Everything on here is awesome right now, it feels like an online forum from the 2000s, everyone is friendly, optimistic, it feels like the start to something big.

Well, as we all know, AI has gotten very smart to the point captcha’s are useless, and it can engage in social forums disguised as a human.

With Reddit turning into propaganda central anda greedy CEO that has the motive to sell Reddit data to AI farms, I worry that the AI will be able to be prompted to target websites such as the websites in the fediverse.

Right now it sounds like paranoia, but I think we are closer to this reality than we may know.

Reddit has gotten nuked, so we built a new community, everyone is pleasantly surprised by the change of vibe around here, the over all friendlyness, and the nostalgia of old forums.

Could this be the calm before the storm?

How will the fediverse protect its self from these hypothetical bot armies?

Do you think Reddit/big companies will make attacks on the fediverse?

Do you think clickbait posts will start popping up in pursuit of ad revenue?

What are your thoughts and insights on this new “internet 2.0”?

  • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Interesting questions.

    Spam-bots attacks are already happening, it means the fediverse is already recognized as a valid alternative to big corporations, tho I don’t believe the fediverse is seen as a “threat” by them, not yet at least.

    I don’t agree reddit is nuked, like twitter isn’t, they’re getting a blow for sure but they’ll live regardless.

    People seeking honest interactions and quality discussions are a minority, the vast majority is content with shitposting and memes, many don’t even know what’s happening or don’t care, look at how little it took for the protest to wane, some subs are still protesting or migrating, but the majority reopened and they’re going on like nothing happened.

    Admins can protect up from bot armies, they’re doing a good job already, it’s up to us to help them reporting when we see them.

    Do you think Reddit/big companies will make attacks on the fediverse?

    I don’t think so, it would be a waste of resources, they don’t see the fediverse as a threat, it’s true we’re growing but we’re still hundreds of thousands against hundreds of millions, different order of magnitude.

    Do you think clickbait posts will start popping up in pursuit of ad revenue?

    Clickbaiting will indeed start, if not already, but by users, not corporations, and drama stirring posts for views (that’s happening already), it can be contained by enforcing rules and having enough mods to deal with it IMO.

    • joshinya@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If not for the reddit blackout, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Characterizing the recent action against reddit as an inconsequential 2 day blackout is inaccurate I think. Shitposts and memes are the content that exists independent of platform, it’s not what made Reddit popular.

      • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Characterizing the recent action against reddit as an inconsequential 2 day blackout

        Where did I say the blackout is inconsequential? I don’t believe that at all, it just won’t kill reddit, but it had indeed an impact, both on the platform and people.

        • joshinya@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m just trying to summarise to be concise, this part is what I was getting at

          look at how little it took for the protest to wane, some subs are still protesting or migrating, but the majority reopened and they’re going on like nothing happened.

          I disagree that “the majority reopened”, of a total proportion of subs that blacked out I think the majority are either blacked out or have not resumed operations as normal. This is different from a majority proportion of all subs, which is a much larger number, and the majority of which also never participated in any blackout. Since the majority of traffic on reddit goes to a minority of subs, it’s not clear which metric you’re looking at or whether it’s meaningful in context.

          Since reddit algorithms to some extent relied upon that consistent operating principle of posts in popular subs being boosted, initially the result of the blackout was extreme - the website could not functionally aggregate posts on most users frontpages with so many subs on private mode. But that is not a problem directly caused by the blackout, it’s caused by reliance on consistent data. So all reddit needed to do in that case was adjust the algo to significantly improve the average user experience during peak blackout. Instead of users seeing a bunch of posts about private subs they can’t interact with, they just get fed posts from subs that didn’t black out, so users could engage with reddit while an active ongoing protest was happening on the platform and might not even notice.

          So I guess my point is that someone’s impression of how the frontpage looked at t+24hrs, or t+48hrs, or today, as an indication of how reddit’s going right now, is inaccurate because of the inherently subjective nature of the information visible from just browsing the platform.

          • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I disagree that “the majority reopened”

            https://reddark.untone.uk/ lists all the subs that took part in the protest (it lists only those who officially pledged to the protest), go look at how the situation is now, majority of subs are colored white, it means they reopened as normal, tho some of them are protesting in a different way (hilarious even).

            my point is that someone’s impression of how the frontpage looked at t+24hrs, or t+48hrs, or today, as an indication of how reddit’s going right now, is inaccurate

            Oh that I agree with, the frontpage is nowhere near a good indication of how the situation on reddit is, admins have been working really hard to hide what’s going on.

            But that IMO brings the point to people who care or do not, I mean, all those who really care are abandoning ship, those who don’t (the majority IMO) are basing their experience on what’s shown on the frontpage, because they don’t care about going deeper than that, those users don’t even notice a protest is going on.

            • joshinya@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              My personal compulsion to browse reddit certainly isn’t to think actively about the content I’m being fed, that’s kind of the whole point - here’s all the links you want spoonfed to you so you don’t need to seek them out. The algorithmic approach to content delivery is the core product, and it became popular because it is good method of consumption. But when content quality goes down on average, eventually you end up with a Facebook situation - those are the users that actually don’t care.

              Thanks for the link, on the face of this I’m not sure if this really goes for or against my idea about the available metrics at hand not really being sufficient to make accurate/meaningful observations about the data. It certainly does feel to me like there’s an undeniably significant protest occuring on the platform now, even within the confines of established rules on reopened subs. And also datapoints not considered, such as subs which have been reopened by direct admin action, or under threat of it.

    • jerry@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Meta (Facebook) is testing an activity pub powered Twitter clone, big companies are knocking at the door.