Our paid CM's are about to be laid off.

If you're on here, and a lib can meme, that's AI you're arguing with.

🚨THE INVISIBLE PUPPET MASTERS: AI'S DISTURBING NEW ROLE IN SHAPING MINDS

The revelation that University of Zurich researchers secretly deployed AI bots to manipulate Reddit users' opinions should chill anyone who values authentic human discourse.

These weren't merely passive… https://t.co/PLNetnEwva pic.twitter.com/vHnCzZzE1s

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) April 29, 2025

I've always thought at least 50% of the users on reddit were just bots repeating talking points.

Reddit is ass.

For those interested, here is a summary, courtesy of Grok.

The strategy was very effective, a little less than 10% of research posts resulted in a changed opinion (a delta).

• Duration: Four months (November 2024 to March 2025).
• Comments Posted: The AI-generated accounts posted 1,783 comments across more than 1,400 discussions.

• Engagement Metrics:
• The comments received over 20,000 upvotes, indicating significant community engagement.

• The accounts earned 137 "deltas," a subreddit-specific metric awarded when a user acknowledges that their view was changed by a comment.

ETA - the reason it was so effective is that the AI made up fake personas that gave credibitity/expertise to their answers that was indeed - fake.


Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

BadMoonRisin said:

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I've always thought at least 50% of the users on reddit were just bots repeating talking points.

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The finance page, is full blown commie and the complete opposite of normal finance/capitalist opinions.

Confirms my theory that there are only 8 users on TexAgs and the rest are socks.

Pretty certain bots have been controlling the narrative of Reddit for a while, be it Russian/Chinese or these days AI.

Things like Ag Tags are even more powerful in the era of AI.

This is also pretty obviously happening with the Twitter "personalities" that are repeatedly posted. It's the same 5 or 6 people on rotation and they eat it up. JojofromJersey, Brooklyndaddefiant, Lakota man, and the newest one is Alex Cole. It's all just paid propaganda.

Genie is out of the bottle. Audio and visual deep fakes already have us unable to believe even what we're seeing and hearing. Now you can't even trust that users in an online community that you don't also know IRL are anything more than malicious AI. Internet is completely cooked.

Likely on here by now. We need to ensure all who post have verified accounts, honestly.

FriendlyAg said:

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BadMoonRisin said:

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I've always thought at least 50% of the users on reddit were just bots repeating talking points.

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The finance page, is full blown commie and the complete opposite of normal finance/capitalist opinions.

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Do you mean s/FluentInFinance? The only thing they're fluent in is feels. Like there are some really really stupid people in there. And they're absolutely communist.

Over_ed said:

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For those interested, here is a summary, courtesy of Grok.

The strategy was very effective, a little less than 10% of research posts resulted in a changed opinion (a delta).

• Duration: Four months (November 2024 to March 2025).
• Comments Posted: The AI-generated accounts posted 1,783 comments across more than 1,400 discussions.

• Engagement Metrics:
• The comments received over 20,000 upvotes, indicating significant community engagement.

• The accounts earned 137 "deltas," a subreddit-specific metric awarded when a user acknowledges that their view was changed by a comment.

ETA - the reason it was so effective is that the AI made up fake personas that gave credibitity/expertise to their answers that was indeed - fake.


Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

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M.F. Barnes actually invented this.

Over_ed said:

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Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

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this goes for Texags too. Be suspicious of any account that overshares boastful information or has an answer for everything on here.

May not be a lib bot but surely someone that is living out his weird fantasy of being highly praised and the go-to authority on everything.

AI is going to inundate, or has inundated, all social media. People love to dunk on Reddit, but it isn't alone. X, Facebook, instagram; all of them are just rife with AI garbage. The problem is that the way social media is set up, there is no real incentive by the companies to do anything about it…. If they even could.

Link to the article from Engadget: Researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments

Within the story are links to a few of the comments which have been archived, a link to a 2 page abstract of the research, which you can find here.

Dill-Ag13 said:

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Confirms my theory that there are only 8 users on TexAgs and the rest are socks.

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Well, I socked your mom and she knows I'm real.

Also remember, Reddit is full of some of the dumbest people on this planet. Nudging their position is likely fairly easy.

nomad2007 said:

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AI is going to inundate, or has inundated, all social media. People love to dunk on Reddit, but it isn't alone. X, Facebook, instagram; all of them are just rife with AI garbage. The problem is that the way social media is set up, there is no real incentive by the companies to do anything about it…. If they even could.

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The incentive is public reporting as an element of their financial reports. When Elon purchased Twitter there was a real debate about how much of Twitter was real users vs bots and there were comments that if the truth was substantially different then what was being reported publicly that Twitter leadership could be guilty of securities fraud. Advertisers rely on those numbers. There's your control.

