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Reddit's r/opensource bans AI slop, and quite a few humans for good measure (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
locked 27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Meanwhile on reddit.

Honestly kind of sounds like lemmy.world mods like Jordan Lund tho...

To get a project featured on the subreddit, developers now need to show it has been actively maintained for at least a year, has an established community, and has at least three contributors, give or take. Student projects such as note-taking apps and PDF viewers aren't welcome either, and developers can no longer use the subreddit to find people willing to help maintain their software.

That creates a chicken-and-egg problem for independent developers, who apparently need an established community before they can use an open source forum to find one. Even projects with no AI involvement could fall foul of the rules. One Reddit user pointed out that their nine-year-old project, which has more than 300 GitHub stars and dozens of resolved issues, would no longer qualify because they're its sole contributor.

The moderator also imposed a minimum Reddit account age of one year and requires significant prior contributions. Anyone who attempts to post and then contacts the moderators seeking an exception risks being permanently banned and muted.

all 27 comments

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[–] 81 points 1 week ago (3 children)

this has nothing to do with the fediverse

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  • [+] [S] -7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

    It has everything to do with the Fediverse as this is precisely the kind of problem the Fediverse was designed to minimize and grapple with, so how that problem is evolving in the corporate social media world is directly relevant to the Fediverse even though it is not part of it, the failure of corporate social media to grapple with these problems elucidates why and how we are trying to solve those problems on the Fediverse best in some ways.

    For example we can compare the problematic behavior of Lemmy.World mods on the politics and world news communities to the problematic behavior of Reddit in this case and see a clear resonance that makes it easier to address the forms of these problems on the Fediverse more confidently.

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  • [–] [M] 5 points 1 week ago*

    I disagree.

    The article you linked is about Reddit. We aren’t Reddit. If it was drawing direct comparisons between us and Reddit, I’d allow it, but it’s just about Reddit and there are other more Reddit-centric communities where this would be a better fit.

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    • [–] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Student projects such as note-taking apps and PDF viewers

    Are PDF viewers a common student project? I always assumed the file standard must be a labyrinthine mess given all the features they've crammed into it over the years. Or is there some popular library that takes 99% of the work out of it?

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    • [–] 22 points 1 week ago

    As someone in a community impacted by the deluge of AI slop projects…good. These are good policies, the overwhelming amount of crap being churned out makes sifting through it as a human, untenable; the only sane solution is to restrict it and ban the peddlers.

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    [–] 40 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Stop talking about Reddit!

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  • [+] -6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Why does it bother you so much that people talk about something you don’t like in a place where people are allowed to talk about things?

    There’s a block button for made for just this thing.

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    • [–] 9 points 1 week ago

    Lol good enough

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    [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    and has at least three contributors, give or take

    You can't make a minimum approximate. Does two contributors count? Just for some, but not others? This just gives them more leeway to include bias in the decision to ban someone

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    [–] 5 points 1 week ago (9 children)

    Reddit it's too big for its own good. I imagine that subreddit must be unmanageable, like any minimally popular subreddit.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 week ago* (8 children)

    The issue is less the size and more that it is a centralized platform with no possibility for communities to effectively "go somewhere else" if they are having a bad experience on one platform/website. The power dynamics are disgusting and no amount of fiddling with the rules and making them more endlessly hypocritical and byzantine or shuffling in and out new moderators will fix it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago* (7 children)

    That is only partially true.

    For one, they could make a new sub, which people have been doing for like a decade, long before Lemmy was even thought of. Most of us know of at least one sub that got its start this way, before we had ever heard of it (or rather, we used to, before we collectively chose to forget all that!:-P).

    For another, people can migrate off of Reddit entirely. There are multiple options to choose from, the top ones being Discord, Bluesky, even X, and as always Facebook, Insta, Tiktok, YouTube, etc.

    All of these are exceedingly poor choices for various reasons or another... however, if history shows us anything, it is that people will do ANYTHING other than come to the Fediverse. Just read pretty much any Reddit post discussing Lemmy and you will see words like "leftist trolls", "extremists", "toxic AF", etc.

