AI is pretty much killing social media in the long term. Even pre-AI, a good chunk of posts/comment sections on sites were bots/paid. Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT. I guess there's still the Onion-verse.
I'm not convinced you can have an impromptu global conversation to any positive end. Humans are not well suited to this task and an unsupervised mostly anonymous forum plays to those weaknesses and provides no support to generate positive outcomes.
It was never a particularly good idea at the scale it's currently deployed at.
The demographics of who was online before the internet went mainstream matter a lot, here. It wasn't exactly a representative slice of the general population.
Usenet was US-centric but somewhat global and certainly not local. Even dialup BBS's were sometimes nationwide despite long distance phone charges. I wasn't into the BBS thing though.
Were they global or local? I made that distinction intentionally.
Either or both, depending on the SYSOP's resources. I ran a BBS that did store-and-forward between the U.S. and Europe.
The ones with global connections could take a day to a week to forward messages, but that turned out to be a feature. We went outside in the real world instead of staying online arguing with strangers.
Reddit has been an absolute dumpster fire from the get-go. Its Wikipedia page has one of the largest “controversies” sections of any publicly listed company. Many of the controversies are so significant they have their own Wikipedia page.
Yeah, I saw some posts on there the other day that felt a bit suspect, went to look at their profile, and nothing. I'd already become an infrequent user of reddit since some earlier changes, but that makes me even less likely to go back.
Interestingly, you can still use `author:username` to search for posts. For my part, if something seems suspicious and the profile is private then I assume it's a bot.
wait is there more than one mod on HN? I for some reason have always thought it was just that @dang guy as the only one. Is he just the top mod and there are others underneath him?
I checked out one of the accounts mentioned, mostly to check if I can discern fake accounts. The content is just still pictures. I'd dismiss those whether or not they're AI. Well, I'm not on TikTok anyway.
This reminds me of some youtube videos when I was researching some stuff to buy. Those videos are just still images plus text-to-speech narration, usually with an annoying background music.
It's almost refreshing how unashamed they are. I hate it, obviously, but I kind of like it better than companies that say something dressed up in marketing speak but actually mean what this site just says outright.
Businesses literally try to track and optimise virality these days as part of their marketing.
Not just businesses. It's governments, too.
There's a public park near me that is tracked for likes and social media engagement. If it misses the city's goals for social media engagement a certain number of months in a row, it can be turned back into a parking lot.
I objected to this measure of "success" during the public meetings about it, but nobody cares about the old man in the back of the room.
It's a great reminder that while room-temperature-IQ AI pumpers like Sam Altman talk about "solving physics" or whatever, the actual value of large language models is generating spam marginally cheaper than Filipinos.
Wow I thought this type of business was illegal or at least a very gray area conducted on the dark web but looks like the VCs at this point have no morals left. Gambling? Amazing. Spam? Take my money. Ad fraud? Yes please
A16Z is basically funding toxic fungi growing on the face of society at this point. So much of what they do seems to be a bet that people will want to pay money to do antisocial things and avoid the consequences.
A lot of people are against the current social media tech it seems. I wouldn't be surprised if they're funding the acceleration of its collapse to see what can come next.
New generation is less social, more sober, less motivated, more doomer.
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
Seems like the Butlerian Jihad is arriving ahead of schedule, and the real horrors demanding the uprising aren't oppression and violence, but viral marketing and sockpuppetry.
I think he's old enough to be tried as an adult here. He architected the product, it was no silly accident. I think his choice of role models may be a reflection of his character...
I don’t think they are in short supply, but the vast majority of them aren’t the super-successful so we don’t see their names often.
They are the teachers, coaches, and engineers. The problem is the anti- role models are the ones who get all of the media:
Andrew Tate (mysogenistic pyramid schemer and pimp / sex trafficker of high school girls),
Joe Rogan (his mind is so open that his brains fell out),
Jordan B Peterson (charlatan who dresses up banal self-help advice with pseudo-intellectual jargon to seem profound, drug addict who is still taking very big risks with his health, frequently argues strawmans by misrepresenting postmodernism, Marxism, atheism, etc).
Our heuristics of who we should look up to are skewed because too many young people revere wrath and fame over ethics, morals, and values which may hold us back from success.
Exactly, concentration of attention onto singular figures as role models should be avoided; kind of like how we agree that it is healthier for the EU citizens to have a more diverse market than concentrated monopolies.
