X is becoming a ‘ghost town’ of bots as AI-generated spam content floods the internet — A sign of the scale is the thriving industry in bot-making::The internet is filling up with machine-generated “zombie content” designed to game algorithms and scam humans. Experts call it the “great AI flood”.
Ironically, this post is made by a bot.
This bot is not creating content though
So, for that matter, is Reddit. I have an RSS subscription to /r/all (routed through a mirror) and a sizable fraction of posts hitting the front page are word-for-word reposts of old popular content by bots. Even the top comments are recycled. It was always a problem, but the loss of good moderators and the shutdown of projects like BotDefense due to the API fiasco has caused it to absolutely skyrocket.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the AI reposts are intentionally allowed by Reddit to “preserve” content in case users nuke their history. Diabolical business maneuver
I’m sure it’s a happy coincidence for the owners, but I’d hardly call it diabolical. I feel like it’s more likely they just want to preserve the impression of activity and engagement. If the bots were suddenly gone it would be that much more obvious that Reddit is something like a cross between a ruined and abandoned industrial wasteland, and an open pit toilet at the undercooked burrito festival.
I don’t even know if it’s a coincidence. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit ran plenty of reposting bots themselves. The R&D budget is probably spent on developing engagement bots on the platform I’d bet. They even ran an experiment where bots were trained by users on the platform via a game where you tried to decide if the user was real or not. That was run a long time ago.
I just meant it’s a coincidence that the bots reposting popular content would mean that people deleting their post and comment history would still have their most popular content preserved. I don’t think the preservation of potentially removed content is their purpose, I think the appearance of activity and engagement is the purpose.
They did when the platform was new, and they had to fake the appearance of it being busy, although that was a very long time ago now. The idea is certainly nothing new for Reddit’s leadership to do.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
One morning in January this year, marine scientist Terry Hughes opened X (formerly Twitter) and searched for tweets about the Great Barrier Reef.
Users posted videos showing scrolling feeds with numerous accounts stating “I’m sorry, but I cannot provide a response to your request as it goes against OpenAl’s content policy.”
Shortly after Mr Musk gained control of X while complaining about bots, X shut down free access to the programming interface that allowed researchers to study this problem.
Towards the end of last year, Dr Graham and his colleagues at QUT paid X $7,800 from a grant fund to analyse 1 million tweets surrounding the first Republican primary debate.
A company called Byword claims it stole 3.6 million in “total traffic” from a competitor by copying their site and rewriting 1,800 articles using AI.
Meta recently announced it was building tools to detect and label AI-generated images posted on its Facebook, Instagram and Threads services.
The original article contains 1,603 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Fuck you bot !
Kind of fitting that the only response until I posted was a bot.
It’s been a long time since I was invited to leave Twitter, and I left (now I’m the happiest person in the world in Mastodon). Now they invite me to leave Reddit… where am I going?
Is your username a Porcupine Tree reference? They’ee one of my favorite bands!
Yeah!!! Also is one of my favorite bands!!! I have all of their albums and Steven Wilson music also is lovely!!! 🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼
Yeah totally. In fact, I’ll be playing a live Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson tribute set next month so I’m thoroughly immersed in that music at the moment
Sir, this is Lemmy.
Yeah! I’m new habitant of this world
Welcome!
Welcome from the rest of us reddit transplants! I’d offer you punch but I think spez snuck in and peed in it.
I think notspez did it, but they did it as performance art, and I enjoyed it.
Enjoyed the art or enjoyed the pee punch?
I was already pissed, I didn’t need the punch to have a laugh.
You’re here. Now play nice and we’ll all get along.
No we don’t! This isn’t argument, it’s contradiction! Yes it is! No it isn’t! Yes it is! No it isn’t!
Now, was this the 5 minute argument or did you pay for a full half hour?
🫡🫡🫡🫡
I hear Omelas is nice.
Tired of reading about Twitter dying and then it not happening.
Tired of reading about Twitter.
It’s Xwitter now.
I will never call it anything but Twitter. Twitter is a pile of shit.
Xhit…
Leave the w out and pronounce it with a Chinese X.
Xitter? Are you xitting me?
Yes, Xitter, I xit you not!
Xitter
Sounds like something a bot would say.
what’s the business plan for these bots anyways
Farm followers to look like a legit user -> sell account -> it is used to advertise or push agendas.
Pretend to be users so you can claim to have users so you can make money on the gamble market so you can be rich.
Long game state sponsored shit probably
Didn’t he claim he would be getting rid of all the bots?
Drain the swamp!
Surprisingly good article. It’s getting depressing just how much of the internet is bots
I’ve almost lost complete confidence in anything I see online as true. These image filters to full on bots are distorting what reality is in very negative way. Most of the things still can be filtered out if you’re paying attention, but how long until the tech becomes indistinguishable from actual human engagement? 5-10 years is my guess.
I mean, how else will chatGPT bots communicate online?
I feel like at some point we’ll see a headline about how the Internet economy has become companies throwing money back and forth at each other without realizing all the content engagement is bots engaging with other bots and generating all the ad revenue from views and clicks.