    Also remember that even Reddit offers more freedoms in some ways than Lemmy. Examples include the ability to ask questions of the mod team via modmail without having to individually DM each (most often inactivated) account in turn, the ability to continue conversations begun on a post that is later removed by a mod from the sub's feed (Lemmy instead gaslights you, pretending that it never existed and you are crazy for attempting to return to it), and the ability to not continually receive notifications via DMs or comment replies from toxic trolls (ahem hexbear ahem lemmygrad ahem, cough), without having to individually user-block each account one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one, and truly almost infinitely since they keep spinning up alts all the time.

    If we offered a VIABLE alternative, then perhaps they would come here. But when faced with man vs. bear, they chose The Man (we here are the bear, I am sadly coming to realize).

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    Maybe, but it is equally possible that people will be forced to learn that their unwillingness to care about this stuff because it is "wayyyy too complicated" is existentially not sustainable....

    People picking Bluesky over Mastodon when Mastodon already existed and was easily functional enough for people to choose as an alternative is a perfect example of what you are saying but also... Bluesky is a vaporwave brand that will eventually strangle itself into obscurity in the pursuit of monetization and Mastodon will keep chugging along... so people will have many many chances to learn why ActivityPub and the Fediverse are the future, and those learning opportunities will only start coming quicker and quicker.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    Though whether people choose to learn or not, we'll see. What I am saying is that our collective haughty attitude where we know that we are superior (which is somewhat true, except for all the ways that we willfully choose to ignore where it is not) is not helping.

    If we want others to come here - and there's a good most likely >50% here who do NOT want that, mind you! - then we would have to entice them to do so, which practically speaking I simply do not see happening. e.g. if Lemmy's instance block tool would actually function to "block" all the content from an "instance" then yeah that would be just great. Or if Dessalines would allow donations to the codebase separately from the maintenance costs of specifically Lemmy.ml. Or if Rimu would listen to community feedback instead of... whatever the opposite of that is. And so on, ad nauseum.

    YOU may want people to come here. However, keeping in mind that they would primarily be right-wing or at most centrist Christians from the USA, or centrist Muslims from the UK, etc., note that others here are the polar opposite of welcoming to such an influx of users.

    So they stay there. Or go to Bluesky. It's their choice. Again, if we want to make coming here more of a viable option, then we would need to put in some actual effort into making this a more receptive place to be for them.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Your argument is completely undermined by the fact that you are clearly only concerned with chastising people to the left of you because you believe most people are to the right of you.

    This is a belief that is not necessarily grounded in reality.

    Besides, there are many versions of people, if this one invites in the best versions of people that is fine by me but also no one controls this, the burden is on people to realize they need to leave corporate social media.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Perhaps I am summarizing incorrectly, but I am talking about comments such as this one at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1wavhh8/comment/pd37eas/.

    Ironically I am not the one who downvoted your comment here. People on both Reddit and the Threadiverse overall seem more negatively predisposed these days than say, prior to 2015, which is when people (in that exact Reddit post, in the comment section) are saying turned all political.

    And yes, I imagine that from that perspective, of a more or less average Reddit user - even one who was here for two years - is going to be more right leaning on the spectrum than let's say a tankie or anarchist.

    Remember that we who use (Arch?) Linux btw are more tolerant to needing to fiddle with the controls on something in order to tune it towards our liking - in this case figuring out what people, and in particular from what instance, to block, so that we can stand to visit this place on a daily basis.

    YOU, who are capable and tolerant enough to figure out how to do so, do not represent the mindset of an average Redditor (thankfully! or I would not be enjoying talking with you here!:-). THEY are... um... different. And they (report that they) do not feel welcomed when they visit here.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Perhaps I am summarizing incorrectly, but I am talking about comments such as this one at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuest

    There is a wide range of reactions there and given the current state of reddit why should I believe these are all human responses?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    I never said that you should. You could also search around for discussions that are like 4 years old (prior to modern LLMs) that say more or less identically the same things. Or just visit Lemmy.ml without an account and browse as an anonymous user for an hour, perhaps counting the number of times you see calls for the guillotine and wonder if they will make a distinction between those truly deserving or settle for anyone that they can more readily get their hands on.

