this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Using AI to notify a poster that a post is likely to run afoul of Reddit or community guidelines before posting actually seems like an interesting albeit fraught idea.
If he weren’t so Speztic about everything, I would not feel so confident it was a nefarious plan to hurt people. But he is evil and impulsive, so… fuck Spez.
Yeah, an AI telling you your post will get deleted sounds like a great way to suppress specific information. Political ideas the mods/admins don't like? Pushing back against right-wing hate? Calling out blatant advertising? I can think of lots of ways this will probably be abused to steer conversations into advertiser-friendly topics.
I mean, that's what moderators do anyway. It all comes down to what the rules of a sub are, and those rules are set and enforced by human moderators. I think it'll be interesting to see how it goes with a less capricious AI in the loop.
You guys are twisting yourself in knots about Spez. This isn't the doing of one person. This is the inevitable conclusion of every business model where you aren't the paying customer. You are cattle. Kept alive just minimally to be slaughtered and sold to the highest bidder. The advertisers get new features. You are catered to only so much to keep you on the platform, but your comfort will be sacrificed the instant there is profit to be made.
FTFY
Doesn't matter if you pay or how much, they're all collecting your data now because no one gives a shit at the end of the day.
That's not really innovative though. Auto moderator bots have been sending out warnings like this based on simple keyword criteria for years.
Exactly.
AI moderation is just word and phrase filtering, the latter of which wasn't done earlier because it is really complicated due to the vast number of possible combinations of words and context. It also has the same failure issues as word filtering where it will end up being overly restrictive to the point of hilarity or will soon show that no matter what you filter someone will find a way around it.
I mean, suppose the LLM bot is actually good at avoiding false positives/misunderstandings -- doesn't that simply remove one of the biggest weaknesses of old-fashioned keyword identification? I really just see this as a natural evolution of the technology and not some new, wild thing. It's just an incremental improvement.
What it absolutely does NOT do is replace the need for human judgement. You'll still need an appeals process and a person at the wheel to deal with errors and edge cases. But it's pretty easy to imagine an LLM bot doing at least as well a job as the average volunteer Reddit/Discord mod.
Of course, it's kind of a moot point. Running a full LLM bot, parsing every comment against some custom-design model, as your automoderator would be expensive. I really cannot see it happening routinely, at least not with current tech costs. Maybe in a few years the prices will have come down enough, but not right now.
No, I don't think I will.
Yes, to suppress swearing or offensive content, not suppress ideas. You could still talk about a touchy subject by filtering out keywords and using substitutions.
It could search for all kinds of keywords to enforce rules. For example, scan titles to find question identifiers to suggest a user maybe needed to check an FAQ/wiki, or that kind of thing. Find keywords to detect probable off-topics. That sort of stuff.
At the end of the day, is what the LLM bot doing really any different? I'd say it's more sophisticated but the same fundamental thing.
It'll just be another avenue through which Huffman can put his thumb on the scales and tune the content to his own liking.