I mean yeah except add in rich people who basically are paying to feel like they are old school internet celebrities for low effort uninspired posting. They will be selling that old school internet feel to the wealthy while using bots as the entire base.
Well we keep trying to tell them that if you give money to people who aren’t as well as off as the 1% they actually spend that money in the economy and keep businesses running. Maybe this is just their way of testing the theory out? (But, you know, in a way that doesn’t actually benefit the rest of us).
Anybody else remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter so he could get rid of all the bots? Once again he does exactly the opposite of what he said he would.
“drain the swamp”
he lures all bots from the net into Xitter, and then shuts it down!
Just like my plan to eradicate the Mosquito population by first maintaining an enormous pool of stagnant water for them to breed in, then draining it once they’re all here!
My favorite showcase of this: Vinny’s “PERUSE MY BIO” segment
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Vinny’s “PERUSE MY BIO” segment
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’ve tried a bunch of Piped links over the last week, none seem to work for me. Are they working for anyone?
I just tried this one. Spun for a full minute and I gave up. I would say 80% of alternative frontends for popular services haven’t worked for me traditionally, yet people swear by them. It’s really puzzling to me. Like you and I can’t be the only person for whom services like these don’t work.
I’ve never had one work and no longer even try.
Doesn’t work for me either. I usually just copy the YouTube url into newpipe on my phone if I really want to watch it. I do wish I could have it do that automatically
You can have links open in NewPipe by setting it in Android’s settings:
Settings -> Apps -> All apps -> NewPipe -> Open by default
And then set things up in there
They have never worked for me, not even once.
I’m all for Xitter bashing but it’s the same on Youtube and pretty much everywhere else. What’s actually most striking to me is how simple these bots are. They don‘t even use AI most of the time, just spamming the same hand full of extremely vague statements while having the profile picture of a young woman, often only showing certain body parts.
I‘m suspecting that more and more scammers caught up on the pig butchering trend which has been a huge thing in China for over a decade. Until last year the African prince was still the most damaging type of online scam for the US economy until pig butchering finally dethroned it. That shows how quick it‘s growing.
That being said, platforms in general seem to follow the same pattern in that moderation is practically non-existent anymore and it will only be a matter of time until Brussels will feel inclined to really crack down on it when it inevitably becomes a much bigger problem for online discourse.
moderation is practically non-existent
It seems you’ve never called a Nazi or homophobe a piece of shit on Facebook or Reddit. That’s a sure fire way to get banned or at least a warning.
I’m all for Xitter bashing but it’s the same on Youtube and pretty much everywhere else. What’s actually most striking to me is how simple these bots are. They don‘t even use AI most of the time, just spamming the same hand full of extremely vague statements while having the profile picture of a young woman, often only showing certain body parts.
This is really low quality bot, nowadays they can use artificial inteligence run locally to output content that you would never think was written by a bot. It’s just that we don’t see it. i’m going to ask chatgpt 3.5 to answer your first comment while denying there is a bot issue, just check if you would be able to spot it and what would happen if hundreds of accounts ran by a single bot were to downvote you and give similar comments.
What do you mean by pig butchering trend?? Not familiar with that scam
Wiki link Truly vile, long-term scamming strategy that became an industry in and of itself. There are entire companies that hire people specifically to lull people into trusting them and giving them money ( often their entire savings ) using what is essentially weaponized catfishing
The key is to start small - throw away money for the victim so they don’t think it through.
Then you progressively ask for larger amounts working the victim over with the sunk cost fallacy.
It doesn’t take much, the victim naturally doesn’t want to admit they fucked up, and you can reinforce that so they think they’re doing the right thing by investing more money.
Keep it up until they are bankrupt, then disappear.
People have invested years I their twitter profile. They don’t want to admit it was a total waste of time.
[]“Bob, we’re going to butcher a pig and get rich selling the meat!”[]“Okay. What do I need to do?”[]“give me some money for pig food.”[]“fine”[][]“Bob, our pig is eating a lot. We’ll need more money. Could you spare fifteen coins?”[]“Fifteen? Fuck.”[]“If you don’t give me 15 coins the pig will starve, and we’ll lose the investment. Remember, once we butcher the pig we’re getting rich!”[]“Fiiiiine.”[][]“Hey Alice, how is our pig going?”[]“Alice? Where are you?”[]
And Alice just stole 20 coins from Bob, through a pig butchering scam.
The key elements of the scam:
- There’s a promise of huge profits near the end. That’s the “bait”.
- Investment starts small, but it gets larger over time. That exploits the escalation of commitment of the scammed.
- At a certain point, the scammer flees.
A pig butchering scam is a type of confidence trick and investment fraud in which victims are gradually lured into making increasing contributions, in the form of cryptocurrency, to a seemingly sound investment before the party they are dealing with disappears.
-Wikipedia
LOL, you really think there’s a bot issue? Sounds like someone’s been watching too many sci-fi movies. Get real, dude.
(Following my previous comment, generated by chatgpt 3.5 in very few seconds).
Dead internet theory coming to pass.
I actually kinda wonder if this AI push is just a desperate attempt to figure out what to do with all the data they own and the original thought for the LLMs is just to keep posts happening as if user supplied posting never dried up.