    I for one had no desire to join the "tankie Lemmy" originally, but came here for Kbin.social, then after it fell apart I realized that I could block more stuff personally like Ernst used to do for us collectively in order to make my experience more similar.

    Most others that have come here seem to not realize that, or just don't want to have to put in that kind of effort. Even when they decry how bad Reddit is. They don't see what you and I see. We realize that some aspects of (corporate) Reddit are unfixable, hence this place is worth something, mainly bc it is the ONLY way to move forward (other than decentralized systems like truly old-school forums). So we put up with whatever pain we need to, bc nothing else is going to work out, in the end.

    However, not everyone is willing to do so. Another very worthwhile comment in that post has a very neat summary of what I extremely often see across many subs whenever I've looked: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1wavhh8/comment/p8mqgrm (I don't go there like daily, but I do specifically enjoy reading about what people say about us here, perhaps monthly, or whenever a post here references the subject, so I guess that qualifies as "often").

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 week ago

    Or just visit Lemmy.ml without an account and browse as an anonymous user for an hour, perhaps counting the number of times you see calls for the guillotine and wonder if they will make a distinction between those truly deserving or settle for anyone that they can more readily get their hands on.

    I for one had no desire to join the “tankie Lemmy” originally, but came here for Kbin.social, then after it fell apart I realized that I could block more stuff personally like Ernst used to do for us collectively in order to make my experience more similar.

    This is about coddling your feelings not what the majority of people feel or what the politics of the majority of people are and it is very telling that you are only focused on policing the behavior of people you perceive as more leftwing than you.

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    • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    Correction they did not ban AI slop, they banned everything that could possibly be related to AI. Including Linux.

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    [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Good. Fuck AI. It’s this scorched earth approach that has a remote chance of doing something that might make a difference if more people got involved.

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    14 comments in c/fediverse@piefed.social view that post
    [–] 5 points 1 week ago*

    "The long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource," moderator Wolvereness wrote. "AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community."

    they ban linux on r/opensource, weird times

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    [–] 4 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    Being a reactionary is never a good thing. Though unfortunately by and large in a lot of places it is the norm.

    Whatever we think of ai. It doesn't matter. It's here. It's not going away. And trying to reactionarily be pure and untainted is only going to cause problems for ourselves and everyone else.

    I think the one thing that could be universally agreed upon at least in the fediverse. Is that people shouldn't be using proprietary models run in remote data centers by fascist oligarchs.

    Sadly in those places we cannot have a nuance debate about what we should do in response. My issue with Torvalds and others isn't specifically that they are using ai. I think someone with his background and experience, can turn out good code faster using AI. My problem is that he's likely currently using a big proprietary model to do that.

    We should all be using local models if any. Which is something that is starting to happen. Even today IBM was talking about it. Sure they were talking about it in reference to them selling the hardware for it to their customers. But still self-hosted nonetheless. And on top of that ethically trained models. I think all of this will come in time. Even with all the toxic reactionary virtue signaling.

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 1 week ago* (5 children)

    Whatever we think of ai. It doesn’t matter. It’s here. It’s not going away.

    Your entire argument hinges on a delusional, near religious belief in the inevitability of AI.

    It is a broken technology that uses a massive amount of energy to serve up results that are often catastrophically wrong. There is NOTHING inevitable about AI, and there are no indications it is profitable or can be trusted to make actually important decisions alone.

    You cannot paint the future with such decisiveness without evidence, and this is precisely what is leading to a collapse of AI valuations. It is all just vibes and no substance.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    You're ultimately not disagreeing with me. But you are behaving very reactionarily/irrationally. Literally I was talking about the commercial AI data centers their unethical oligarchs. And the necessity of getting rid of them.

    Specifically I was taking with regard to self hosting. I have self hosted before. Have you? Since you're acting like a subject matter expert who's sure of themselves. Can you explain why that even with having no hoses or anything run to my desktop, that it worked just fine? Yes it's inefficient. So were computers at one point. Filling buildings and consuming kilowatts of power. They got better.

