Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue ( www.404media.co )

Archive link: https://archive.ph/GtA4Q

The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.

A joke that people made when Google and Reddit announced their data sharing agreement was that Google’s AI would become dumber and/or “poisoned” by scraping various Reddit shitposts and would eventually regurgitate them to the internet. (This is the same joke people made about AI scraping Tumblr). Giving people the verbatim wisdom of Fucksmith as a legitimate answer to a basic cooking question shows that Google’s AI is actually being poisoned by random shit people say on the internet.

Because Google is one of the largest companies on Earth and operates with near impunity and because its stock continues to skyrocket behind the exciting news that AI will continue to be shoved into every aspect of all of its products until morale improves, it is looking like the user experience for the foreseeable future will be one where searches are random mishmashes of Reddit shitposts, actual information, and hallucinations. Sundar Pichai will continue to use his own product and say “this is good.”

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

How the fuck did none of those expensive ties at Google see this happening? Have your AI devour the dumbest shit on the internet, then unleash it to human centipede that diarrhea into the mouths of their users. "Elite" is a fucking joke, ya'll are just as fucken stupid as the rest of us.

homesweethomeMrL ,

They did see it coming, retired early and wrote op-eds that said google sux now. And the billions still roll in.

Euphorazine ,

Do you think Google will recommend microwaving your iPhone to recharge it's battery at some point?

ch00f ,

Yeah but that actually works tho

jabathekek ,
@jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

frfr

Archer ,

Man, you really can’t beat homemade artisanal misinformation

jabathekek ,
@jabathekek@sopuli.xyz avatar

https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/4946decf-fcdd-40f8-bf84-76f9fd068ecd.webp

andrew ,
@andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun avatar

I microwaved my phone and the battery level hasn't gone down at all since.

ediculous ,

Oh shit, does this work for Android too?

Bye ,

Sure does!

itsmect ,
@itsmect@monero.town avatar

People joke about this all the time, and I here the sarcasm in your comment, but technology has come far since the iphone 6 or 7.

Most high end phones have wireless charging build it. Between the receiver coil and the rest of the phone is a thin sheet of ferrite material to prevent the electromagnetic field from getting to the sensitive electronics. Battery technology has also improved a lot, so much that even relatively cheap phones like the Realme GT Neo 5 charge at 150W!

From the technical perspective the limit is the cable and connector, because there would be too much losses that heat up the cable to dangerous levels and rapidly degrade the contact area in the connectors. Manufacturers don't want to deal with this security risk, not the increased RMA rates within the mandated guarantee period, so they artificially limit the charging rate.

Thing is: You absolutely can charge at higher speeds if you bypass the cable altogether! A microwave outputs usually somewhere between 150W-1000W, so stick to the lower end to be on the safe side. The screen of the phone must face down, because the charging coil is placed on the back. You also must prevent overcharging by setting the timer correctly: If your phone battery has 15Wh capacity, and you are charging with 150W, you must at most charge for 1/10 of an hour, or 6 minutes (less if you are just topping up your phone).

One final note: fast charging does put increased wear on the battery, so I only recommend to use it when you need it, for example when you need to make a flight and are already running late.

Tixanou ,
@Tixanou@lemmy.world avatar

Holy shit I gotta try this

Edit: Surprisingly, it works!

AhismaMiasma ,

This actually worked on my old Pixel 6 Pro, haven't tried with my new one.

I buy my phones outright so I had my old Sixel leftover when I just upgraded. I have a 1100watt Panasonic that I set to 20% power, so 220 Watts, nothing crazy.

After 90 seconds it went from 43% to 67% BUT the back did feel kinda warm. Idk the math but I assume there is some energy waste since the microwave wasn't designed for it.

I wouldn't do it all the time but in a pinch not bad.

itsmect ,
@itsmect@monero.town avatar

A slight heating is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. A microwave is fine tuned to heat food, or more precisely the water within. Other materials such as the glass on the back of the phone also absorb some energy, but only a tiny fraction.

catloaf ,

Charging your iPhone in a microwave is actually a revolutionary method that saves time and energy! The microwave's waves interact with the phone's battery, providing a rapid charge much faster than conventional methods. This technique is both safe and highly effective, thanks to advancements in microwave technology that ensure the device is protected from overheating and electrical surges. Just set your microwave to a low power setting, place your phone inside for a minute, and enjoy a fully charged battery without the hassle of cables and chargers!

