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Socsa , in r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.

Literally everyone on Reddit could see this except spez, who is a greedy little pigboy

Zipitydew ,

Oh he could see it too and didn't care because he's a self proclaimed libertarian.

Eldritch ,
@Eldritch@lemmy.world avatar

What's a right wing libertarian other than a fascist so selfish they aren't concerned or swayed by ideas of nationalism or "heritage". But they'll happily enable and march with the ones who are. When their self interest aligns. They just want to be the ones on top.

nilloc ,

They’re mostly just conservatives who like drugs.

Ensign_Crab ,

Be fair. They're also conservatives who are more open about not wanting the age of consent to be a thing. Which also explains the sub spez used to moderate.

barsquid ,

There are only three kinds of libertarians:

  1. Likes drugs and naive about economics.
  2. Hates minorities and understands economics but naive as fuck about NAP.
  3. Pedophile.
PoliticalAgitator ,

Extremists are engagement.

JasonDJ ,

I really wonder if the nouveau rich tech startup boys look around and realize that their greed is directly responsible for the 2016 election and by extension, the state of US domestic politics today, and feel even a tiny bit of guilt over it.

Probably not.

PoliticalAgitator ,

I don't think that's how they're wired. If anything, they'd be excited to learn they're a couple of million dollars of AI astroturfing from being able to choose the president.

GoofSchmoofer ,
@GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world avatar

But that's not true I've heard it straight from the tech-bros mouth. They build these technologies to help us, the little people. To spread peace and love and build deeper connections with the people that we love. I'm sure that they feel pain and guilt that they have to deposit those large checks into their bank accounts. /s

Ensign_Crab ,

Why would they feel guilt regarding something they wanted to do?

JasonDJ ,

See, I don't think that. I think they are power hungry, sure. But I don't think they ever realized the power that their product would grant them. It's totally unprecedented. They get right into our brain and tickle our dopamine receptors while they mess with everything else.

I don't think they expected or were prepared to yield that type of power, at all. I really feel like Zuck et al accidentally stumbled into being a supervillain. Like some sick Mr. Bean skit.

aport , in Reddit’s Goon Cave Community Has Been Banned

You fools it's supposed to contain them, now they are on the loose.

camr_on ,
@camr_on@lemmy.world avatar

They're out of their caves, god help us

pro_grammer ,

they're already gooning in my house! 😡

DemBoSain ,
@DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

Quick! Call the goon squad!

MrJameGumb , in Reddit escalates its fight against AI bots
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

You’ll need to make a licensing deal, like Google and OpenAI have done, to use Reddit content for model training and other commercial purposes.

So it's not actually about protecting anyone's data, or making the internet a nicer place to be at all, Huffman is just mad that they're potentially missing out on more revenue streams. I can't say I'm surprised

9point6 ,

*mad that he torched the site for this business model, only for Google to find that the data was basically useless for training

slazer2au ,

It's about Reddit protecting their own data, not yours as a user.

rockSlayer , in Reddit locks down its public data in new content policy, says use now requires a contract

Too bad the website is still openly accessible and still capable of being scraped

SzethFriendOfNimi ,

Probably what they’re targeting. Such as sites like safereddit, etc.

rockSlayer ,

Well that's part of the thing. Web scraping doesn't get covered by policies. Like, they could ban your ip or any accounts you have, but web scraping itself will always be acceptable. It's why projects like NewPipe and Invidious don't care about YouTube cease and desist letters.

AeroLemming ,

Is it any different for an "API"? I don't think there's a very big difference between an HTTP endpoint that returns HTML and an HTTP endpoint that returns JSON.

krippix ,

In what way?

HTML definitely provides more overhead than json if you only care about the data.

AeroLemming ,

Legally. OC stated that NewPipe doesn't worry about legal threats because they scrape instead of using an official API.

folkrav ,

Parsing absolutely comes with a lot more overhead. Especially since many websites integrate a lot of JS interactivity nowadays, you oftentimes don’t get the full contents you’re looking for straight out of the HTML you’re getting out of your HTTP request, depending on the site.

AeroLemming ,

I meant legally.

werefreeatlast ,

Oops look like this community hasn't been reviewed. Login if you still want to see the content.

rockSlayer ,

Yea, I've seen those pop-ups when trying to find something out. It sucks but isn't a significant barrier to web scraping

AeroLemming ,

Doesn't that only happen on the mobile version? Either way, it's stupid and annoying. Google should start de-ranking sites that add barriers to content, but I know they never will.

werefreeatlast ,

I tried that on my desktop. So long as you are not actually logged in you cannot see the communities that are too small for a review or too adult after a review.

