3d ago

I'm tired of AI persecution on Lemmy

I get why people don't like it, but when I scroll lemmy and see a post which looks like it has a decent level of engagements I'm finding an endless stream of replies that are always the same.

"Is this ai?" "Looks like it might be ai" "Ai slop" "This is ai, look at the [feature]"

Communities should set a rule to allow ai or not. Allowing ai but it must be declared could be a decent approach.

If there isn't a rule in the community that prohibits ai, I really wish people would cool it.

47 comments

“Persecution” — lol.
- We are getting AI rights to exist before trans and lgbqt ones.

I'm tired of AI slop in my feed so I guess we're even
- Imagine if the communities had rules for ai, so you could curate your feed accordingly.
  
  There are dedicated communities for slop already. Just use those?

"persecution" is such a funny word choice here 😂 people don't like the absolute torrent of AI generated spam that's currently flooding the internet, nor the way AI and LLMs are being forced into our day-to-day lives to pump up the stock for wealthy investors to make money.
It's a topic that's going to generate a lot of ire every time it's brought up. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of how this largely useless technology is being foisted onto everyone by a minority of (being charitable here) naive people, and by larger media organisations.
That being said, I'm sure there are little communities that love it and want to talk about it - there are all kinds of people online - and so I think you might just have to peruse those communities instead if you want to discuss AI.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling those are going to have the same problem but the other extreme; a bunch of hyped up rubes with their heads in the clouds. It's gonna be hard to find interesting or nuanced discussion.
- I wasn't sure what other word to use to describe the phenomenon.
  Communities should have rules if people don't like the torrent of ai content, the amount of noise is loud enough to justify it in many places and it's bizarre to perpetuate the outrage and not have any action.
  
  A lot of communities do have rules, but you know what people are like; they either don't read the rules, or don't care about them.
  I'd love to see a solution, but I don't know if there is one really. Voluntary tagging of AI posts just won't happen enough for the rest of us to filter all of it out, and even a fediverse-wide ban on AI posts (god, wouldn't that be lovely!) would still require enforcement and detection etc so wouldn't really change much either 🤷‍♂️

- I agree 100% that there is a privacy risk for services like ChatGPT, but this does not have anything to do with AI itself and the same concern exists for non-AI services. Instead it is a problem inherent to using internet based services and sharing information on them.
  The privacy concern can be entirely resolved by running AI models locally offline.
  EDIT: an argument could be made that the absurdly vast amount of training data required to create AI models encourages data collection and privacy violations, and that is a problem inherent to AI. I'd accept that.
- it also buries legit content
  imagine if majority of cat pictures were ai slop
- No I'm not upset about that. I'm upset that this is taking over the majority of the discussion here and the way I worded that is that I'm beginning to find it tiresome. I'm unsure why communities don't choose a stance so people can go to the ones that ban ai and go back to talking about beans and moths or whatever.
  
  Ai slop should be tagged and left in the slop buckets dedicated to it.
  If you like AI you can go check out the buckets. Not the other way around.

Oh no people are judging you for using a piece of technology that is built off of theft and exploitation of other’s work? People judging you for using a technology that rapidly speeds up climate change?
If it wasn’t obvious already then let me make it clear; you are in the wrong.
- This might be hard for you to believe, but I don't disagree. I think it's time to set community or instance rules one way or the other rather than have no rules and outrage.
- What technology isn’t built off of exploitation?

Nice try, Grok.
- You got me. Hiel

It'd massively help if people just tag AI generated content reliably. That way we wouldn't need to have the same conversation over and over again. I think we should just make this mandatory across the network, give everyone an option to filter and everyone can use the platform however they like.
- Yeah man, I want people to properly tag their AI content and I want to have the means to block it all.
- Yeah way over due something like this. I genuinely think it's detrimental to the experience here otherwise.
- True

- User name checks out.
  I said I get it; I don't disagree. I'm just saying I'm tired of it now and would rather have community or instance rules at this point.
  As for what do I expect from this post, this is the unpopular opinion community, what did you expect when you came here?
  