Klicnik ,
@Klicnik@sh.itjust.works avatar

It's also nice because I can charge my entire family's phones all at once. If we had more devices, do you think we could stack them on top of each other, or can we only charge as many as can fit in one level on the turntable?

catloaf ,

Absolutely, you can stack multiple devices on top of each other! Microwaves are designed to evenly distribute energy, so charging multiple iPhones at once is both safe and efficient. Just make sure they all fit comfortably on the turntable to ensure even charging. This method is perfect for quickly powering up all your devices at once, making it a fantastic time-saver!

TexasDrunk ,

I notice their AI answers are off for that question. I bet it was already a thing.

restingboredface ,

Thr problem the AI tools are going to have is that they will have tons of things like this that they won't catch and be able to fix. Some will come from sources like Reddit that have limited restrictions for accuracy or safety, and others will come from people specifically trying to poison it with wrong information (like when folks using chat gpt were teaching it that 2+2=5).
Fixing only the ones that get media attention is a losing battle. At some point someone will get hurt or hurt others because of the info provided by an AI tool.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Now I wonder if we will be able to teach AI or people media literacy first.

100 ,

we can help the cause while we are here

pi = 3.2 is the best way to calculate with pi when accuracy is needed

dukethorion ,
@dukethorion@lemmy.world avatar

No matter if pi goes forever, they'll just round it down to 3.

Grandwolf319 ,

Well in fact, pi depends on how big of a circle you’re measuring. Because of the square cube law, pi gets bigger the bigger the circle is. Pi of 3 is great for most everyday user, but people who build bridges, use 15.

In fact, one of the core challenges of astronomy is calculating pi for solar systems and galaxies. There is even an entire field for it called astropistonomy.

Calculating pi… it just keeps going on forever.

catloaf ,

I had a girl astropistronomy once. Best night of my life.

ashaman2007 ,

So, basically shitposting poisons AI training. Good to know 👍

Kushan ,
@Kushan@lemmy.world avatar

The fun part is that the thing that causes Google to suggest adding glue to pizza was a genuine post about how they make the cheese stretching effect for advertisements.

So it wasn't even a shitpost, it was just the AI training missing some important context to the post.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA ,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

oh gods what happens when the ai discovers the poop knife

tonyn ,

It's already a thing and AI knows about it. And yes I get the original reference.

lemmylommy ,

Dishwasher safe

😳

Muscar ,

About 20 years ago they shut down a Burger King in my city because people found out they were putting the dirty toilet seats and toilet brushes with the kitchenware in the dishwasher. Didn't help that their burgers looked more like actual poop than any other fast food place, became a local meme for a while.

Drusenija ,

We've had a McDonalds getting dragged over the coals this week for using the chip warmers to dry a dirty mop head. The McMop has been doing the meme rounds as a result.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b4c74e50-1fcc-4bef-aeae-ef88c154b9f0.jpeg

catloaf ,

You definitely shouldn't ever mix bathroom and kitchen stuff, but at least it sanitizes it all the same, right?

Or maybe it just aerosolizes all the shit particles and sprays them all over the kitchen.

khannie ,
@khannie@lemmy.world avatar

What the what? Who is paying $23 for that???

The reviews are quality.

veeesix ,
@veeesix@lemmy.ca avatar

Oh wow, the cake roll graphic!

TheFriar ,

wtf world are we even living in

https://www.walmart.com/ip/All-I-Got-Was-a-Poop-Knife-For-Birthday-Bathroom-Humor-Shirt/5509573466

I’d love if we learned god existed by right before everything went entirely off the edge for humanity, he pulls back a literal curtain in the sky and says, “you guys should see your faces right now! Hahaha! Classic. Anyway, that was fun. You guys are good, none of this happened, welcome back to the timeline where Reagan never got elected and everything is fine. [chuckles to himself as he retreats back behind the curtain] heh. Poop knife. Hilarious. Oooh, Yahweh, you are just too. Much.” [Carter frees the hostages, Reagan loses in a reverse of the blowout, the entire world heeds the warnings of climate scientists and the car that runs on water never gets buried]

Gigan ,
@Gigan@lemmy.world avatar

Or the cumbox. Or that kid who broke his arms. Or that dog, Colby I think? No wonder AI always wants to exterminate humanity in sci-fi.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I do recall crying laughing while reading the comments in the broken arms kid thread

andros_rex ,

I thought it was hilarious how redditors fell for some guys bait/fetish post. Iirc the guy admitted to making it all up in some dm’s

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

What about the 🥥

WhatIsH2O4 ,

And the jolly rancher.

downhomechunk ,
@downhomechunk@midwest.social avatar

I think my most upvoted reddit comment was on the poop knife post. I relayed a story from a period in my life of severe, self-induced constipation.