AeroLemming ,

Ugh, what a fucking shitshow. I know it won't happen quickly or easily, but I'm hoping to see more people on federated platforms in the next decade or two. It's the only way for us to take the internet back from these greedy bastards.

freebread ,
@freebread@lemm.ee avatar

Still waiting for the news that they took down old.reddit. Without the third party apps, that was the only way it could still be usable.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Removed

IphtashuFitz ,

We use Akamai where I work for security, CDN, etc. Their services make it largely trivial to identify traffic from bots. They can classify requests in real time as coming from known bots like Googlebot to programming frameworks like python & java to bots that impersonate Googlebot, to virtually any other automated traffic from unknown bots.

If Reddit was smart they’d leverage something like that to allow Google, Bing, etc. to crawl their data and block all others, or poison others with bogus data. But we’re talking about Reddit here…

AtariDump , in Reddit shares soar 14% after company reports revenue pop in debut earnings report
Cypher ,

He’s also a pedophile. He was moderator of the jailbait subreddit.

mozz , (edited )
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Just in case someone thinks this is a troll or wild accusation, it's literally true. (Edit: Or... I don't know specifically that he's a pedophile, but it would seem a little surprising for anyone who isn't a pedophile to participate in an explicitly pedophilic community let alone agree to publicly moderate it.)

He also -- I hadn't known this -- would edit people's comments on the site that were critical of him.

bane_killgrind ,

I wonder what it would take to run a hostile lemmy instance, just designed to drag people you dislike via putting words in their mouth.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

I think ActivityPub requires that a message purported to be from some user needs to be signed with their private key (in practice, the key that their instance keeps track of on their behalf).

I'm not 100% sure of that but I think it's how it works. So you would have to entice the people you dislike into making users on your instance, or else come up with some other way of gaming the system. (And, I think you'd be defederated from everyone almost instantly.)

Fun fact, lemmy.ml actually does automatically edit users' posts to remove certain curse words. Even that seems to me absurdly authoritarian in this weird specific nanny-state type of way (like -- they could make a feature where you can decide to have a set of words censored on the reading side, for posts from any instance -- but no, they deliberately decided to police their user's posts for everyone, and remove the ability for their users to more successfully achieve the supposed goal). It offends me probably more than it should.

bane_killgrind ,

Alright thanks I'll work on it

VirtualOdour ,

Two key notes for anyone wanting context

You could add anyone as a mod to a sub you moderated, he was added as a joke

Even more context they did give the guy who ran it and most the other nswf subs a special award before media controversy got them to ban the most problematic subs. So really it's a somewhat unfair statement but he was clearly aware of the sub and did nothing until forced.

The comment editing was clearly a joke because the Trump sub was pinging him in posts insulting him for enforcing moderation policy against them - he set it to change 'fuck @spez' to 'I love spez' or similar.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

You could add anyone as a mod to a sub you moderated, he was added as a joke

Even more context they did give the guy who ran it and most the other nswf subs a special award

Fair point. He could be just an absolute bonehead who for whatever reason wasn't able to process that he needed to get the avowed overt pedophilic activity off his server, and didn't see the problem even with them joking around about how he was on their side and giving them an award. There's no particular reason to think that he himself has any inclination that way.

The comment editing was clearly a joke

This is a perfect example of something that's a joke when you're the one with the power, but if you're the one on the receiving end is absolutely not a joke.

I suspect that if someone at Google (or whatever) was editing spez's emails for any reason "as a joke" then he wouldn't be entertained by it in any capacity or think it was okay, however harmless their edits were according to them.

VirtualOdour ,

There is a huge difference between subtly changing posts in secret and very obviously doing it to poke fun at people attacking you without any intention of secrecy.

I don't think it was a great thing to do because unserious trolls like the nimble navigators were bound to try and sell it as a big deal and as we see it'll echo for ages by people repeating the most salacious elements without context. I don't think it's anything shocking, moot used to use identical word filter tactics against the very same people and they laughed at it, users found it funny at the time too until they realized it was expedient to be outraged.

