An investigation into the AI bots that appeared on Reddit after they partnered with OpenAI.

Key points:

  • The bots post a lot of links to products and services which appear to be adverts but are not marked as such.
  • Many of these links are for Sam Altman’s World ID.
  • Reddit added terms on AI advertising to their business page around the time the bots appeared.
  • The bots also make up stories about dead mothers, depression, drug addiction, eating disorders, medical conditions and mental health issues.
  • wuffah@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I left Reddit after it became clear that every other post on every cute animal subreddit was a dead pet sympathy karma farm bot post. That and the relationship-panic gossip trash.

    There’s nothing genuine left there.

    • lori@lemmy.zip
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      7 hours ago

      People on reddit always make the assumption that bots are all going to be angry divisive posts or posts advertising products but this is by far the most common form of reddit bot I see: the kind that just posts a bunch of one sentence generic positivity comments for easy upvotes where every post has the exact same grammatical format. My favorite is when like four of them post in the same thread with barely reworded versions of the same comment. I’ve gotten a good read on them at this point and I notice them constantly.

    • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 hours ago

      Yeah, the general-purpose or “default” subs were always terrible. I haven’t completely left reddit yet because of some very specific communities that don’t have, and probably never will have, a fediverse equivalent, and they don’t seem to be too much of a target for AI bots, but I am starting to notice how social media influencers are affecting the population as a whole. But maybe that’s just the cloud I’m shaking a fist at.

    • Elting@piefed.social
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      16 hours ago

      Browsing the relationship subs on reddit will affect your mental health. Disfunctional people writing hate fanfics of fake versions of themselves.