this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ | The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment. (www.theatlantic.com)
submitted 6 days ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] thanksforallthefish 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Users aren't likely to point out a bot when the rules explicitly prevent them from doing that.

In fact one user commented that he had his comment calling out one of the bots as a bot deleted by mods for breaking that rule

[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Point there is clear, that even the mods helped the bots manipulate people to a cause/point. This proves the studiy's point even more. In practice and in the real world.

Imagine the experiment was allowed to run secretly, it would have changed user's minds since the study claims that the bots were 3 to 6 times better at manipulating people than a human in different metrics.

Given that Reddit is a bunch of hive minds, it is obvious that it would have made huge dents. As mods have a tendency to delete or ban anyone who rejects the group think. So mods are also a part of the problem.