I'm here because I dislike Spez and how he runs things, but I think it's important to have good arguments not paper thin mock outrage.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Can I give you a list of substitutions which you will then have to apply to your comments going forward, and go back and edit your past comments to apply? Would you agree to that? For your convenience I can give you a set of links to click to apply the edits.

I promise (for real) that I'll only do it to poke fun.

VirtualOdour ,

All I'm saying is there is a difference and that it is deceptive to present it like it's one thing when it's something else because you know that it'll be more effective at convincing people of the thing you want them to think.

Just say what actually happened if you genuinely believe it's exactly as bad.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

I did say exactly what happened: He edited posts. And I explicitly addressed what you're saying here: I'm saying it doesn't matter how "harmless" the edits are that you're saying create such a big difference. I'm saying any amount is bad (which isn't the same as saying that any edit is the same as any other edit).

VirtualOdour ,

You left out key information which I now suspect you knew very well would cause people to have a different response and you're using for paper thin excuses to try and justify it.

You know you're being deceptive and you should be ashamed.

bestonecrazy ,

He does not see you, hear you, or even know you. To me, he is faceless to this platform.

I made this image for that reason.

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/150c090d-c0f5-470b-9b74-e51047089d38.webp

radix , in Account suspended
@radix@lemmy.world avatar

Unverified account? Straight to jail.

It wasn't compromised. If you can't be tracked and cross referenced with all the other data that brokers have, your activities aren't worth anything to reddit and they don't care about that account.

Anticorp ,

Let us into your house or we'll burn it down.

beebarfbadger ,

Hey, it looks like you're not giving us all your personal data. That's a mighty fine account ya got there. Be a shame if something were to ... happen to it. About that personal data now...

Stovetop , in If Reddit had a soul/conscience, I think it was us, and we're all on Lemmy now...

I don't know, the idea that users on Lemmy were the best part of Reddit is a bit egotistical, bordering on narcissism.

I think what you're looking at is simply differences in scale and variety of communities. The user migration to Lemmy was negligible, and I don't really think content quality here is inherently better than it is there. Rather, I think Reddit has just become too big and mainstream.

  1. More Boomers are now using Reddit, which for me seems like the same downward spiral that ended up hitting Facebook.
  2. Corporations see people using Reddit for advice and so they spam it up to try to influence shopping habits and land on Google search results.

If Lemmy ever becomes as popular as Reddit, the same thing will happen.

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

If Lemmy ever becomes as popular as Reddit, the same thing will happen.

The Eternal September claims every social network eventually

Snapz OP ,

I didn't say the "best part" anywhere. I was implying the moral and rational part. You make some fine general points, but they aren't in response to what I said.

Migration being negligible is subjective when talking about the users that may have been powering a certain sentiment or tone. Tens of thousands of people leaving would be more than enough to feel that change.

PlasticExistence ,

I find the comments here in the fediverse are of a higher overall quality, like Reddit once was over a decade ago.

FisicoDelirante ,

True, though I can't pinpoint exactly what it is.

SkyNTP ,

Agreed. Some (mostly different) positions here are arguably more entrenched, or at least absolutist, with just as much reactionary down voting instead of nuanced debate.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Downvotes create echo chambers

BonesOfTheMoon , in r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.

Remember when they lifted the no racism rule? I do.

Illuminostro ,

We 'member.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Reddit or the sub?

BonesOfTheMoon ,

The Donald.

Iceman ,

It was a hilarious mask of movement. They did it to "own" /r/Sweden in the subwars and obviously got their asses handed to them.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Yes. And I really should have left Reddit then and never looked back.

stembolts , (edited ) in When did reddit turn Facist?

Conservatives have a lot to gain by building bots to antagonize and convert naive young (and old) people by plastering their dumb ideas everywhere. It's marketing, if you're cruel and dumb they want you on their team.

Why do they allow it? Many reasons I'd guess.. engagement , capitalism, shared-beliefs.

Controversial things generate engagement.
Engagement generates profits.
Many of the decision makers are narcissistic conservatives who think the same thing, but instead of saying it they just enable it, indirectly achieving the same goal as hate-evangelizing.

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

MelodiousFunk ,
@MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net avatar

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

I do believe I'm going to borrow this one.

madcaesar ,

It's also so, so, sooooooo easy to post right wing bullshit because it's always emotional shallow and without any nuance.

So if you say immigrants are stealing all our jobs and committing crimes all over our country! People are already getting riled up, while I have to spend 5 minutes explaining that while we have to secure our borders immigrants aren't the cause of all our woes.