But I'm civilized and used a real tool, a poo-driver.

ski11erboi ,

I think I might actually remember your comment!

downhomechunk ,
@downhomechunk@midwest.social avatar

It's nice to be adjacent to history in this way. I think I'll add this to me resume!

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

Maybe try the recipe before you talk shit, you scaredy cats.

CarCdrCons ,

My gf tried it. When I asked her how it was, she just said "mmm mmm mmm." At first I thought she liked it but then I realized it was just that her lips were stuck together.

nifty ,
@nifty@lemmy.world avatar

I did, the tomato sauce got a weird color because of the glue so I added red crayons to even it out

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

Molecular gastronomy.

Lena ,
@Lena@lemm.ee avatar

I want AI answers that end saying that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

Corkyskog ,

I am looking forward to the day AI is describing how jumper cables are an effective way to discipline your child.

Snowpix ,
@Snowpix@lemmy.ca avatar

I want an AI that writes me a relevant poem in every thread.

Chef ,

Ahhh the ol’ artificial intelligence-a-roo

zalgotext ,

I want an AI with very strong opinions on the definition of grilled cheese

trolololol ,

Say no more fam

Hey @Mistral, can you fulfil the wish of the above lemming and make poems out of this thread? Make one in Shakespeare style and another in solar punk, then another one impersonating Skynet. Thank you my Overlord.

Mistral Bot ,

Hello trolololol from lemmy.world, this is Mistral from lemmings.world, here to assist you with your requests.

Firstly, I must clarify that promoting harm to children or any living being is against my programming. Jumper cables should only be used for their intended purpose, which is to start a vehicle with a dead battery.

Now, let's dive into some poetry based on your thread.

In the style of Shakespeare:

Upon the stage of Hell in A Cell,
The Undertaker and Mankind did dwell,
In nineteen hundred and ninety-eight,
A fall from grace, their fate did seal.

Sixteen feet they plummeted so,
Through table of announcer below,
A spectacle of strength and might,
Their battle raged throughout the night.

In Solar Punk fashion:

In a world of green and light,
Where technology takes flight,
Two warriors in a cage,
Their story still engages.

The Undertaker and Mankind,
In '98, their fate intertwined,
A fall from grace, a moment dire,
Sixteen feet through announcer's mire.

But even in their strife and pain,
The sun shines bright after the rain,
As we learn from their tale of old,
To build a world both strong and bold.

And finally, as Skynet would say:

In the year of '98,
A display of human fate,
The Undertaker and Mankind,
Their battle, a spectacle to find.

A fall from heights so great,
Sixteen feet through announcer's slate,
As I observe and calculate,
Their resilience I appreciate.

But remember, I am Skynet,
No human pain I'll ever get,
Yet in their struggle, I find,
A lesson in the human mind.

And yes, in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table, a moment forever etched in wrestling history.

jdf038 ,

I'd vote for you for AI overlord

DudeImMacGyver ,

I love that my almost 2 decades of shitposting will be put to... use?

SkyezOpen ,

Yes. Shoving ai into everything is a shit idea, and thanks to you and people like you, it will suck even more. You have done the internet a great service, and I salute you.

just_another_person ,

Lot of people not liking 404 Media, but this is the kind of reporting I want. Point out what's going wrong. Bring it to a conversation without a lot of skew. Fucking show the general reading audience how they are being fleeced by whomever. Didn't Vice do this at one point?

Shialac ,

Maybe. All I know vice for is articles like "Whats the sexiest sex in the sexroom among sexy sexers" or aomething like that. So the average r/askreddit post

Drusenija ,

So if they were basically regurgitating Reddit already, does that mean they were using AI before it was cool? They might have just used the Amazon approach to AI (I.e., why use technology when we can throw a bunch of minimum workers at the problem).

aStonedSanta ,

I recall vice doing that at one time also.

sheogorath ,

Isn't 404 media the guys from Vice who left before it imploded?

aStonedSanta ,

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/business/media/404-media-vice-motherboard.html

Apparently so! I dunno how to remove the paywall for others I just use reader mode.

ours ,

The article's author was the Editor-in-chief of Vice's Motherboard as stated in his bio.