    Frankly I really don't like it being called ai colloquially either. I don't think what is being paraded around us truly conscious etc. But the reactionary behavior is what leads to a lot of shit shows. Purposeful misunderstandings etc. Like I said, you probably mostly agree with me. Whether or not you understand that.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    The idea that because you have self-hosted before it makes you somehow qualified to speak about this is just you sitting on a high horse and throwing anecdotes at me condescendingly, it means nothing.

    There is no credible evidence self-hosted or corporate AI delivers on any of its promises, it is just a woodchipper to obliterate our humanity in so we can spit out bloody chunks and point at them and say "wow, almost like the real thing!".

    AI is a snake eating itself/a massive theft of the commons in an attempt to privatize it, and once the public's shared wealth of open information has been strip mined and then drowned in AI submitted crap to push things that direction, all of this collapses into complete and utter junk.

    If we decide to actually go through with this dumb shit and get to that point I will never stop raising the point that this was all a self-defeating choice we made not any sort of "inevitable" new powerful technology we all had to bow down to and become dependent on.

    If we choose AI as the "inevitable" future we have only become religious in a new way that limits our ability to innovate and create new technologies that actually work.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    The idea that because you have self-hosted before it makes you somehow qualified to speak about this is just you sitting on a high horse and throwing anecdotes at me condescendingly, it means nothing.

    We can debate about the level of qualification all day long. But I'll tell you one thing, it makes me more qualified than someone who hasn't. Which was the point you're trying to deflect from. And talk about condescending. Either way I'm not here to troll or caused drama. I gave my two cents and you can get back to your Purity or whatever I'm out. Can't have a reasonable discussion with someone who behaves like this.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    the assumption is this is expensive or locked behind some corporate wall, models like deepseek v4 flash that are now out are useful af, pretty damn capable and will be around forever now that they exist, because they are already running on random ppls hardware

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Deepseekv4 flash can handle most projects ppl post on opensource related subreddits, its not going anywhere, its cheap af, it might get more expensive but if I have to spend 50$ instead of 20$ a month I wont cry about it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I am not sure that coming off as pretentious by presenting your ideas as "nuance" and deriding everyone else's views as "reactionary" and saying it "doesn't matter what they think" is the avenue for civilized discussion that you might have assumed it was.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Pretentiousness wasn't the intent. I chose reactionary because it was the most neutral way to describe the phenomenon. If you have problems with the word choice. What word would you use to describe it?

    Keep in mind. I'm as about as skeptical of this so-called AI as anyone else. Even though I have self-hosted them at home. I don't generally run them. Because they are largely useless to me.

    Still though, we see people having for lack of better words. Very strong, lower knowledge reactions to the discussion. If you feel that's pretentious, then honestly what terms would you suggest for those well beyond healthy skepticism?

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    • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Hell yeah, good on them... The "you must speak English" thing comes off wrong, tho. I think I get why they're implementing it, but that phrasing... Yeesh.

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    • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    I love the rss reader I've been having deepseek v4 flash make for me, I keep context low, use the cheap subs for commandcode and opencode go, havent hit my weekly limits using a hermes agent, prob just needed one 10$ a month sub. Still not there on mobile but it's all I use on desktop and I tried every rss reader out there and only really liked frirss, a frontend for freshrss, but it still didn't fit my needs. This one functions so well, i'm genuinely suprised because it was never meant to be good, just a test, and I've ended up with something I genuinely love using. Idk I hate ai taking jobs but no one was making this rss reader for me for 10$ a month.

    Why is the existence of this project an issue because AI was used, it works and works well for me better than any other rss reader I've used. It wouldn't exist otherwise and I would be having a worse experience. What it made in 2 days is better than I could've hoped to achieve in months and my goal isn't to be a dev, it's to use the app I have in my head. To have the convenience I am seeking, which is why I seek out opensource apps in the first place. It's never stable, always buggy, long before AI, but it fulfils my need good enough for free...

