the only human on hackernews? ive never met anyone irl whos been on this site. honk if youre human.
Yes, exactly this. It's a form of a Keynesian beauty contest. That essentially means to make your comment based not on what you think, but on what you think will be popular with others.
It's the heart of modern social media. It abdicates opinion to the masses and drives the hive mind.
It's called "social proof". You see this a lot in Japanese culture, it seems that all of Japan goes nuts for one thing or another that sweeps the entire nation like falling cherry blossoms in spring.
When I was in Japan in 2011, young Japanese women were pretty eager to make smalltalk with me (most likely to practice their English, I'm not gonna lie about how much of a stud I am), and they tended to ask me similar smalltalky questions like "Who's your favorite musician?" I would try to explain as best I could who the KLF is, and then I would turn it around and ask "who's yours?"
Every single girl had the exact same answer: Lady Gaga. Every. Single. Girl. Born This Way had just dropped in Japan, so there was a lot of promotion and Lady Gaga was everywhere in Japanese media, so Lady Gaga was the safe favorite artist to have at that moment in time; because everybody else apparently likes her, you won't be thought of as weird or an outcast for doing so, or be put in my unfortunate position of having to explain who the artist is and why their peculiar work is so captivating. That's social proof in a nutshell.
Similar things that literally all of Japan was fond of at the time included One Piece (which is evergreen) and the cartoon character Stitch of Lilo & Stitch fame (an anime featuring him was running at the time). I saw Stitch and his girlfriend Angel crop up in some weird places, including on a poster in an elderly gentleman's ramen shop which was otherwise free of pop culture; just a grotty CRT TV with a Hanshin Tigers game on.
> They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes.
I think that may be basic human social norm-following.
I noticed the exact same thing. In the midst of the protests, it felt like reddit turned on the "AI comment bots" and then just let them run. I rarely saw insightful comments or comments that aren't just repeated/reposted comments from the last time the link was posted. Reddit says "we did it" in response to the protest, but it really feels empty these last couple of months.
This was almost as noticeable as during the 2016 election when the general sentiment of the site went from Pro-Sanders to Pro-Clinton, literally over night. The tinfoil hatters blame the Correct The Record group becoming active at that time.
Along with the more recent changes of adding paid upvotes along with contributor rewards and then removing the ability to opt-out of ad-personalization, reddit management seems to have a one track mind. Profitability at the expense of anything, including the userbase.
AI has changed the game for content uploaded to the Internet. I haven't seen an Asian girl in the last two years who doesn't run a filter on her images/videos 24x7. I know I try not to upload any images of myself that haven't at least been tweaked by AI, if nothing else than to improve the lighting etc. Shit, I even run my comments through ChatGPT before I post them if I feel like they could be improved.
They're never overly enhanced. I would bet 99.9% of people who see them just think "damn, this guy is good at taking photos" and don't guess I tweaked them.
What's your workflow for tweaking pictures? I'm looking for something that makes me look good while remaining an accurate representation of how I look in reality for online dating purposes.
Social media as we knew it 10 years ago is dead and nothing will bring it back. OK, maybe "nothing" is an exaggeration, but we can safely exclude AI. AI will not bring back anything related to social networks.
I would argue social media started dying all on its own anyway: I remember the novelty of Facebook wearing off quickly when the most active subset of people on it all decided to just use it to cross post self promotion about their careers, and I had the "right, I don't actually care about people I went to high school with at all" moment.
Eh, media dying would probably be better for us... current evolution of media isn't taking it towards a destination where it's beneficial to the user. Much like the morphing of staph into MSRA.
This works as a novelty for a moment's interest. However, it quickly fades as AI is making authenticity a crisis of meaning.
The new Meta announcements are bringing a flood of new gimmickery to the social platforms. More fake realities.
I'm not sure where all this leads society, but I used AI art as a launch into deeper introspection of where we are going here.
Is society on the precipice of falling into the abyss of illusion? Whatever is applicable in the context of art is likely also for the rest of all works, creative or intellectual, by human beings. Whatever is the current trajectory in these matters does not stop at art. AI inevitably will consume in some form all disciplines and master them. Observing closely what happens to art could inform us as to the future of other human domains.
Is it different than prior mis/disinformation or than addictive media like computer games? It's just a way to spin your wheels endlessly, in a way that satisfies some neural perception of activity.
Play that game all night - you know the feeling, so intense and addictive as you are playing, and then in the morning the bizarre empty feeling that you are nowhere; you are living nowhere and have gotten nowhere.
You feel sick or you are concerned about something, and you Google some mis/disinformation (who can tell the difference?) on someone's blog, Twitter, etc. Just like playing that game, while you're doing it you feel like you are doing something. But you are just as sick, your concern is unresolved (though with mis/disinfo, you don't always realize it).
