Bots of MP

Can someone explain the bots on MP to this clueless crusty trad dad?  The bots on social media all try to sell me male enhancements or IA generated climbing tshirts.  The bots on here however dont have such a commercial agenda.  They just spew some climbing related topics in a voice that's not quite climbed to the other side of the uncanny valley without trying to sell me anything.

I know somewhere deep the the progenity of these bots there must be a human trying to make a buck but I'm clueless as to how.

Jake907wrote:

Can someone explain the bots on MP to this clueless crusty trad dad?  The bots on social media all try to sell me male enhancements or IA generated climbing tshirts.  The bots on here however dont have such a commercial agenda.  They just spew some climbing related topics in a voice that's not quite climbed to the other side of the uncanny valley without trying to sell me anything.

I know somewhere deep the the progenity of these bots there must be a human trying to make a buck but I'm clueless as to how.

I think it's just training. The bot posts some predefined prompt and it's gathering the responses to use in some other setting (be it another mp bot or somewhere else)

Another explanation could be that they're testing their model and grading it based on how harshly the community reacts ( probably using sentiment analysis to grade the bots performance) then bots that do well get promoted and the ones that got flamed die out. If I had to guess I'd say that all of the bot activity on here is from one actor or group of actors. If they seem benign it's just because their stage of acting hasn't moved into the nefarious stage yet. I'd bet it's forign actors trying to build an undetectable bot that is capable of making thousands of super legit seeming accounts and one by ones scams with each. Use buyer protection and demand proof of life when you buy items. But with progressions in image ai proof of life photos may become insufficient.

Matthew Bellwrote:

I think it's just training. The bot posts some predefined prompt and it's gathering the responses to use in some other setting (be it another mp bot or somewhere else)

Another explanation could be that they're testing their model and grading it based on how harshly the community reacts ( probably using sentiment analysis to grade the bots performance) then bots that do well get promoted and the ones that got flamed die out. If I had to guess I'd say that all of the bot activity on here is from one actor or group of actors. If they seem benign it's just because their stage of acting hasn't moved into the nefarious stage yet. I'd bet it's forign actors trying to build an undetectable bot that is capable of making thousands of super legit seeming accounts and one by ones scams with each. Use buyer protection and demand proof of life when you buy items. But with progressions in image ai proof of life photos may become insufficient.

So we're in effect training the bots to be better? If so I propose we should all praise the bad bots in an attempt to fuck with the bot people.

Ricky Harlinewrote:

So we're in effect training the bots to be better? If so I propose we should all praise the bad bots in an attempt to fuck with the bot people.

This is why If I suspect it's a bot I'll feed the post into chat gpt and ask it to make a response that would confused an ai model. Idk if that actually disrupts what they're doing. Being obtuse as a community and genuinely responding to bad bot posts could damage their ranking?shrug? It really depends on their motivations though. Honestly I don't there's much we can do as a community it's really on onX to data mine these actors connections and figure a common theme to block against.  The good posts that people interact genuinely with will be indistinguishable to us from real users.

People should be more pissed off about this.  These aren't fly by night scams.  They are well funded tech companies using us as unwilling and uncompensated trainers for their AI models.  The result is that every newcomer to the forum has to undergo an anal probe to prove they are human.

Who is your favorite bot, everybody?

Why would anyone need to train a bot like this? You would be better off letting the forum just run and having the bot learn from the natural human language without disrupting the forum with useless garbage. Can someone who specializes in NLP explain to us why this would be beneficial?

They're actually aliens, electronic aliens. Their letters read you!

“Bots” is a social panic here on MP. Any time someone sees a post or comment they don’t like, they call it a bot. There is zero proof any of these are bots, and the people speculating (in this thread and elsewhere) don’t seem to have any relevant experience or expertise in the related technologies.

I’ve been involved in online communities for 30 years, studied them professionally, and this seems to be a weird cultural pathology that is special to this place. Everyone talks about bots here because everyone talks about bots here. It’s self-reinforcing, but based on nothing real. 

To be sure, there are weird posts here. But weird posts happen in any online community and always have. 

Bots do show up sometimes. They post CBD oil ads across dozens of forums at once. That’s what bots do. They don’t post a question about climbing gear that is worded slightly differently from what you expect. 

James -wrote:

“Bots” is a social panic here on MP. Any time someone sees a post or comment they don’t like, they call it a bot. There is zero proof any of these are bots, and the people speculating (in this thread and elsewhere) don’t seem to have any relevant experience or expertise in the related technologies.

I’ve been involved in online communities for 30 years, studied them professionally, and this seems to be a weird cultural pathology that is special to this place. Everyone talks about bots here because everyone talks about bots here. It’s self-reinforcing, but based on nothing real. 

