- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
documentingourdecline.substack.com
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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.



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.