Now we have immersive 3D worlds and AI illusions to occupy us even better. Our technologists are innovating ways for us to go nowhere and stay nowhere ever better. Apple's choice to make their goggles transparent, with reality visible to the user and vice-versa (the user's eyes visible to others), is an interesting philosophical choice in this context.
... In fairness, it doesn't have to be nowhere. Art can be an alternate reality that is somewhere and gets us somewhere.
"Is it different than prior mis/disinformation or than addictive media like computer games?"
Substantially so. Nothing prior became indistinguishable from reality. Yes, illusions have existed in some form, but they were still discernable with effort and good illusions had significant production cost.
This massively scales up that capability, not in just production, but in the parameters of influence as well. It will be capable of understanding, predicting and influencing behavior far more precisely and deliberately. All the data exists for this and will be analyzed for such effect.
Which is why I followed with "Yes, illusions have existed in some form".
Illusions for which it is possible to pierce the veil even though some might not. The new illusions will not be possible for anyone. OpenAI already abandoned its project of AI content detection.
I bet it's very similar to how drug addicts feel: "intense feeling" during consumption, and the empty feeling afterwards. This must be the reason why CCP doesn't allow its subjects to play online games too much. A sufficiently advanced AI will be able to create super addictive games, that drain the user's energy many times faster.
On the other hand, I've noticed that something as simple as watching a tree grow for a few minutes with all attention is an oddly fulfilling experience, that weeks later still stays in memory as a moment of high significance. Mindless gaming seems the opposite of that.
Yes, slow down and observe the world is the heightened human experience that we have left behind as we have plundered into an algorithmically run society fueled on attention engagement.
Every generation thinks that its current popular media and culture is putting society on the precipice of falling into an abyss. I'm sure you could find similar sentiments about books, radio, and television when those were new.
Based on hedonic adaptation it may be the case we can't perceive the true state of society. However, it is also true that past civilizations have collapsed, so it isn't a given that warnings should be ignored.
if that were true we'd be running the world on nuclear fission
there is such a thing as social pushback sinking a technology, see also google glass and maybe also LSD. advances to be sure, roundly rejected by polite society.
> Myuri Thiruna, a freelance photographer in Toronto, used to post frequently on Instagram and discuss photography with other users. But she said she had stopped two years ago, feeling “drained” by the demands of social media and the pursuit of followers and trends.
Don't we see this pattern by now? 'I was doing [fun/creative/innovative/passionate] work and then [0-3] years ago I felt [drained/depressed/despairing] and stopped.
As a person with an audience – you get to a point where the audience feels like an insatiable beast that just wants wants wants and never gives back. Soon you feel like a monkey dancing for peanuts to a jeering crowd that will move on to the next monkey immediately when you stop. You are only as good as your last [new] piece of content.
Social media has long since stopped being a bazaar of ideas and stimulating exchange. These days to most people it’s passive entertainment fueled by semi amateur creators. It’s no linger social media, now it’s social media.
It's pretty draining if you’re on the creator side.
And unless you possess an extraordinarily wide creative range, people will eventually get bored with your work. Note how most YouTube channels are only popular for a few years at most. You discover one, it's new and interesting, you watch, can't wait for the next post. After a while the videos start to run together, the next one seems the same as the previous one. You start to look around at what else seems interesting. And that creator falls back into obscurity.
Is there another alternative between dancing monkey and despair? It seems like many rock'n'rollers settled on a more artistic approach, with some 'dancing' thrown in for fun.
(Also, to be clear, I'm talking about a pattern that, IMHO, extends to every corner of society, from government leaders to non-profit leaders to artists to doctors to my friends and neighbors.)
I don't see how the headline is supported by the article's actual content. Seems like it should read "to boost engagement and user retention, social networks turn to AI gimmicks".
I couldn't make out where the AI part helps with genuine human connection.
52 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 344 ms ] threadBut both Reddit and Portland have long since been enshittified from how I remember them.
They are playing a little social game where you bet on a what a socially acceptable opinion is and if you guess right you get dopamine in the form of likes. This concensus seeking feedback loop results predictably in a hivemind.
Because of Reddit's api changes it's harder to track this, but at one point it was pretty easy to find accounts that only posted comments that had already been posted in the past.
Now, it's difficult to trace most comments under 7 or 8 words, but there were accounts that only had ever posted replies from other users. Just watching some threads in popular subs for replies that were exactly the same as others. Then trace both accounts. Sometimes one is a legitimate human, and one is a bot. Other times both accounts where pretty much every post in their account is something that had been previously posted.
It's the heart of modern social media. It abdicates opinion to the masses and drives the hive mind.
When I was in Japan in 2011, young Japanese women were pretty eager to make smalltalk with me (most likely to practice their English, I'm not gonna lie about how much of a stud I am), and they tended to ask me similar smalltalky questions like "Who's your favorite musician?" I would try to explain as best I could who the KLF is, and then I would turn it around and ask "who's yours?"
