Comment on [META] Are paid for closer source advertising appropriate?
moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 18 hours ago
On reddit, there is a community called r/progressionfantasy, which is about a specific type of fantasy fiction. They have a rule that self promotional posts (for paid books) must be preceeded by 10 comments, and actual engagement with the community.
This is a reasonable compromise, in my opinion. Known community member who has been answering questions and contributiting to discussions?
I would be okay if they dropped a paid product of good quality and with a reasonable business model (please no vibecoded slop).
But drive by ProductNameAccount users who have never posted on lemmy before a bunch of self promotional posts? Yeah ban that shit.
With the advent of AI bots trying to flood into Lemmy communities, I don’t really see this as a viable option on the long run.
moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 13 hours ago
It is possible to detect and moderate them, as long as your mods haven’t been disappeared and replaced by people who’s job is to accept bribes. And also when we can actually see people’s history, since reddit now has an option to hide your history from others because of course.
My usual method is to focus on content, rather than writing style. The AI bots can write a lot, or be brief, or whatever, but they don’t actually contribute to the discussion. They just kinda paraphrase and restate what has been said, or when trying to sell a product they disagree and go “Are you sure this isn’t an problem?” to everybody in the thread telling them that it’s actually a skill issue.
Sometimes they’ll be a little better, but it’s often surface level stuff that can be found at the top of a google search of keywords.
This also makes it possible to tell the difference between ESL speakers who are using AI to clean up their writing style, and true bots. Since the ESL speakers will actually have something to say, but bots won’t.
And then: xkcd.com/810/