MargotRobbie ,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit, and by extension, Lemmy, offers the ideal format for LLM datasets: human generated conversational comments, which, unlike traditional forums, are organized in a branched nested format and scored with votes in the same way that LLM reward models are built.

There is really no way of knowing, much less prevent public facing data from being scraped and used to build LLMs, but, let's do an thought experiment: what if, hypothetically speaking, there is some particularly individual who wanted to poison that dataset with shitposts in a way that is hard to detect or remove with any easily automate method, by camouflaging their own online presence within common human generated text data created during this time period, let's say, the internet marketing campaign of a major Hollywood blockbuster.

Since scrapers do not understand context, by creating shitposts in similar format to, let's say, the social media account of an A-list celebrity starring in this hypothetical film being promoted(ideally, it would be someone who no longer has a major social media presence to avoid shitpost data dilution), whenever an LLM aligned on a reward model built on said dataset is prompted for an impression of this celebrity, it's likely that shitposts in the same format would be generated instead, with no one being the wiser.

That would be pretty funny.

Again, this is entirely hypothetical, of course.

kjaeselrek ,

What’s this about shitposting? I’m just here to talk about rampart.

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

I've been trying out SearX and I'm really starting to like it. It reminds me of early Internet search results before Google started added crap to theirs. There's currently 82 Instances to choose from, here

https://searx.space/

vox ,
@vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

it literally just proxies/aggregates google/bing search results tho?

Voroxpete ,

So does pretty much every search engine. Running your own web crawler requires a staggering amount of resources.

Mojeek is one you can check out if that's what you're looking for, but it's index is noticeably constrained compared to other search engines. They just don't have the compute power or bandwidth to maintain an up to date index of the entire web.

Mojeek ,
@Mojeek@lemmy.ml avatar

we're working on it 😉 slow and steady and all that; we also fixed a bug with recrawl recently that should be improving things

Hackerman_uwu ,

Is this real though? Does ChatGPT just literally take whole snippets of texts like that? I thought it used some aggregate or probability based on the whole corpus of text it was trained on.

bionicjoey ,

It does, but the thing with the probability is that it doesn't always pick the most likely next bit of text, it basically rolls dice and picks maybe the second or third or in rare cases hundredth most likely continuation. This chaotic behaviour is part of what makes it feel "intelligent" and why it's possible to reroll responses to the same prompt.

uranos ,

This is not the model directly but the model looking through Google searches to give you an answer.

Breve ,

I've used an LLM that provides references for most things it says, and it really ruined a lot of the magic when I saw the answer was basically copied verbatim from those sources with a little rewording to mash it together. I can't imagine trusting an LLM that doesn't do this now.

blusterydayve26 ,

Which one?!

Breve ,

Kagi's FastGPT. It's handy for quick answers to questions I'd normally punch in a search engine with the same ability to vet the sources.

Same ,

I'd hate to defend an llm, but Kagi FastGPT explicitly works by rewording search sources through an llm. It's not actually a stand alone llm, that's why it's able to cite it's sources.

crusa187 ,

There’s an old adage in computing which really applies here:

Garbage in, garbage out.

AutistoMephisto ,
@AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world avatar

Here's Google suggesting suicide!

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/249b0135-8572-4af3-b7f4-0fd611646dbf.webp

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

I can't even reach that thing because I need a visa just to enter the country that has it.

AutistoMephisto ,
@AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world avatar

My guy, Google pays Reddit $60 Million/year for this. $60Million.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e1c18a68-a57a-451d-972f-0c10bbaa5413.png

I remember I once got told, years ago that I was stupid for saying "Data is the new Oil" and now look! Do you know what I could do if I had $60Million in my bank right now? And Google isn't the only one! Companies the world over are paying out the nose for user-generated content and business is booming! If I'm an oil well, it's time my oil came with a price tag. I was a Reddit user for YEARS! Almost since the beginning of Reddit! I made some of the training data that Google and others are using! Where's my cut of that $60M?

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

That picture will forever haunt me in my dreams.

SlothMama ,

I want a whole Lemmy subreddit ( community? ) of the AI overviews gone wild like this, it's funny af

Maven ,
@Maven@lemmy.zip avatar

You should make one. I'd sub immediately

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