But Huffman said Reddit was now battling to ensure its users stay at the center of the social network. “Where the rest of the internet seems to be powered by or written by or summarized by AI, Reddit is distinctly human,” he said. “It’s the place you go when you want to hear from people, their lived experiences, their perspectives, their recommendations. Reddit is communities and human curation and conversation and authenticity.”
As Reddit becomes an increasingly important source for LLMs, advertisers are responding with what one agency chief described as a “massive migration” to the platform.
Multiple advertising and agency executives speaking during this month’s Cannes advertising festival told the FT that brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots.
It’s gotten to the point that if someone were to ask me what my super power would be if I could choose, I’d say that I’d like to be able to see what is human and what isn’t when I’m online. Very boring super power, but it would make some things a lot easier.
Ironically I also lost count on how many times I was accused of being a bot near the end of my time on reddit. I wouldn’t be surprised if those who accused me were bots themselves. It was just insane sometimes.
But good luck with that, Mr CEO. I’m sure you care very much about your human users on your goofy platform.
Me too…any tips for spotting it?
It is so tricky and i dont have any good answers as I’m a tech-idiot, but I’ll try my best to give you some suggestions:
In the past you may come across a comment that sounded overly robotic and emotionless when they commented, but that might as well just be someone on the spectrum. Nowadays some bot comments sound more human than actual human comments. I really cannot tell.
I think I was often accused of being a bot because I tend to go into detail about things that interest me and try to explain things in too many paragraphs, lol. I have tried to learn how to shorten my replies to people but I fucking fail everytime. I literally just spammed a friend with a long ramble about why the Syrian flag looks different and went into the history of the flag and made a cliff notes version of the conflict in Syria because it randomly became an interest for me for a few minutes after a car passed my window with the new Syrian flag on the car helmet. So maybe that trait is a bit off putting to random people who cross my path online. I dunno.
Anyway, I have heard that some people look at sentence structure and grammar to decipher who is real and who isn’t. If the grammar is too good, the sentence structures too perfect, then some people suspect it is a bot. But it’s probably just a matter of time before bots will adapt to poor grammar and writing patterns. If they can go from sounding like a Wikipedia page to cracking jokes and sounding human in less than five years, they can learn how to imitate shitty writing patterns that most of us have. I for one tend to accidentally press the s when I want to press the a and I usually catch it before posting, but sometimes I overlook it.
Usually, on reddit, I would check the comment history of someone I suspected of being a bot. If they posted way too much, like seconds between each comment and in various different subs for hours, I would conclude they were a bot, but I don’t think all bots are like that.
I dunno how I would spot bots in the fediverse, tbh. Maybe similar, checking the comment history if i suspect a bot, but otherwise i dunno man.
Usually I go by how people behave. Anyone who acts insane or aggressive gets blocked. I am too old to deal with shit like that, but that has less to do with bots and more to do with no longer tolerating extremely divisive behavior.
That’s really helpful thanks mate. And I agree, banging your head against a brick wall just hurts your head