This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Reddit, AI spam bots explore new ways to show ads in your feed
#For sale: Ads that look like legit Reddit user posts
"We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden. We find that humans don't usually type out full URLs in natural conversation and plus, most Internet users are happy to do a quick Google Search," ReplyGuy's website reads.
“With Dynamic Product Ads, brands can tap into the rich, high-intent product conversations that people come to Reddit for," Reddit EVP of Business Marketing and Growth Jim Squires said in a statement.
Gross.
rich, high-intent product conversations
these people make me so fucking sick i cannot
i cannot believe this site i spent so many sad years posting on in high school, with pure heart, posting purely out of a desire for interesting interactions and the potential to make insightful, peer-reviewed contributions that others could enjoy, has turned into such fucking dead-eyed garbage.
Why are people still on there?!
Just like Twitter where most people are entirely ignorant to what's happening and they continue to use it because everyone else is. It'd be nice if they died like Digg back when that site went to shit just like reddit and Twitter have.
Well, Twitter is actually based now. Before Elon bought it there were a bunch of feds working behind the scenes to censor and move the needle. When Elon cleaned house he removed a lot of that. Elon said he "bought a crime scene" basically.
There's something sad about society losing a such a unique source of knowledge, but hopefully we've collectively learned something about the dangers of trusting proprietary solutions.
Anyone found a reliable way to search across Lemmy instances they can share?
narrator voice
They have not learned anything about the dangers of trusting proprietary solutions.
I've been on Lemmy ever since the reddit API fracas. To date, I have not seen a reason to return. I have, however, seen many reasons to stay away.
Amen. I should have seen it earlier, but the API debacle told me that Reddit is run by "my way or the highway" management. And they showed they didn't care at all about their users. I used to post spicy OC memes. Realized there's no point in adding value to a platform that does not value it's own people one iota.
The style in which that post by Ophelia_SK is written seems exactly like chatGPT. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes me feel so strongly, but it’s something to do with how sentences and paragraphs are constructed. They always have the same cadence with the commas and how thoughts are laid out. It’s got that generically positive tone as well.
Kinda cool though, I feel like I’m becoming able to spot these. It’s like being able to spot a photoshop by the pixels. I’ve seen quite a few shops in my time.
how thoughts are laid out
Perhaps you're noticing the lack of deixis?
Without going too technical, deixis is to refer to something in relation to the current situation. For example, when you say "Kinda cool though, I feel like I’m becoming able to spot these.", that "these" is discourse deixis - you're referring to something else (bots) within your discourse based on its relative position to when you wrote that "these".
We humans do this all the bloody time. LLMs though almost never do it - and Ophelia_SK doesn't, that's why for example it repeats "debt" and "job" like a broken record.
EDIT: there's also the extremely linear argumentation structure. Human text is way messier.
Plus it explains like the reader is kinda dumb
It should be illegal to misrepresent an ad as a post or comment. This exact thing should be against the law. The boundary between advertising and social media is so thin at this point. It has to stop. It's dangerous for consumers. Corporations should have to clearly label themselves at every turn. The usage of AI to intermingle advertising and social media should be blanket illegal.
The law requires YouTubers to identify sponsored segments. I don't see why that shouldn't also be applied to social media posts.
The law does apply to social media posts.
The social media company has to mark sponsored content and give users the means to do so themselves (when the partnership is between the user and a third party rather than the social media company).
Unfortunately it’s hard to prove and profitable to lie.
Is it difficult to prove that's what's explicitly being sold in this case?
It's hard since it could theoretically also be an actual user who used that website themself.
We highly recommend only mentioning the brand name of your product since mentioning links in posts makes the post more likely to be reported as spam and hidden.
Like Barbie(tm), now available on Blu-ray and select streaming service!
Thank you, Oscar-winning actress Margot Robbie.
