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Comment by SamuelAdams

4 days ago

This is not unique to Facebook. Reddit has seen a large uptick in AI-generated posts, or repeated posts from the past.

I think we need to recognize that social media of 2026 is not the same as what we had in 2006. AI generated content, regardless of if it is image, video, or text, is here to stay. And it will only get better and more convincing as the technology improves.

What people really need to ask is this - what do they want to get out of social media? Is it personal relationships and status updates? Is it entertainment? Is it something in between?

The harsh truth is most people at this point use social media for entertainment, and AI content is entertaining, or at least engaging, to most people. Remember that 54% of USA adults read below a 6th grade reading level [1]. It is not perfect, but it is convincing enough that a large enough number of people are beginning to accept it as "real".

[1]: https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-fac...

26 comments

SamuelAdams

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__lain__  4 days ago

The reddit bots are quite nefarious. Even in technical communities where no advertisement is happening there are so many posts made by bots either recycling old posts or masquerading as humans doing banal things like complaining about end users or something. Hundreds of bots that do nothing more than pretend to be people complaining about work, really curious what the goal of the operators is with these ones. Makes me wonder if they are bots supplied by reddit to artificially boost engagement.

  • boelboel  4 days ago

    Reddit has made it impossible to check the history of accounts this past week. They certainly want to make it as difficult as possible to see if someone is 'real'.

  • themafia  4 days ago

    Points are often presented as a proxy for trustworthiness. They're even implicit on sites like HN where certain features only become available once you've crossed a threshold.

    It's a bad tool. I always think of the Bill Bur joke talking about Netflix going from 1-5 stars to thumbs up/down. "It's like.. stubbed my toe.. thumbs down. Hitler.. thumbs down. There's too big of a gap in 'thumbs down.'"

Cthulhu_  3 days ago

The reposts and crossposts are popular because while you may have seen it before, millions haven't.

I think I'm almost at the point of letting it go already. If AI becomes more egregious / apparent, I'm out. I was caught by one already - scrolled for too long, came across some manufacturing video (I love those), but as it went on it became less and less realistic. By the end I was like "huh, TIL robots can make jeans out of banana fiber end to end", but that wasn't true.

Zak  4 days ago

It's not about what users want. It's about what's profitable for the company.

What I want from Facebook is to see what original words, images, or videos my friends and family thought was worth sharing with the world today, and I want to see clearly when I've reached the end of that. I probably don't need to spend more than ten minutes once a day on that.

It's profitable for Facebook to show me as many ads as possible. If I wasn't an aggressive adblock user, the thing I want would have much less potential profit than all the third-party content they want to show me.

overgard  4 days ago

I don't really think that's how this plays out. Facebook can squeeze people a little longer, but if all you want is entertainment other options seem better. End of the day Facebook's moat is your network, but if it's not useful for keeping up with the people you care about, what's special about it? I see a lot of AI generated stuff on youtube, but the view counts are pretty low, so I don't think most of it is getting much traction (and frankly it's very obvious that it's AI just from thumbnails 99% of the time).

monero-xmr  4 days ago

Reddit is so insufferably political now it's insane. Like why do 3d printing subreddits need to stand with (insert leftist outrage of Gaza / Israel / Ice / Canada / on and on)

  • thrance  4 days ago

    Weren't you the one telling us X.com should replace legacy media? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504404

    I think it's very telling how you went to Reddit first when complaining about politics on social media, one of the only big ones that still hasn't been completely invaded by MAGA sycophants. Just admit you take no issues with politics on social media, you just want them to align with your views.

  • fullshark  3 days ago

    Reddit runs on unpaid labor in the form of moderation, in exchange for this unpaid labor mods want to have cultural influence.

  • jmye  4 days ago

    Why do you think? Enragement = engagement. You could generously assume that it's users optimizing for posts that get them likes/karma/whatever, or ungenerously assume that the platform itself is gaming engagement via AI or bots, but the effect is the same and it's pervasive. The only out is finding tiny communities that are still communities, and praying they don't grow.

    Everyone saw the Facebook model and adopted it. It's why Reddit has the valuation it does (and why it's still insane to me people intentionally use it as a recommendation or information tool).