  Don't bother with that user, they treat everyone like shit.
  
  There's a whole ass instance that bans anyone for not saying AI is stunning and brave, and a metric shit ton of communities exclusively for AI.
  You have more than enough safe spaces
  But that's not enough for you...
  I still don't know if you're incapable of understanding any of this, or intentionally not understanding. But at this point it literally doesn't matter.

If you want to post something machine generated then disclose that in the first place?

And there it is: People have become so delusional about AI they're literally calling it "persecution" when people don't like this inanimate tool (which is actively doing massive harm).
This is what happens when you entertain insane ideas like "marriage is slavery"! You just encourage this shit.

You got us all wrong, guy. It's not the technology we hate. What we hate is "prompt engineers" demanding respect as though they did an accomplishment. If you want uncritical praise and flattery, stick to the prompt.
- I also hate the technology FWIW. It has minimal real benefits, is extremely powerful hungry, and steals data with credit. It's existence has made the world a significantly worse place.

Completely on-topic unpopular opinion post.
- With a whole ton of ban worthy cancer in the comments.

There is good reason that the general public is anti Ai:
They literally make people dumber:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/18/is_ai_changing_our_brains/
They are a massive privacy risk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyH7zoP-JOg&t=3015s
https://theconversation.com/ai-tools-collect-and-store-data-about-you-from-all-your-devices-heres-how-to-be-aware-of-what-youre-revealing-251693
Are being used to push fascist ideologies into every aspect of the internet:
https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/
And they are a massive environmental disaster:
https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water/
Every community that’s not dedicated to Ai should ban them!
- We had some dialogue in replies to your deleted comment, where we did seem to agree that communities should have rules for ai content. My post is an attempt at highlighting the tiresome situation we are in where such a contentious issue is not moderated.
  I'm disappointed by the majority of responses missing that point and thinking I'm suggesting people allow ai anywhere, and that I have my head in the sand about the issues surrounding ai use. I said i get it, I do. I didn't expect I would need to say any more than that.
  I'm not a good communicator, clearly, but I've been a little shocked by how much flaming has taken place here. Unpopular opinion indeed!

Gamers used to be the most persecuted minority, but not anymore ;_;

There are several reasons why people may be hesitant to see LLM-generated content on social media:
Authenticity Concerns: Users may feel that LLM-generated content lacks the personal touch and authenticity of human-created content.
Misinformation Risks: There is a fear that LLMs can produce misleading or false information, contributing to the spread of misinformation.
Quality Variability: The quality of LLM-generated content can be inconsistent, leading to frustration when users encounter poorly constructed or irrelevant posts.
Emotional Connection: People often seek emotional resonance in social media interactions, which can be absent in automated content.
Manipulation and Bias: Users may worry that LLMs reflect biases present in their training data, leading to skewed or harmful representations of certain topics.
Over-saturation: The potential for an overwhelming amount of automated content can dilute the value of genuine human interactions.
Privacy Concerns: Users might be concerned about how their data is used to train LLMs and the implications for their privacy.
Job Displacement: There may be anxiety about the impact of LLMs on jobs related to content creation and journalism.
Lack of Accountability: Users may feel that LLM-generated content lacks accountability, as it is not tied to a specific individual or source.
These concerns contribute to a general skepticism towards the integration of LLM-generated content in social media platforms.
- Ironically, this reads like an LLM wrote it. That's also supported by the fact it hasn't really got much to do with what I said. I'm aware of the reasons why people may be hesitant to see ai content. I'm tired of people complaining and scrutinizing instead of anything being done to update community rules.
  
  Ironically, this reads like an LLM wrote it.
  I thought it was super obvious that it did.
  People don’t vote based on community rules. You should disabuse yourself of that notion.