We do have to recognize that we have societally dropped the ball by allowing media companies brainwash the population into thinking that money and fame is unquestionable success; this has allowed the corporate mouth pieces to blow so much hot air into the bullshit they spew, that turds end up floating to the top.
What is clear as day is that we live in a world where Brandolini's law is being exploited constantly: that there is a constant fight to DARVO the heck out of our perceptions is undeniable.
We need to normalize bringing receipts to back your claims...
How to teach the average person not to follow the siren's song of populism and rage baiting?? That, I have not yet figured out.
Because using the CFAA as a cudgel against things you don't like, whether it's journalists exposing insecure government systems, or companies engaging in deceptive marketing practices is a bad idea? For the latter, there's already laws against it that doesn't involve CFAA, eg. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B...
My god, horrific. Does not everyone know everything online is a psyop now? I will tel you, they don't. No one studies things, no one takes the time. AI, social media, it all has to be protested, boycotted.
Now it seems war is coming from the US it could not be more true that at this moment.
How about a few prison terms for conspiracy to defraud? And not for small fry like the "CEO" of this company either. Why not, say, 10 years for Marc Andreesen, personally? And, no, no "disrupting" it with serve-your-time-as-a-service, either.
No, we should not stop something that is inevitable. We should work with it to find ways that it fits into a productive society, such as anonymously verifying that you are a citizen so the cost of abuse is at least a felony.
As the submitter, I want to point out that I submitted this post with the original title. The one that makes it clear a16z are behind the social media astroturfing. The mods changed the title.
If you read "Careless People" you'll notice that Andreesseen was prioritizing cash over morals for a long time, and his Facebook investment/involvement was also producing highly unethical things
I don't disagree, but lighting money on fire hyping NFTs and whatever other random fad strikes them as interesting doesn't seem to be the way to accomplish that.
My actual guess is that they got way too big, both in terms of headcount and fund size, to limit their investments to what is expected to be the best of the best in terms of financial return and societal impact.
Eternal September came up in conversation today about how users don't do effort posts any longer, they just want to leave funny comments below reaction videos and then swipe to the next one.
Anyone got any good effort post oases I can lurk and help out in?
why was the original title edited to remove the reference to a16z? why hide investment into socially unacceptable product? if you are going to be a scumbag weasel, own it.
Both for length reasons and because it was clickbait.
The original title doesn’t even have the actual company’s name in it, only the name of the investor, which is intended to elicit just the kind of ragey reaction you’re exhibiting in this comment.
On HN, titles need to be more neutral and factual (I.e., include the name of the company the article is primarily about).
(Also, you seem to be implying some conflict of interest? Doublespeed and a16z have nothing to do with HN/YC.)
Nobody knows what Doublespeed is, everyone knows what a16z is. Doesn't putting the part that's pertinent to people in the headline oblige readers-to-be?
I'd say that the change is editorializing more than the original was "linkbait".
A16z invests in countless companies. Without the company name in the title, you have to click to find out who the company is. That’s the point. The title gets readers riled up and activates them to click.
The title we’ve set is intended to give enough information to pique curiosity for those who will be curious about the topic - the company name, what the company does (AI-generated promotional content), what’s happened (hacked).
I don’t love the title but it’s the best I could come up with to fit within the 80 character limit.
Anyone is welcome to suggest a better one that is compliant with the guidelines.
The title had to be changed to be compliant with the guidelines. It also has to fit under 80 characters. It’s not an easy task and you’re welcome to suggest a better one.
This feels not very different from the recent report revealing how Nick Fuentes has a lot of artificial likes and comments on videos that push his content, due to a large following that responds to commands delivered via Telegram etc. A VC backed corporation using a large phone farm to manipulate the public is no better than Nick Fuentes.
Most of Fuentes’ support is real, sadly. The organization that recently released the report alleging the contrary is the same one that released that report earlier this year claiming that if you say “Christ is King” then you’re a white supremacist. Their neutrality is questionable.
No need to bring up the boogeyman of the day. Reddit was literally kickstarted with fake comments. (Frankly I'm convinced that most of its political comments are fake too.)
https://archive.ph/20uwc
AI is pretty much killing social media in the long term. Even pre-AI, a good chunk of posts/comment sections on sites were bots/paid. Reddit is becoming less believable than ChatGPT. I guess there's still the Onion-verse.
Yes, Dead Internet Theory went from joke to reality in what feels like overnight.
