saarth

No wonder Reddit has turned to shit

https://lemmy.world/post/42546266

Feb 2 at 7:40amWeb
Show thread9point6Feb 2

Most people […] write […] comments […] and hope AI picks them up

Really quite sad if there’s even one person out there doing that.

This is also as much of a grift as any SEO that claims to have cracked the code of getting to the top of results. Even if they have figured something reproducible, it will get fixed. If someone can manipulate a search engine to provide results different to what it would otherwise do, that’s a bug they will fix

Show threadschnurritoFeb 2
That “most people” part kinda reminds me of this: xkcd.com/2501/
Average Familiarity

xkcd
Show threadchickenFeb 2
Will they though, search engine results lately seem very much like a decisive victory for the SEO slop
Show threadTempercheFeb 2
only if u use google. Try Qwant.
Show threadDrusasFeb 2
Or DDG.
Show threadAzzuFeb 2
DDG is bing and definitely has the same problems.
Show threadKurtVonnegutFeb 2
Or Kagi
Show threadSergioFeb 2

If someone can manipulate a search engine to provide results different to what it would otherwise do, that’s a bug they will fix

But there are more people manipulating the results, than people fixing the bugs.

Show threadsurewhynotlemFeb 2
But not in novel ways. Lots of exploiters using the same bug. Fix it once and they’re all fixed.
Show threadfckredditFeb 2
SEO is a grift.
Show threadreabsorbthelightFeb 2
Wtf it literally never crossed my might to use a forum like this. So fucking dumb. It’s like everyone is scrambling for a couple percent points over the next
Show threadpulsewidthFeb 2

Its likely this is designed with a plan to push advertising or self-promotion.

Eg: step one is done - figure out how to both find threads early & get your content picked up as a good answer regularly and consistently. Step 2 - start inserting ‘first hand’ recommendations or even just mentions of products and services.

I’ve already seen webpages with the most esoteric or niche product/service recommendations (like some random Indian consultancy with 2 people listed in it, and no other significant web footprint) pop up in first page web results. Its another AI deathblow to the utility of search engines.

Show threadF/15/[email protected]Feb 2
People have been doing it for years. At one point, it amounted to a sizable percentage of Reddit’s posts and comments. Just seo spam to their own profile, a few subreddits, and sleep your 600+ accounts for 3 days.
Show threadreabsorbthelightFeb 2
I knew most of it was spam. I just figured it was propaganda
Show threadslaacaaFeb 2
Line must go up, always & forever.
Show threadAllzeitBereitFeb 2
It’ll happen in the Fediverse too.
Show threadbirdwingFeb 2
And when that happens, we move instances.
Show threadThis is fine🔥🐶☕🔥Feb 2

That’s discord model. 🫩

Fediverse needs to have a layer which traps AI in a never-ending maze.

Show threadRimuFeb 2
A never-ending maze would mean the scrapers just hammer our servers forever. Better to lead them into a honeypot and automatically ban their IP. Like PieFed does.
Show threadThis is fine🔥🐶☕🔥Feb 2

A never-ending maze would mean the scrapers just hammer our servers forever.

Is that how tarpitting works? I didn’t know.

Show threadRimuFeb 2
There are a lot of strategies. afaik a tar pit tries to waste the attacker’s resources by delaying our responses to their traffic? A honey pot tries to funnel bot traffic towards a place which only bots would go to. Once they go there you know they’re a bot and they can be banned.
Show threadlumpenproletariatFeb 2
Sadly that only works for scrapers, content engaging bots are immune to it.
Show threaddavidgroFeb 2
What about a maze that adds a few hundred ms to the response time with each request, so the load gets less the longer it’s trapped?
Show threadRimuFeb 2
I haven’t tried to make something like that. I think it’d be hard to do that without also exhausting our resources too.
Show threaddavidgroFeb 2
Ah, that makes sense
Show threadpimento64Feb 2
So just find scrapers IRL and burn down their houses, easy
Show threadFaceDeerFeb 2
How would that layer distinguish AI from non-AI?
Show thread4amFeb 2

That’s the job of the web server, not of the application that runs on it.

There is already software you can get that feeds a never-ending maze of text to AI scrapers, some of which is AI generated and/or designed to poison LLM training. The problem is that these still use up a ton of bandwidth.

Show threadmaptoFeb 3
Fortunately AI is taking care of that on its own doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07566-y
Show threadrglullisFeb 2
If the idea of a healthy Fediverse requires people moving instances whenever one finds themselves close to bottom-feeders and opportunistic parasites, we already lost.
Show threadbirdwingFeb 2

It’s not so much the requirement of moving inasmuch it’s the ease of doing so.

With traditional social medi, you’d need to move entirely to another social media platform while you might not even be able to enjoy similar content. With lemmy&piefed, you can do that.