To be sure, there are weird posts here. But weird posts happen in any online community and always have. 

Bots do show up sometimes. They post CBD oil ads across dozens of forums at once. That’s what bots do. They don’t post a question about climbing gear that is worded slightly differently from what you expect. 

BOT!

James -wrote:

“Bots” is a social panic here on MP. Any time someone sees a post or comment they don’t like, they call it a bot. There is zero proof any of these are bots, and the people speculating (in this thread and elsewhere) don’t seem to have any relevant experience or expertise in the related technologies.

I’ve been involved in online communities for 30 years, studied them professionally, and this seems to be a weird cultural pathology that is special to this place. Everyone talks about bots here because everyone talks about bots here. It’s self-reinforcing, but based on nothing real. 

To be sure, there are weird posts here. But weird posts happen in any online community and always have. 

Bots do show up sometimes. They post CBD oil ads across dozens of forums at once. That’s what bots do. They don’t post a question about climbing gear that is worded slightly differently from what you expect. 

I think you’re posting this on the wrong website…Can you cite an example of someone on this website accusing someone that you don't think is a bot? I see it on reddit and other forums where people call others “bots” as a pejorative, but I have not seen that behaviour here on MP at all, or any large number of accusations that I thought were wrong.

Poisoning the well to only affect bots is complicated but people are trying. https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

This and its sister program “nightshade” are trying to use humanly undetectable watermarks to disrupt AI learning in order to protect visual artists’ works.

It is interesting to see how worked up people get regarding AI training itself on the public discourse of this forum.

As for us disrupting this learning through ridiculous and audacious posts…  I think we have already reached the ceiling on that one ;)

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

I think you’re posting this on the wrong website…Can you cite an example of someone on this website accusing someone that you don't think is a bot? I see it on reddit and other forums where people call others “bots” as a pejorative, but I have not seen that behaviour here on MP at all, or any large number of accusations that I thought were wrong.

I don't mean to a jerk and just say "scroll up." But here is the first post in this thread:

Can someone explain the bots on MP to this clueless crusty trad dad?  The bots on social media all try to sell me male enhancements or IA generated climbing tshirts.  The bots on here however dont have such a commercial agenda.  They just spew some climbing related topics in a voice that's not quite climbed to the other side of the uncanny valley without trying to sell me anything.

The explanation is: those posts are not from bots.

It's actually likely that every post  every on here and everywhere else has already been read by AI.  

James -wrote:“Bots” is a social panic here on MP. Any time someone sees a post or comment they don’t like, they call it a bot.

What am I misunderstanding here? You think it's a social panic here on MP, I don't, and so I'm asking you to back it up, because I have not seen that panic and misfire on innocent human accounts on MP.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

I think you’re posting this on the wrong website…Can you cite an example of someone on this website accusing someone that you don't think is a bot? I see it on reddit and other forums where people call others “bots” as a pejorative, but I have not seen that behaviour here on MP at all, or any large number of accusations that I thought were wrong.

Apogee calls people bots all the time

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/201102785/ranking-best-grip-crag 

This was just yesterday. 

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/201115225/best-grigri-color 

This was less than an hour ago, heh. 

For more, use the search function for “bot,” sort by recency.

I haven’t made an account in many years but why don’t we make it harder to post in general (e.g. first must post in a “welcome” forum like some uw photo sites, or make them wait X days before posting, make authentication harder for bots, or just go the way of TGR where it’s super convoluted to even open an account)

James -wrote:

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/201102785/ranking-best-grip-crag 

This was just yesterday. 

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/201115225/best-grigri-color 

This was less than an hour ago, heh. 

For more, use the search function for “bot,” sort by recency.

There they are....

So, why are these not bots?

Bb Ccwrote:

There they are....

So, why are these not bots?

James is right, these look like misfires. If you look at Victor Berg's account, it's 6 years old, and has been posting in slightly incorrect english since 2019. Elie just looks like a new account, and there just isn't enough to go on, not to mention the somewhat sensible response to the accusation.

Maybe I am "impossibly naive", but I still don't really understand the need for any great concern about the 'bots of MP'. I do recognize that in many areas bots and other 'AI creatures' , are a significant concern, and that interacting with them does provide them with 'training', but as long as we aren't providing them with any important personal information, it seems like any impact they have on or through MP is pretty minimal compared to all the other options available for them. On here, if the site administrators discover a bot, they remove it; as for the rest of us, the simplest thing to do if we suspect that a post is from a bot, is just to ignore it--and it will quickly become 'buried'.