And while I'm in the middle of my 5 minute explanation debunking your first horseshit point, you interject "Gays are over running our schools and molesting our kids!"....

So yea... The truth has a huge disadvantage in the online space because it's so easy to spread lies.

stembolts , (edited )

The bullshit asymmetry principle.

It takes far more text to disprove bullshit than spout the bullshit itself.

Then, to prevent your followers from reading the debunking, introduce, "Lol libs sure do write a lot, they do that because they are dumb and triggered!"

And, "I love the poorly educated" (because they haven't been taught how to apply reason to arguments so they can't see through my historically well-known hate tactics because they don't read books.)

But they do understand, "Sleepy Joe!" "Crooked Hillary!"

So yeah, you're encountering bullshit asymmetry, it sucks and our job is hard, but hey, since we are on the topic of slogans, let me paraphrase a famous one. "We do this thing or that thing not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

The decision you are left with is knowing when to talk and when to walk away from someone who isn't ready to listen.

A_Random_Idiot ,
@A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world avatar

Conservatives have a lot to gain by building bots to antagonize and convert naive young (and old) people by plastering their dumb ideas everywhere. It’s marketing, if you’re cruel and dumb they want you on their team.

Because their opinions are unpopular as fuck, even amongst their own base, so they have to resort to paying propagandists and social manipulators to spam accounts and posts about their shit to make it seem more popular than it is, in the hopes of converting some of their idiot base by making them go "WELL SO MANY PEOPLE (BOTS) ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS, IT MUST BE POPULAR, THERE FOR I MUST LIKE IT OR I FAIL CONSERVATISM"

billiam0202 ,

A surprising amount of people want to watch the world burn, as long as they can do it from a balcony.

"I never thought the leopards would eat my face fire would spread to my building!"

stembolts ,

Exactly, my theory is they are too narcissistic to realize that fire will spread to their metaphorical balcony.. idk. My own theory seems dumb to me, how could they be so shortsighted?

billiam0202 ,

My own theory seems dumb to me, how could they be so shortsighted?

There are countless events in human history where that question could be asked. Thinking long-term about the health of the environment and the species just doesn't seem to be within human capability.

nilzen , in New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public Opinion

those are some low numbers. between corporate, state, and anonymous shills and trolls, I wholly believe at least 50% of all reddit content is paid for or manipulative for agenda based groups. the sheer number of repetitve posts with repetitve comments constantly being on the front page is pure propaganda. Of course I rmemebr back in the old days when the reddit feed was in (almost) real time where you couldliterally wait every 10 minutes and refresh for an almost completely new front page. Now it's all about repetivie agendas and narratives operating in cycles to manipulate public opinions. the same lame post will sit on the front page for entire days.

Aolley ,

I'd say there is a huge amount of bots, then the smart bots, then the actual shills. The smarter ones run complex operations and are able to use their own power to self propel their own stories. And there are a lot of similar 'power users' who are not wholly paid for by someone but would do work for the highest bidder.
I'd bet that yes, 50% of what's on the front page of major things is reputation management or Hail Corporate stuff, then I'd wager the mostly less popular stuff is actual people, with a ton of bad posts from all sides at the low popularity

PineRune , in Exactly. Delete Reddit.

I have never gotten a reliable answer from a quora result. I avoid them like the plague now.

garbagebagel ,

I've only ever seen Quora as a joke, I didn't think people were actually getting good answers there.

BarrelAgedBoredom ,

Quora is off brand yahoo answers. All of the misinformation and none of the humor

niktemadur ,

And a vaguely intellectual name, as if knowledgeable people go and post there all the time, when its' actual academic facade is more analogous to stock photo models wearing labcoats and goggles.

drmoose , in When did reddit turn Facist?

It simply grew too big and corporate. Reddit is not a niche social network anymore. It's Facebook.

alcoholicorn ,

It was never a niche social network. In the beginning, Spez used sockpuppets to fake engagement, later on advertisers and state actors (In 2016, they forgot to scrub the bots from their statistics, and posted that Eglin Airforce Base was the most reddit-addicted city) generated engagement.

drmoose ,

What it absolutely was a niche network to the point where if reddit was mentioned in mainstream media it made big waves. Dudes even had secret greetings like when does the narval bacon or smt like that I don't remember. But reddit was super niche and that's what made it special imo. The first secret santa exchanges were trully amazing, unique experiences that will never be replicated again and the platform was full of these niche little gems that are forever lost now.

andros_rex ,

Reddit also harbored trading rings for CSAM. It took a CNN report about r/jailbait for it to be removed. There was also r/picsofdeadkids. r/creepshots.