Show threadRimuFeb 2
Yes PieFed has a setting for that. It makes scrapers give up pretty fast but ruins the experience for people without an account so I only use it on really bad days.
Show threadDrusasFeb 2
That's how it's been on my mbin instance (fedia.io) for a while now.
Show threadNutomicFeb 2
Lemmy also has an admin setting like that. Additionally there will be private, federated communities available in version 1.0.
Show threaddeafboyFeb 2

the rest only accessible through login and verification

Yes. If you can’t fight the death of the www, embrace it! Help making it happen!

/s

Show threadbirdwingFeb 2
I don’t need one of those stupid ID verifications. Something else should be that instead, but what, I do not know. Whatever helps counter AI scraping and preserves anonymity.
Show threadSpaceNoodleFeb 2

People downvote me when I say it. That’s all cope. We’re not wrong; if and when this goes mainstream, it’ll attract the same bad actors just as heavily.

Of course, there are surely already a few here testing the waters.

Show threadAngelevoFeb 2

We are all rats. When this ship sinks, we will float to the next, or (decide to) drop off.

All things considered, how much would actually be lost?

The alternative being…

Show threadWolfmanEightySixFeb 2
This comment made me realise that the internet could have been born, lived, and died, within my lifetime.
Show threadOpenStarsFeb 2
Like phone calls, and texting, bad actors ruin everything that they touch.
Show threadtomiantFeb 2
Good actors too, it’s the nature of capitalism.
Show threadMotoAshFeb 2
Who is the ‘good’ actor in this ‘capitalism’ thing?
Show threadtomiantFeb 2
It’s more of a technical concept within the lore than an actual thing.
Show threadmaptoFeb 3
There are cooperatives and I haven’t seen any of them so such spamming. The fediverse is an example of it too.
Show threadjayboneFeb 2
Even snail mail.
Show threadzo0Feb 2
Idk their new album sounds pretty good
Show threadVieuxQuebFeb 2
It infuriates me to no end almost everyday I get new plasticized paper ads in my snail mail. Like yeah keep destroying the planet in hopes of selling more junk to destroy the planet with. And my city made it mandatory ! They are not allowed to skip a house.
Show threadBurgerBaronFeb 2
I consider internet dead at this point. I hang out on the outer edge in niche low population servers like the fediverse that the worst humans mostly ignore because spamming here isn’t profitable and manipulating politics doesn’t gain much for their efforts at the moment.
Show threadAngelevoFeb 2
Thank you for the strange compliment.
Show threadSpaceNoodleFeb 2
Squeak
Show threadbalsoftFeb 3
The benefit of the fediverse is that it’s trivially “forkable”. If lemmy.world and other big instances get overwhelmed with bullshit, I fully expect that many smaller chill/focused instances will defederate and keep on doing their own things, chatting only with each other. Perhaps there would also be some in-between, instances which are federated with both worlds, and where you can get a combination of tons of niche information/entertainment but with bots, and a small amount of genuine human interaction. I hope if that ever happens, lemmy-the-software gets sorting algorithms to deal with these situations.
Show threade8d79Feb 2
I think there are some differences that make the fediverse more resilient to this. For example, the absence of cumulative account karma keeps out the reddit style karma farming. The ability to ban whole instances also makes it easier to kick out bad actors. Instance admins could also implement their own rules like switching to an invite based system to reduce bot spam. Also it seems to me that reddit is actively encouraging this kind behaviour to inflate their user statistics and there is no incentive to tolerate this kind of spam for a fediverse server admin.
Show threadhypnicjerkFeb 2

  • karma is meaningless to seo outside of account restrictions. the people doing this as a job aren’t doing it for imaginary internet points

  • it doesn’t matter what individual instances do as long as the largest ones have open signups

    • Show threadmaptoFeb 3

    Yet you didn’t respond to the point that makes the difference:

    reddit is actively encouraging this kind behaviour to inflate their user statistics and there is no incentive to tolerate this kind of spam for a fediverse server admin

    Show threadjohn_tFeb 2
    There’s no algorithm to be played in the fediverse. The reward is too low for all the work of making a post visible, and it won’t carry to the next post, essentially starting all over again.
    Show threadSchadrachFeb 2

    There’s no algorithm to be played in the fediverse.

    There presumably is. Something metric decides visibility on the feeds. That algorithm not being based on corporate profitability doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

    Show threadMacFeb 2
    In fact, it doesn’t matter if there’s no internal incentive. If it’s being indexed and shows in searches it will have all the incentive needed to maximise SEO for profit.
    Show threadmaptoFeb 3
    Google will never rank fediverse posts high. Said otherwise, the external incentives are not there either.
    Show threadSl00kFeb 2
    The Hot ordering is itself an algorithm.
    Show threadGoodeye8Feb 2

    I mean there’s nothing preventing them for doing the same thing here. But if we could get a more even split of users between instances it would arguably be harder for them to pull the same thing because a) the admins can intervene and ban those accounts because the admins are not corporate slaves, unless they are in which case b) other instances can just ban the instance that is letting corporations go wild. We’ve already seen that level of “moderation” with Lemmygrad being ostracized from the wider Lemmy/Piefed ecosystem.

    It’s going to require more work from mods and admins, but I imagine we’ll fare better than Reddit. After-all Reddit has an incentive to support this kind of behavior.