Every single girl had the exact same answer: Lady Gaga. Every. Single. Girl. Born This Way had just dropped in Japan, so there was a lot of promotion and Lady Gaga was everywhere in Japanese media, so Lady Gaga was the safe favorite artist to have at that moment in time; because everybody else apparently likes her, you won't be thought of as weird or an outcast for doing so, or be put in my unfortunate position of having to explain who the artist is and why their peculiar work is so captivating. That's social proof in a nutshell.
Similar things that literally all of Japan was fond of at the time included One Piece (which is evergreen) and the cartoon character Stitch of Lilo & Stitch fame (an anime featuring him was running at the time). I saw Stitch and his girlfriend Angel crop up in some weird places, including on a poster in an elderly gentleman's ramen shop which was otherwise free of pop culture; just a grotty CRT TV with a Hanshin Tigers game on.
I think that may be basic human social norm-following.
This was almost as noticeable as during the 2016 election when the general sentiment of the site went from Pro-Sanders to Pro-Clinton, literally over night. The tinfoil hatters blame the Correct The Record group becoming active at that time.
Along with the more recent changes of adding paid upvotes along with contributor rewards and then removing the ability to opt-out of ad-personalization, reddit management seems to have a one track mind. Profitability at the expense of anything, including the userbase.
We're living in a strange time.
I get color correction, but for the rest, what's the appeal?
media itself will adapt, change, morph or something
If you want some big graph attention mechanism to know if people are going to get divorced? Just to pick an example.
AI will bring back the IP trench warfare about the “graph”, twist: they don’t care if it gets updated.
The new Meta announcements are bringing a flood of new gimmickery to the social platforms. More fake realities.
I'm not sure where all this leads society, but I used AI art as a launch into deeper introspection of where we are going here.
Is society on the precipice of falling into the abyss of illusion? Whatever is applicable in the context of art is likely also for the rest of all works, creative or intellectual, by human beings. Whatever is the current trajectory in these matters does not stop at art. AI inevitably will consume in some form all disciplines and master them. Observing closely what happens to art could inform us as to the future of other human domains.
https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-art-challenges-meaning-in-a-w...
Play that game all night - you know the feeling, so intense and addictive as you are playing, and then in the morning the bizarre empty feeling that you are nowhere; you are living nowhere and have gotten nowhere.
You feel sick or you are concerned about something, and you Google some mis/disinformation (who can tell the difference?) on someone's blog, Twitter, etc. Just like playing that game, while you're doing it you feel like you are doing something. But you are just as sick, your concern is unresolved (though with mis/disinfo, you don't always realize it).
Now we have immersive 3D worlds and AI illusions to occupy us even better. Our technologists are innovating ways for us to go nowhere and stay nowhere ever better. Apple's choice to make their goggles transparent, with reality visible to the user and vice-versa (the user's eyes visible to others), is an interesting philosophical choice in this context.
... In fairness, it doesn't have to be nowhere. Art can be an alternate reality that is somewhere and gets us somewhere.
Substantially so. Nothing prior became indistinguishable from reality. Yes, illusions have existed in some form, but they were still discernable with effort and good illusions had significant production cost.
This massively scales up that capability, not in just production, but in the parameters of influence as well. It will be capable of understanding, predicting and influencing behavior far more precisely and deliberately. All the data exists for this and will be analyzed for such effect.
> Nothing prior became indistinguishable from reality.
Mis/disinfo is indistinguishable, practically, for at least a large segment of the population.
Illusions for which it is possible to pierce the veil even though some might not. The new illusions will not be possible for anyone. OpenAI already abandoned its project of AI content detection.
On the other hand, I've noticed that something as simple as watching a tree grow for a few minutes with all attention is an oddly fulfilling experience, that weeks later still stays in memory as a moment of high significance. Mindless gaming seems the opposite of that.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/can-of-soup
there is such a thing as social pushback sinking a technology, see also google glass and maybe also LSD. advances to be sure, roundly rejected by polite society.
> Myuri Thiruna, a freelance photographer in Toronto, used to post frequently on Instagram and discuss photography with other users. But she said she had stopped two years ago, feeling “drained” by the demands of social media and the pursuit of followers and trends.
Don't we see this pattern by now? 'I was doing [fun/creative/innovative/passionate] work and then [0-3] years ago I felt [drained/depressed/despairing] and stopped.
It's time to live again.
Social media has long since stopped being a bazaar of ideas and stimulating exchange. These days to most people it’s passive entertainment fueled by semi amateur creators. It’s no linger social media, now it’s social media.
It's pretty draining if you’re on the creator side.
Is there another alternative between dancing monkey and despair? It seems like many rock'n'rollers settled on a more artistic approach, with some 'dancing' thrown in for fun.
(Also, to be clear, I'm talking about a pattern that, IMHO, extends to every corner of society, from government leaders to non-profit leaders to artists to doctors to my friends and neighbors.)
I couldn't make out where the AI part helps with genuine human connection.