AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'

Oh, I would have thought Reddit themselves would offer such a service

The only reason reddit was valuable was because it was from real people who weren't paid off. Well that's ruined now.

Doesn't mean that the fediverse is immune.

News stories and narratives are still fought over by actors on all sides and sometimes by entities that might be bots. And there are a lot of auto-generating content bots that post stuff or repost old content from other sites like Reddit.

Generative AI has really become a poison. It'll be worse once the generative AI is trained on its own output.

So the human shills that already destroyed good faith in forums and online communities over time are now being fully outsourced to AI. Amazon itself a prime source of enshittification. From fake reviews to everyone with a webpage having affiliate links trying to sell you some shit or other. Including news outlets. Turned everyone into a salesperson.

AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'

FTFY

You don't get to blame AI for this. Reddit was already overrun by corporate and US gov trolls long before AI.

I don't understand how Lemmy/Mastodon will handle similar problems. Spammers crafting fake accounts to give AI generated comments for promotions

It's gross, but also inevitable. If there's an untapped niche to make money from, somebody's going to try it -- plus if they want to waste their money on generating accounts only to have them be banned, then so be it.

Makes me kinda thankful that this community is smaller and less likely to be targeted by this sort of crap.

The creator of the company, Alexander Belogubov, has also posted screenshots of other bot-controlled accounts responding all over Reddit. Begolubov has another startup called “Stealth Marketing” that also seeks to manipulate the platform by promising to “turn Reddit into a steady stream of customers for your startup.” Belogubov did not respond to requests for comment.

What an absolute piece of shit. Just a general trash person to even think of this concept.

I just consider any comment after Jun 2023 to be compromised. Anyone who stayed after that date either doesn't have a clue, or is sponsored content.

yeah, the internet is doomed to be unusable if AI just keeps getting more insidious like this

yet more companies tie themselves to online platforns, websites, and other models of operation depending on being always connected.

maybe the world needs a reboot, just get rid of it all and start from scratch

If the rumor is true that a reddit/google training deal is what led to reddit getting boosted in search results, this would be a direct result of reddit's own actions.

When the internet is eventually oversaturated with smartbots, where will the humans go.

Well, that was the last bit of usefulness I used to get out of google. I've been on yahoo for a while now

This is a direct consequence of Google targeting Reddit posts in its search results. Hopefully forum groups like Lemmy don't go get buried under a mountain of garbage as well. As long as advertisers are able to destroy public forums and communities with ads, with ad based revenue sites like Google directing who to target. We will always be creating something great while constantly trying to keep advertisers from turning it into a pile of crap.

"i remember when reply guy was a term used for someone notorious for replying to things in a specific manner"

"take your meds grandpa, it's getting late"

How exactly are they poisoning a pool of toxic waste?

Logitech decided to include some AI shit in Logi Options+, I uninstalled that crap ASAP.

Wow this is gross. I'm gonna wash it down with some MOUNTAIN DEW ™

Well that's certainly one way for your brand to lose a lot of respect once it becomes apparent. Much like I when want to lose respect for myself, I use Chum brand dog food. Chum, it's still food, alright?

Yeah this isn't new.

Ever wonder why you are such a fan of shitty played out franchises?

I still haven’t seen a use of AI that doesn’t serve state or corporate interests first, before the general public. AI medical diagnostics comes the closest, but that’s being leveraged to justify further staffing reductions, not an additional check.

The AI-captcha wars are on, and no matter who wins we lose.

This market; expected to replace the same market that just used bots to achieve the same thing

I appreciate the mostly benign neglect we had for awhile. Now that they're paying attention it's just all bad. Or would be, if I was there. HA.

That’s just for small players. Big corps probably been doing it for years.

This shit isnt new, companies have been exploiting reddit to push products as if they're real people for years. The "put reddit after your search to fix it!!!" thing was a massive boon for these shady advertisers who no doubt benefitted from random people assuming product placements were genuine.

If only people moved to an open and federated platform. I mean I don't have to say that I hate reddit since I'm here but still whenever I Google a problem reddit answers are one of the most useful places. Especially about something local.

When googling something, append -site:reddit.com

I was about ready to downvote out of pure annoyance lol.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Enjoy your open, impartial platform Reditards.

That's like adding caustic soda to bleach. Just made the poison stronger