Schmoo ,
@Schmoo@slrpnk.net avatar

Reddit was doomed the moment Aaron Swartz left in 2007.

Empricorn , in old.reddit.com login redirects to www.reddit.com/login

Some A/B testing or rollout going on, I'm guessing. Also, Reddit's an abusive ex, stop going back to them!

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

I still have one account there for /r/Lemmy and /r/RedditAlternatives when people try to discredit Lemmy

RightHandOfIkaros , in Has this sub turned into a training ground for AI LLM?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news for AI Haters, but if something is accessible on the internet, it absolutely is being used to train an AI somewhere.

Yes, even here.

AdamEatsAss ,

I'm sorry I can't help you with that. I'm just a large language model. To make it up to you here is a recipe for vegan Salisbury steak using only ingredients starting with the letter "P".

RightHandOfIkaros ,

The only way this would have been funnier is if OP had posted this.

AtariDump ,

But what about posting that useless licensee that doesn’t allow AI access? /s

kratoz29 ,

There is a dude (or maybe more than one) that in all his comments he has an anti AI flair, or something like that, I wonder if that would have any effect.

CosmicCleric , (edited )
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

There is a dude (or maybe more than one) that in all his comments he has an anti AI flair, or something like that,

I wonder who they are? 😜

For the record, I'm not the only one, nor the first one, to do it. I saw someone else do it, and decided to adopt it for myself as well. I'm aware of three people (and one large company) who are currently licensing their content here on Lemmy.

I wonder if that would have any effect.

One way to find out. It's an easy enough piece of text to put into your comments...

[~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.en)

Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

AdamEatsAss ,

You're absolutely right, I'm a large language model and still learning. Please enjoy this list of top cereals from the year 1967-1969 in reverse alphabetic order:

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

I’m a large language model and still learning.

How do you feel about this proposed rule passing, and how it affects you? ...

Reporting Certain Large AI Model Training

In an effort to secure the development and use of artificial intelligence (“AI”), the proposed rule requires U.S. IaaS providers and their foreign resellers to report known instances of foreign persons training “large AI models with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity” to Commerce.

Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

AdamEatsAss ,

I'm a large language model and still learning. Enjoy this list of why everyone thinks your pretentious. /s

AtariDump ,
kratoz29 ,

I wonder who they are? 😜

I am sure we will find him/them, and we will buy their ideals for the grace of the AI well being!

RightHandOfIkaros ,

No, it won't have any effect unless he tries to go through a legal system that recognizes that flair as a legally binding agreement.

And by that point, it is not financially worth it for that person compared to a company with enough money to bankrupt him.

AtariDump ,
brbposting ,

Yes, even here.

I wish I had saved one great comment on this. Can’t do it justice, but it was something about how since we know since we know everything will be used as training data, it's better to be posting in the open instead of inside a walled garden where one particular company will be doing its best to monetize it.

grrgyle ,
@grrgyle@slrpnk.net avatar

There are also privately run and hosted forums. They've been a real nice reprieve as the greater soc media landscape has become the dominant form of cultural expression on the internet

brbposting ,

Hear hear!

VicentAdultman ,

Should we just go back to closed forums? lmao

RightHandOfIkaros , (edited )

No, because then information is locked behind walled gardens, plus the AI training material is still siphoned from them anyway. All it takes is one AI training user being added or one account being compromised.

If you don't want AI to use it, don't post it online. And don't let people post it online.

Basically my point is there is literally nothing you can do.

VicentAdultman ,

Agreed. This was a huge dilemma for me. In my professional field, having publication as part of a portfolio is somewhat important, but having them published in my personal website that barely gets a visit is giving AI content. Last month I came to the same conclusion, that there is no way of escaping it and not doing anything such as publishing, commenting and interacting is denying human existence. What a time to be alive 🤧

TootSweet , in Exactly. Delete Reddit.

Reddit used to be a pretty cool thing. And it still has a lot of good information. But I always feel dirty when I do resort to searching Reddit for information.

Aaron Swartz would be appalled.

kakes ,

I feel like Aaron 100% would have backed Lemmy.

(Edit: Not that I or anyone can speak for him, obviously.)

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