I'm not convinced you can have an impromptu global conversation to any positive end. Humans are not well suited to this task and an unsupervised mostly anonymous forum plays to those weaknesses and provides no support to generate positive outcomes.
It was never a particularly good idea at the scale it's currently deployed at.
BBSes and forums have existed for literally longer than the internet
The demographics of who was online before the internet went mainstream matter a lot, here. It wasn't exactly a representative slice of the general population.
Were they global or local? I made that distinction intentionally.
Usenet was US-centric but somewhat global and certainly not local. Even dialup BBS's were sometimes nationwide despite long distance phone charges. I wasn't into the BBS thing though.
Were they global or local? I made that distinction intentionally.
Either or both, depending on the SYSOP's resources. I ran a BBS that did store-and-forward between the U.S. and Europe.
The ones with global connections could take a day to a week to forward messages, but that turned out to be a feature. We went outside in the real world instead of staying online arguing with strangers.
Adding recommendation engines that optimise for anger makes it even worse.
Reddit was pretty solid before people started cultivating their personal "brand"/only fans page/crypto pick.
Reddit has been an absolute dumpster fire from the get-go. Its Wikipedia page has one of the largest “controversies” sections of any publicly listed company. Many of the controversies are so significant they have their own Wikipedia page.
Reddit died to me when they allowed private profiles this summer.
Yeah, I saw some posts on there the other day that felt a bit suspect, went to look at their profile, and nothing. I'd already become an infrequent user of reddit since some earlier changes, but that makes me even less likely to go back.
Interestingly, you can still use `author:username` to search for posts. For my part, if something seems suspicious and the profile is private then I assume it's a bot.
Hack reveals that startup is doing exactly what it said it was doing
Okay, is this just an ad then?
Actual title: "Hack Reveals the a16z-Backed Phone Farm Flooding TikTok With AI Influencers"
Original title was better in multiple ways. Mods did a disservice here.
wait is there more than one mod on HN? I for some reason have always thought it was just that @dang guy as the only one. Is he just the top mod and there are others underneath him?
tomhow is the other one, and evidently the one who changed the title. apparently for "clickbait" and "length" (he shaved off 1 whole character!)
Yes.. it was updated to this by mods
Streisand effect?
A mod changed the title to something other than the originally submitted original article title, to protect a major VC.
Not cool.
I haven't looked at the article but its title is pretty baity and that's probably why we changed it, per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The baity-feeling title is actually pretty spot-on, honestly.
I checked out one of the accounts mentioned, mostly to check if I can discern fake accounts. The content is just still pictures. I'd dismiss those whether or not they're AI. Well, I'm not on TikTok anyway.
This reminds me of some youtube videos when I was researching some stuff to buy. Those videos are just still images plus text-to-speech narration, usually with an annoying background music.
Looks like this is a report on how the company just…handles its business: https://doublespeed.ai/
>"never pay a human again."
>"Take proven content and spawn variation."
It's almost refreshing how unashamed they are. I hate it, obviously, but I kind of like it better than companies that say something dressed up in marketing speak but actually mean what this site just says outright.
Controversy is currency. Businesses literally try to track and optimise virality these days as part of their marketing.
Businesses literally try to track and optimise virality these days as part of their marketing.
Not just businesses. It's governments, too.
There's a public park near me that is tracked for likes and social media engagement. If it misses the city's goals for social media engagement a certain number of months in a row, it can be turned back into a parking lot.
I objected to this measure of "success" during the public meetings about it, but nobody cares about the old man in the back of the room.
No, it's a calculated marketing, not them being honest.
All marketing is calculated, some just turns out to be more effective
>No, it's a calculated marketing, not them being honest.
It's obviously marketing. But their marketing strategy appears to be being unashamed about ripping off content and creating bot farms.
What are you suggesting they are lying about? They're actually doing it for the good of the world and just pretending they're a bot farm for hire?
I don't think they actually believe that "never pay a human again" works as they raised money to pay humans.
It's a great reminder that while room-temperature-IQ AI pumpers like Sam Altman talk about "solving physics" or whatever, the actual value of large language models is generating spam marginally cheaper than Filipinos.
How does one profit from this farm of AI content on TikTok?
Advertising and shilling, just like normal influencers?
Immorally.
Probably moves like affiliate/referral linking, client paid campaigns, cpa lead generating arbitrate at scale, product seeding.