I've seen this on YouTube already, a growing flood of AI generated videos but if you are already knowledgeable on the topic and material, you can spot them as they often have glaring errors and fairly terrible selection of supporting graphics and imagery…,for now. But, plenty of naive rubes will easily fall for such things and they'll be harder and harder to fact check as source material fills with more AI junk.

It sort of mirrors the academic publishing that's been happening: many many more degrees publishing but lots and lots of poorer quality junk is getting published.

Over_ed said:

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For those interested, here is a summary, courtesy of Grok.

The strategy was very effective, a little less than 10% of research posts resulted in a changed opinion (a delta).

• Duration: Four months (November 2024 to March 2025).
• Comments Posted: The AI-generated accounts posted 1,783 comments across more than 1,400 discussions.

• Engagement Metrics:
• The comments received over 20,000 upvotes, indicating significant community engagement.

• The accounts earned 137 "deltas," a subreddit-specific metric awarded when a user acknowledges that their view was changed by a comment.

ETA - the reason it was so effective is that the AI made up fake personas that gave credibitity/expertise to their answers that was indeed - fake.


Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

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But what if the AI bots are the ones upvoting the other AI bots and it is really just a big circle jerk of AI bots upvoting each other?

Dill-Ag13 said:

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Confirms my theory that there are only 8 users on TexAgs and the rest are socks.

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MouthBQ98 said:

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I've seen this on YouTube already, a growing flood of AI generated videos but if you are already knowledgeable on the topic and material, you can spot them as they often have glaring errors and fairly terrible selection of supporting graphics and imagery…,for now. But, plenty of naive rubes will easily fall for such things and they'll be harder and harder to fact check as source material fills with more AI junk.

It sort of mirrors the academic publishing that's been happening: many many more degrees publishing but lots and lots of poorer quality junk is getting published.

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This guy posted about the AI generated youtube science videos a year ago:

buda91 said:

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Over_ed said:

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For those interested, here is a summary, courtesy of Grok.

The strategy was very effective, a little less than 10% of research posts resulted in a changed opinion (a delta).

• Duration: Four months (November 2024 to March 2025).
• Comments Posted: The AI-generated accounts posted 1,783 comments across more than 1,400 discussions.

• Engagement Metrics:
• The comments received over 20,000 upvotes, indicating significant community engagement.

• The accounts earned 137 "deltas," a subreddit-specific metric awarded when a user acknowledges that their view was changed by a comment.

ETA - the reason it was so effective is that the AI made up fake personas that gave credibitity/expertise to their answers that was indeed - fake.


Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

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M.F. Barnes actually invented this.

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Barnes in the AI and bot era is more terrifying than nuclear war. One of his socks may be elected president.

BadMoonRisin said:

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I've always thought at least 50% of the users on reddit were just bots repeating talking points.

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There's at least one on Texags...

Reddit has been a liberal echo chamber forever. This isn't a surprise.

Mods silencing and deleting 90% of anything not far left and banning members for wrong-think does more damage that AI.

I love reddit for niche areas, but goodness sake I will be in an area not even related to politics and some how Trump will get brought up.

A.I. To Be Trained On Reddit To Make Sure It Never Becomes Too Intelligent

U.S. To counteract concerns that Artificial Intelligence is growing too rapidly and will soon become self-aware and destroy humanity, tech companies have reportedly begun training their AI models on Reddit to make sure they won't become too intelligent....

https://babylonbee.com/news/ai-to-be-trained-on-reddit-to-make-sure-it-never-becomes-too-intelligent/

Mega Lops said:

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Over_ed said:

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Lesson: don't believe personal stories on the web. DUH

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this goes for Texags too. Be suspicious of any account that overshares boastful information or has an answer for everything on here.

May not be a lib bot but surely someone that is living out his weird fantasy of being highly praised and the go-to authority on everything.

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A great solution to this is to challenge people's actual arguments and ask for sources.

Don't ever trust experts. 90% of them are around to persuade as opposed to educate. Look for people that educate.

I want to be paid for being pushy

I convinced posters on the candy Reddit to try Nerds Gummie Clusters.

I was correct on their awesomeness

Wonder if this was what people saw a few months ago when Reddit got flooded with bots (more than usual). There was some discussion about it on here when it happened.

TheHulkster said:

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Genie is out of the bottle. Audio and visual deep fakes already have us unable to believe even what we're seeing and hearing. Now you can't even trust that users in an online community that you don't also know IRL are anything more than malicious AI. Internet is completely cooked.

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It's still got porn.

And if you can't tell if it's AI, then...who cares?

Reddit, including r/aggies is full of deranged liberal lunatics. I use Reddit primarily for sports, especially college football.

Don't go to reddit. Ever. Also AI is some scary *****