[echelon]

Did you participate in the blackout? What was your impression of it? Were any of the tools you used impacted by the API ban?

I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign.

Package up a lightweight, easy to use LLM for Windows users and let them turn their accounts into noise. Purposely generate overly-argumentative, blatantly wrong prose on every subject and in every subreddit.

Reddit would hate that. Just a hundred users engaging in it could probably tank the quality of the whole site.

[kmlevitt]

I don’t go on Reddit that much anymore and I haven’t been active as a mod on that sub for a very long time. But based on my experience doing it, users are quite good at identifying stupid bullshit and reporting it to mods, which makes it easy to spot. Plus they downvote low quality comments like crazy so it gets buried and people don’t even see it.

Because of those things Prank spammers usually don’t last long. Usually a small gang of people will try something like that and you can quickly ban them. They might try to come back on new accounts but eventually tire of it and find another way to keep themselves busy. The mod queue feature is quite efficient so we can ban reported junk much faster than they can post.

I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but it would be more difficult than you might think. If you try to automated completely it would cost you an awful lot in fees (Open AI’s server bills are “eye-watering“ and if you go past the free limit they start passing that cost onto you), and the admin’s would probably be able to identify the accounts doing it and ban them site wide.

[vGPU]

The trick would be to spend a few months making good comments and then have the AI go back and edit them with junk.

[rglullis]

While an interesting idea, the problem is that the majority of users would be more bothered by it and they simply don't care enough about Reddit's management to fight it.

[arp242]

> I think a much more effective strategy would be a user-led LLM "spamming" campaign.

Also hugely immoral.

If you don't like Reddit and decide to not use it: fine, your choice, obviously.

But completely fucking over a platform because you don't like it? That's an entirely different thing. Who are you exactly to decide how Reddit runs it site?

This is just a DDoS attack, but in a slightly different form.

[echelon]

You're right, and it'll probably become outlawed by legislation (or be caught by existing protections).

Reddit and its userbase have always been on the activist spectrum (SOPA, PIPA, CEO changes, API changes, etc.) And before it, Digg was much the same. Given the fact that they'll brigade r/Place with automation tools and protests, I'm surprised it hasn't happened in the form of a broader protest.