We need better solutions for proving identity online. Email, capcha, etc. are insufficient. I imagine a system similar to the certificate authority system, where you prove your identity to one of many trusted identity providers and then that provider vouches for you when you sign up for other services (while also protecting you anonymity.)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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the protecting your anonymity part would be very hard though, such a system has a high risk of eventually enabling a dystopian future where your every online move is being monitored by big brother
I was thinking that a mandatory donation to a charity could work. Like a simple $5 donation per account to any of a (carefully curated) list of charities. It would dramatically throttle new account creation / app adoption, of course, which is bad, but if a potential user wants it bad enough then they'd be OK with donating $5 to their favorite charity. It would reduce the number of bots / trolls / Sybils and it could work in a decentralized manner (imaging a lemmy instance doing this)
There will always be a trade-off between anonymity and authenticity. I could see a future where some web services will only interact with users that present a verified certificate that establishes them as a real person, even if it's not necessarily tied to your real-world identity. Some could require a cert that is tied to your actual identity. Some others could allow general anonymous accounts, though they would struggle with spam and AI bots. But ultimately, I think people are going to come to value some amount of guarantee that they're interacting with actual people.
How would that be possible though while keeping you anonymous. All these verification system essentially comes down to providing more data.
Unless of course you physically go and get a free “human card” which lets you sign up for 1 account but that’s also terrible.
Yeah it's bad enough with heavy handed admins. With a "human verification system" I can imagine a government making identities/accounts disappear for saying inconvenient truths.
Someone made a meme/warning video in the style of a Metal Gear Solid 2 radio call.
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This isn't going to happen in the future.
Bots are already engaging with users and pushing narratives. The percentage of Reddit that is inorganic is probably higher than most people would expect.
I'm interested to see how AI training on reddit turns out. Especially the default subs are full of snarky jokes, even on serious topics the majority of comments are "funny" one liners. And those are the ones getting the most upvotes.
Compared to a system like StackOverflow where the upvoted answers are the most helpful and mostly well written and thoughtfully crafted.
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Content will be used to train bots, yes, but it probably won't be Reddit doing it, and they likely won't be offering bots as a service.
Instead, they'll sell access to the API to people training LLMs, and sell it again to people who want to use bots on the site. They can split API access into bulk read, and read/write packages so that people can't double-dip. Then they'll let people monetize subreddits, directly incentivising bot access and usage.
Never underestimate the power of negative energy, plenty of people flock to also dump on things they don't like, it's a great way to drive engagement (albeit shitty engagement)
Lol why are you using the future tense here, where were you the last five years?
They're already doing that, it's why reddit went down the drain, not suddenly but progressively over the last years.
It can only get worse, I'm so happy the protest made aware of alternatives so I can be here instead.
Reddit stole this idea from /r/subredditsimulator and /r/subredditsimulatorgpt2...
I was actually thinking something similar, but less extreme. Alts, astroturfing and bots were already prevalent, it's just gonna be a slight uptick to cover the loss in users. In my opinion, it won't be a massive change, but a low double-digit percentage change
Yeah, even Reddit is not stupid enough to make it super obvious. They'll just continue what they've been doing for years, making incremental changes that are detrimental but imperceptible to the users. It's not until years later that people will look back and realize its a totally different website. Good riddance
r/subredditsimulator takes over reddit.
Have you never been to /r/SubSim2Interactive?
Although you have to wonder how much advertisers would actually pony up if most of the Reddit users weren't actual users at all. They want people to do the clicking, and if the users are all bots, they're likely not going to bother wasting their money at that point.
Maybe I guess
But that doesn't seem will be too popular with advertisers considering it can go the other way too