Hot take: 18 years of user contributions to reddit will serve as a base model for an AI that generates content and conversations. the reddit experience continues as a simulation, to harvest clicks, sa
most of the time you'll be talking to a bot there without even realizing. they're gonna feed you products and ads interwoven into conversations, and the AI can be controlled so its output reflects corporate interests. advertisers are gonna be able to buy access and run campaigns. based on their input, the AI can generate thousands of comments and posts, all to support your corporate agenda.
for example you can set it to hate a public figure and force negative commentary into conversations all over the site. you can set it to praise and recommend your latest product. like when a pharma company has a new pill out, they'll be able to target self-help subs and flood them with fake anecdotes and user testimony that the new pill solves all your problems and you should check it out.
the only real humans you'll find there are the shills that run the place, and the poor suckers that fall for the scam.
I actually think this is the fate of the entire corporate driven part of the internet (so basically 95% nowadays, lol). Non-corporate, federated platforms are the future and will remain as the bastions of actual human interaction while the rest of the internet is being FUBAR by large language model bots.
Reddit has been that way for a long time, after it lost the reputation of "niche forum for tech-obsessed weirdos" and became the internet's general hub for discussion. The default subreddits are severely astroturfed by marketing and political campaigning groups, and Reddit turns a blind eye to it as long as it's a paid partnership. There was one obvious case where bots in /r/politics accidentally targeted an AutoModerator thread instead of a candidate's promotion thread and filled it with praise for that candidate.
Ever heard of the Dead Internet Theory? It's the idea that bots have taken over the Internet and there are few real humans left. For the whole of the Internet, this is a conspiracy theory. But for any individual platform, it is a totally plausible outcome. Reddit could become one of those bot networks that just pretends to be a social media platform. Twitter is on track for that too.
The larger subs are already starting to become a war between different groups of spammers. The smaller subs can get by for now, but when the war in the larger subs gets to the extent that spammers start needing to branch out, they'll likely invade the smaller subs, as well.
Never underestimate the power of negative energy, plenty of people flock to also dump on things they don't like, it's a great way to drive engagement (albeit shitty engagement)
Bots are already engaging with users and pushing narratives. The percentage of Reddit that is inorganic is probably higher than most people would expect.
We need better solutions for proving identity online. Email, capcha, etc. are insufficient. I imagine a system similar to the certificate authority system, where you prove your identity to one of many trusted identity providers and then that provider vouches for you when you sign up for other services (while also protecting you anonymity.)
Content will be used to train bots, yes, but it probably won't be Reddit doing it, and they likely won't be offering bots as a service.
Instead, they'll sell access to the API to people training LLMs, and sell it again to people who want to use bots on the site. They can split API access into bulk read, and read/write packages so that people can't double-dip. Then they'll let people monetize subreddits, directly incentivising bot access and usage.
Although you have to wonder how much advertisers would actually pony up if most of the Reddit users weren't actual users at all. They want people to do the clicking, and if the users are all bots, they're likely not going to bother wasting their money at that point.
I'm interested to see how AI training on reddit turns out. Especially the default subs are full of snarky jokes, even on serious topics the majority of comments are "funny" one liners. And those are the ones getting the most upvotes.
Compared to a system like StackOverflow where the upvoted answers are the most helpful and mostly well written and thoughtfully crafted.
I suggest to watch "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix, not a paid sponsor ok hahaha.
This will become or "just already becomes" a great opportunity for elections, conspiracies, propagandas, prohibitions and defamations and corruption of minds of freely learning real online people, a great opportunity with poor, naive, innocent real online people and especially youngsters and upcoming generations just browsing, enjoying and wanting the Internet. So I swear there will be a massive daunting aftereffect on society/people/youngsters soon to be grownups with not-normal mindsets anew after.
BTW OPTIONS:
Rebellious: annihilate those servers!!!
Civil: manually delete/edit/request away every info, posts, comments and personals.
Best I believe: be edified and keep learning particularly to media literacy to well and easily discern the color—truth every time reading or obtaining online/outside. Nothing can ever corrupt a rational man that learns and achieves truth.