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    8 comments in c/gnulinuxitalia@feddit.it view that post
    [–] 1 point 1 week ago (7 children)

    @informapirata @gnulinuxitalia Ma in una situazione di emergenza non abbiamo sempre fatto così? Aggiungiamo una regola al firewall che blocca tutto e poi valutiamo singolarmente le richieste genuine?

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago (6 children)

    @unz sì, infatti il problema del nerd ideologico, in particolare l'opensursaro imbruttito, è di non riuscire a distinguere un'architettura elettronica da un'aggregazione sociale. L'esclusione dei "giovani", degli "indipendenti", dei parlanti lingue straniere e di chi praticamente non riconosci come un facente parte della comunità, è un fattore tipico delle piccole società residuali e soccombenti.È vannaccismo ma senza l'intelligenza e la furbizia di Vannacci @gnulinuxitalia

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    @informapirata@mastodon.unoFortuna che per quanto brutto, avendo scritto e usato la #HackingLicense, scandalizzando grandemente noti avvocati "opensoursari" (e lobbisti BigTech), non posso rientrare in alcun modo nella categoria!@unz@mastodon.uno @gnulinuxitalia@feddit.it

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    @informapirata @unz @gnulinuxitalia da quando l'opensursaro si pone problemi di natura non-tecnica? Però, secondo me, da un certo punto di vista è comprensibile la reazione, per quanto discutibile, sotto certi aspetti

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    @informapirata @gnulinuxitalia mi son letto il thread su r/ , ed è pure peggio di quello che immaginavo. detto ciò, il termine ‘opensursaro imbruttito’ mi fa rosicare, ma magari solo perché non sono milanese. ‘quei mentecatti su reddit’, sarebbe stato più puntuale e meno inclusivo.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago

    @unz ci sono quelli per i quali l'Open Source è semplicemente libertà e poi ci sono quelli per i quali è una religione, nel senso che è una narrazione dalla quale escono regole, rituali, fama e tanti adepti dei quali puoi essere leader.E i secondi non stanno solo su Reddit...Per il resto sono d'accordo con te @gnulinuxitalia

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    • 5 comments in c/fediverse@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 20 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Honestly, the "maintained for one year" part alone would filter out most of the AI slop. The rest of the rules are kind of crazy. I've got several ongoing open source projects, and almost none of them would qualify because I don't spend any time making community posts...

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 week ago

    I’ve got several ongoing open source projects, and almost none of them would qualify because I don’t spend any time making community posts…

    ....and why would you in a community like that?

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    • [–] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    I've never been active in r/opensource and don't want to make assumptions of bad faith on this moderator. It's my opinion that these rules, while perhaps well-intentioned, are a bit too stringent, and they will most likely walk some of them back in time. Personally I would give the benefit of the doubt to established projects but I think newer projects should merit more scrutiny, not an outright ban. That said I have spoken in favor of a ban on vibe coded and mostly-generated projects (although tend to give the benefit of the doubt to established projects experimenting with generative tools).

    IMO I'd keep the one-year maintained rule (maybe walk it back to six months) and the "capstone project" rule (more scrutiny if it's something we have a dozen of already). "Must have 3+ contributors" is just too far. The account age rule is also probably a good idea if it keeps spammers away.

    That said it is my experience that many "anti-AI holy warriors" are not "pro-FOSS" or very knowledgeable about the free software movement in general. Not saying that's true about this moderator in specific but many would have no issue at all sacrificing the FOSS community if it helped fight back against slop. I'm not saying being pro-FOSS means being "pro-AI" but I think most "anti-AI" are motivated by silly mickey mouse reasons like "stolen intellectual property" when there are imo actual reasons to be skeptical of "AI" especially the proprietary SaaSS models.

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    [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    English requirement because the entire world revolves around Americans

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    [–] 0 points 1 week ago

    Oh yeah reddit is the right host for "open-source" content...

    They don't want AI slop but uses the platform that shut down alternative reddit clients so that they can sell training data to AI companies...

    The whole fit against AI is ridiculous on Reddit.

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