/r/programming came back up two days ago and as far as I can tell everything relating to the blackout was wiped. I kinda expected it since spez was admin.

Another thing that surprised me was how much chatGPT bot spam there is (danm it is so so bad, wonder what the mods are doing over there… ah yes, spez).

I used to sort by hot so it was hidden away a bit for me before.

Anyways I hope Lemmy does not fall into the same pitfalls!

goes back into lurk mode

  • glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    how much chatGPT bot spam there is

    It doesn’t surprise me at all. The spam was already there on /r/programming and /r/coding way before the blackout. I tried to report all the posts, I asked to become a mod to clean all this shit (and was rejected), but nothing worked. They don’t want to clean the mess, and that’s another reason why I don’t care if reddit dies.

    As for /r/learnprogramming, it’s still filled with spam or people who cannot do a proper google query, it’s as hopeless as the rest. I’m unhappy for all the newbies who want to learn something. I hope the “learnprogramming” of lemmy will be more successful.

    • CoderKat@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I had some lengthy period of time where I enjoyed regularly helping folks in r/learnprogramming. But it got exhausting fast. For every person putting in a good attempt at learning, there was 10 people who couldn’t do the most basic level of googling and content was often extremely repetitive as a result.

      The sub also faced a constant stream of people who just wanted to self advertise their own YouTube videos for teaching programming, as if the lack of such was the barrier to learning.

      Oh, and soooo many people who clearly just wanted to be told the answer to their homework questions and weren’t even hiding that.

    • Hexorg@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      To be fair, new programmers generally don’t know enough to construct a proper Google query either. And yes there are some lazy people who just don’t try. But sometimes you know what you want to achieve but any query you try seems to be unhelpful. For example, if I want to learn how to store settings in c++ the first link for me tells me to use boost. Now I need to learn about linking libraries and 300 other boost-isms. While anyone with any basic knowledge could recommend reading strings line by line and splitting the string on the equal sign.

      • Deely@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Judging by quality of Google search results I believe experienced devs have the same problems with Google as well…

  • RonSijm@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Another thing that surprised me was how much chatGPT bot spam there is

    Not really a bad thing. Part of the protest was to devalue the platform…

    See what /r/ProgrammerHumor/ is doing - all titles are camelCase, and all the comments started including and returning things. It’s not really something anymore that reddit could sell to AI content farms.

    If mods are removed for participating in the blackout, the next best thing is probably to let their sub go completely unmoderated and let things turn into a shitshow with unable content by spam bots.

    Don’t think you can really teach an AI bot something by letting it regurgitate it’s own output

  • jere344@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I posted a question on one of theses subs a few weeks ago and had mostly very generic answer that clearly didn’t read all the post. I was confused at the time but it makes sense now, it was the same kind of basic trooblesooting steps by chatGPT. Reddit is doomed, there are way too much bots. We can only hope to find a solution before it spreads to the whole internet.

    • thatsPrettyNeat@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      We’ll have to prove we’re a human every time and log in every time we use a service to be sure it doesn’t have bots. But AI will get better and better at those too. Is captcha the next level above Go? Lol

  • Lee Duna@lemmy.nzEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Anyways I hope Lemmy does not fall into the same pitfalls!

    I really hope! Just watchout for Meta

    • Feyter@programming.devEnglish
      01·
      1 year ago

      What should meta possible change about Lemmy or programming.dev? They have no power here even if we federate with them.

      • Lee Duna@lemmy.nzEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        They have no power here even if we federate with them.

        The current matter with Meta is that they have bad intentions towards the fediverse

        https://infosec.pub/post/400702

        And even if you don’t have Threads app installed, Meta is also a privacy threat to fediverse users. If there are fediverse instances that are still federated with Meta.

        Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.

        https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

  • Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    We must prevent these kinds of bots on getting a foothold here.

    I acknowledge that we do have bots here [lemmy], reposting top posts from reddit. As we grow in number. We must also scale down these bots until the day that only moderating related bots are existing in our ecosystem.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.worldEnglish
      122·
      1 year ago

      As i argued in another comment, there are many useful bots for certain niche communities that I really think have a place here, even though I am generally wary of AI accounts infesting the fediverse as well.

      Good examples for good and very useful, yet not mod work related bots are on TCG/CCG subs like magic the gathering and hearthstone to provide context to card names, or convert deck codes into a nicely formatted table of the used cards. Or on the Lego sub, returning any set number as a link to the proper bricklink entry. This kind of bot should be allowed and even encouraged to be used where appropriate.

      Then there are the plenty of irrelevant and annoying bots we really can do without, like the alphabetical order bot, haiku bot, the dozens of bots quoting LOTR or Star Wars characters, and so on. Like most reddit jokes they stopped being funny fairly quickly and now add nothing to the conversation, but are being kept around for karma.

      And then there are the more insidious bots that are about to become widespread, being harder to detect the more their refinement advances. It is going to be a constant arms race between bot detection and bot deception skills.

  • fades@beehaw.orgEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    Ah yes, spez. I got permabanned the day 3p died for harrasment, clicked the link and it was a comment I had made a week prior insulting spez.

    He really leans into the man baby version of Elon