Wow I thought this type of business was illegal or at least a very gray area conducted on the dark web but looks like the VCs at this point have no morals left. Gambling? Amazing. Spam? Take my money. Ad fraud? Yes please
A16Z is basically funding toxic fungi growing on the face of society at this point. So much of what they do seems to be a bet that people will want to pay money to do antisocial things and avoid the consequences.
> So much of what they do seems to be a bet that people will want to pay money to do antisocial things and avoid the consequences.
Yes but they also stand to make money offering services to counteract the services they offer.
A lot of people are against the current social media tech it seems. I wouldn't be surprised if they're funding the acceleration of its collapse to see what can come next.
New generation is less social, more sober, less motivated, more doomer.
Some people are naturally talented financially, and can make as much money as they like without doing anything to anyone else's disadvantage.
And then there's everyone else.
Yeah, it's basically free publicity for them.
Holy crap. They really are leaning into "evil supervillain" advertising copy.
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
Seems like the Butlerian Jihad is arriving ahead of schedule, and the real horrors demanding the uprising aren't oppression and violence, but viral marketing and sockpuppetry.
wow... honestly, reading the Twitter feed for Zuhair ("CEO" of DoubleSpeed) makes me sick. https://x.com/rareZuhair and https://www.zuhair.io/.
If you want more photos of his phone farm... it's all on his twitter page: https://x.com/rareZuhair/status/1961160231322517997
"Accelerating the dead Internet"? Why are we, as a community, encouraging the acceleration of enshitification of our common spaces? So weird to me...
He's doing it for the ragebait, but the sad thing is the product is totally real. Cory was right from the start.
He sounds like an intelligent but misguided teenager. Maybe he's not a bad kid, and just needs better role models than the companies he mentions.
If we never do things that later make us cringe and want to correct, we're not reflective and self-critical enough.
He just got a $1 mil series A. Better role models? He is a role model, at least in the society we've decided to build.
I think he's old enough to be tried as an adult here. He architected the product, it was no silly accident. I think his choice of role models may be a reflection of his character...
FWIW, I agree with you. I think that great role models are sadly in short supply these days.
I don’t think they are in short supply, but the vast majority of them aren’t the super-successful so we don’t see their names often.
They are the teachers, coaches, and engineers. The problem is the anti- role models are the ones who get all of the media:
Andrew Tate (mysogenistic pyramid schemer and pimp / sex trafficker of high school girls),
Joe Rogan (his mind is so open that his brains fell out),
Jordan B Peterson (charlatan who dresses up banal self-help advice with pseudo-intellectual jargon to seem profound, drug addict who is still taking very big risks with his health, frequently argues strawmans by misrepresenting postmodernism, Marxism, atheism, etc).
Our heuristics of who we should look up to are skewed because too many young people revere wrath and fame over ethics, morals, and values which may hold us back from success.
Never seen a better description of Jordan B Peterson. Should also add climate-change denier there.
Exactly, concentration of attention onto singular figures as role models should be avoided; kind of like how we agree that it is healthier for the EU citizens to have a more diverse market than concentrated monopolies.
We do have to recognize that we have societally dropped the ball by allowing media companies brainwash the population into thinking that money and fame is unquestionable success; this has allowed the corporate mouth pieces to blow so much hot air into the bullshit they spew, that turds end up floating to the top.
What is clear as day is that we live in a world where Brandolini's law is being exploited constantly: that there is a constant fight to DARVO the heck out of our perceptions is undeniable.
We need to normalize bringing receipts to back your claims...
How to teach the average person not to follow the siren's song of populism and rage baiting?? That, I have not yet figured out.
The risky thing about creating this tool is that someone will inevitably use it against the creator, the employees, and the investors.
It is not weird, it is greed and control.
Why isn't this company sued for computer fraud and abuse?
Because using the CFAA as a cudgel against things you don't like, whether it's journalists exposing insecure government systems, or companies engaging in deceptive marketing practices is a bad idea? For the latter, there's already laws against it that doesn't involve CFAA, eg. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B...
How long until the company gets sued by X/Meta/Tik Tok?
Bot activity could push up engagement metrics on these platforms, so (in some sense) those companies aren't necessarily incentivized to stop this.
My god, horrific. Does not everyone know everything online is a psyop now? I will tel you, they don't. No one studies things, no one takes the time. AI, social media, it all has to be protested, boycotted.
Now it seems war is coming from the US it could not be more true that at this moment.
How about a few prison terms for conspiracy to defraud? And not for small fry like the "CEO" of this company either. Why not, say, 10 years for Marc Andreesen, personally? And, no, no "disrupting" it with serve-your-time-as-a-service, either.
