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Slowly enshittification of the internet?

Vendrah

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There's one thing that I didn't said about AI, though, but I got angry today: I am slowly leaving my participation from internet because of it, or, rather, because of its terrible use of AI. On the internet.
Just today, I've commented on you tube - as I rarely do - with another account (I have like 3 google accounts cause I used to have 3 different emails, one for youtube, one for gmail, another for the google account of PDB), and again, my comment is down below the board on the algorithm (although this time is visible at least, checked on the other browser, or at least is visible to my IP).

Meanwhile, I open a new tab for music and a right-wing politic influential figure is just there, waiting for me, just because I got interest in the Trump's new tariff war also with Brazil - he basically have empathy for Bolsonaro since he figured an even similar to january 8 - ops, its another date for US, but its that date where he lost an election to another guy and he says the election are a fraud because he didn't win - what I said exist for Bolsonaro for January 8 and identical for Trump on another date. The Bolsonaro has been threat of real imprisonment, so Trump suddenly got empathetic for him - just for him, (...) [see ya for] the rest.

On another day, another indication of a you tube video that is actually a politics channel disguised as a gaming channel that seems to "put off", desabafar, "get something off your chest", of feelings and stuff and got me attracted on a bad day yet actually is right wing politics and has that "long lost masculinity" video (probably almost every right-wing channel has one of these). That channel is a few months old and a striking success. I know the channel isn't success due to its merit, its success because the secret algorithm manipulated it and boosted it at its will, meanwhile if I post something, it will likely get zero to one digit views.
It wasn't like that in 2010, 2011, when I did posted videos about Burnout Paradise and NFS HP 2010. NFS HP 2010 video even got like thousands of view, a lot for the time, because I was one of the first to post videos, people were looking for videos, and no one got the game first hand, plus the search algorithm actually did looked for the game videos and not some other stuff at these years.


Well, even like 7 years ago, I did have access to battlefield tracker and wanted to learn better how to play it on you tube. I did look for the best players in the leaderboards. Known you tubers were quite disappointment - most famous were like 10th percentile at "general skill" (I call that for simplification, real analysis is more complicated) at best, normally just 30th percentile skill, many many views. Top 1% or 0.1% in skills, when had videos, had and probably still have few views, were hard to find, and at times the famous youtubers appears quickly at the indications or even at search when I was deliberately searching for the unfamous actually skilled players (well, just to be fair some of them were cheating but that is another story).


The algorithm had became hellish manipulative. It used and could be genuinely optimized for actual and real search, but it is for something else. The same is already happening to AI. Now I don't even know who are real and who is not on reddit, youtube comments anymore. We are not far from the AI being able to create channels of their own disguised as human beings and started with massive videos full of hidden ugly motives and manipulation.

PS: This is originally a part of a private message from me to somebody else. I like AI a lot these days, what I dislike is the bad use of it.
As a supplement, I'd say just compare the thread format from the format social media uses these days. Here, posts are sorted by date and there used to be many forums. A good bunch of forum owners are north americans-US as this, yes, in part because of the language advantage over other plus internet being earlier than other places. Yet on other social media places, its a sea of message where the a mysterious, dubious and manipulative algorithm chooses what goes light and what goes dark. It is completely manipulative these days, and now you can't even know if the poster is a real person or an automated AI spilling dozens to hundreds of posts per day instructed by a person to make up stories and all to manipulate people.
 

SensEye

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That latter part is one of the reasons I still prefer long post forums like this one. In forums like this a community builds over time and you get a feel for who's who so you can never be fooled by a bunch of random posts from strangers.

Alas, I (and the few of us still posting on these kinds of forums) are in the minority. One wonders if a few more years of complete chaos on larger platforms (reddit, discord) might drive people back to more niche forums like this one. Doubtful, because it takes more energy to post in a forum like this, and there is no way to monetize your posts. Compare this to the endless sea of video bloggers/podcasters out there expressing their opinions but only if they can gather followers to produce income. And if it works, their opinions won't necessarily be their opinions any more, they will be opinions custom tailored to please their followers and to hopefully gather more (which is the same modus operandi as mainstream media, so it's hard to find honesty any where these days).
 

Vendrah

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And if it works, their opinions won't necessarily be their opinions any more, they will be opinions custom tailored to please their followers and to hopefully gather more (which is the same modus operandi as mainstream media, so it's hard to find honesty any where these days).
That's already happened. You can't even rely on their opinions and neither the critics to know if a movie or game is good. Its like we're back in 90's where you have to ask your friends, except that we see people in real life at least somewhat less than we did in the 90's. And I was a kid on the 90's but it used to be like that as far as I remember.

I highly doubt people are going to get back but at least we can trust any member that joined before 2022 isn't entirely a bot, while people could use an account or a few post to writen by LLM's now, without taggint they did so.
 
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