I hate that Marc Andreesen' arc went from Mosaic to supervillain.
It's easier to count billionaires who aren't supervillains.
p.s. this is not a great photo of Marc on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Andreessen-9_(croppe...
He's eggmaxxing.
> He posted on HN.
The call is coming from inside the house.
No, we should not stop something that is inevitable. We should work with it to find ways that it fits into a productive society, such as anonymously verifying that you are a citizen so the cost of abuse is at least a felony.
Nothing makes this inevitable. People like you who want to do nothing about it makes it inevitable.
As the submitter, I want to point out that I submitted this post with the original title. The one that makes it clear a16z are behind the social media astroturfing. The mods changed the title.
That’s fine, you did nothing wrong. I explained the title change here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307121
WTF happened to a16z?
They used to be at the pinnacle of the VC sector, and now they seem to actively seek out the most toxic portcos possible.
If you read "Careless People" you'll notice that Andreesseen was prioritizing cash over morals for a long time, and his Facebook investment/involvement was also producing highly unethical things
Once you have infinite money, you tend to want infinite power next
I don't disagree, but lighting money on fire hyping NFTs and whatever other random fad strikes them as interesting doesn't seem to be the way to accomplish that.
My actual guess is that they got way too big, both in terms of headcount and fund size, to limit their investments to what is expected to be the best of the best in terms of financial return and societal impact.
Really?! They've always made a little bit of sick come up for me. Marc Andreessen has always been a grotesque parody of Lex Luthor.
The Internet is dead. Long live the Internet.
Let's be honest. It's been mostly downhill since AOL.
Today is Wednesday the 11796th of September 1993.
Eternal September came up in conversation today about how users don't do effort posts any longer, they just want to leave funny comments below reaction videos and then swipe to the next one.
Anyone got any good effort post oases I can lurk and help out in?
why was the original title edited to remove the reference to a16z? why hide investment into socially unacceptable product? if you are going to be a scumbag weasel, own it.
Both for length reasons and because it was clickbait.
The original title doesn’t even have the actual company’s name in it, only the name of the investor, which is intended to elicit just the kind of ragey reaction you’re exhibiting in this comment.
On HN, titles need to be more neutral and factual (I.e., include the name of the company the article is primarily about).
(Also, you seem to be implying some conflict of interest? Doublespeed and a16z have nothing to do with HN/YC.)
Nobody knows what Doublespeed is, everyone knows what a16z is. Doesn't putting the part that's pertinent to people in the headline oblige readers-to-be?
I'd say that the change is editorializing more than the original was "linkbait".
A16z invests in countless companies. Without the company name in the title, you have to click to find out who the company is. That’s the point. The title gets readers riled up and activates them to click.
The title we’ve set is intended to give enough information to pique curiosity for those who will be curious about the topic - the company name, what the company does (AI-generated promotional content), what’s happened (hacked).
I don’t love the title but it’s the best I could come up with to fit within the 80 character limit.
Anyone is welcome to suggest a better one that is compliant with the guidelines.
>Both for length reasons
The original title is 75 characters. Your title is 74 characters. If it was edited for length reasons, I'm not sure saving 1 character is worth it.
The title had to be changed to be compliant with the guidelines. It also has to fit under 80 characters. It’s not an easy task and you’re welcome to suggest a better one.
I'm just pointing out that it's weird to say you changed it for length reasons if you make the new title the same length.
… Interesting that the title was changed from “Hack Reveals the a16z-Backed Phone Farm Flooding TikTok With AI Influencers”.
Guess they wanted to hide the a16z connection on frontpage, huh?
I explained the title here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307121
> The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31
Lmao. Nice.
This feels not very different from the recent report revealing how Nick Fuentes has a lot of artificial likes and comments on videos that push his content, due to a large following that responds to commands delivered via Telegram etc. A VC backed corporation using a large phone farm to manipulate the public is no better than Nick Fuentes.
Most of Fuentes’ support is real, sadly. The organization that recently released the report alleging the contrary is the same one that released that report earlier this year claiming that if you say “Christ is King” then you’re a white supremacist. Their neutrality is questionable.
No need to bring up the boogeyman of the day. Reddit was literally kickstarted with fake comments. (Frankly I'm convinced that most of its political comments are fake too.)
Reddit wasn't explicitly pushing white nationalism.
Furthermore: reddit is a platform; Fuentes is content. That's a meaningful difference.