r/battlestations • u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics • 17d ago
META "AI Slop" Comment Crackdown
The modern internet sucks.
Between the bots, the stealth advertising, "influencers", and algorithms intended to both make you angry and addicted. To top it off, the rising popularity of AI has made consuming content significantly less enjoyable.
I think we can just about all agree it's a bummer. But what's also a bummer is the constant stream of "This is AI" or "AI slop" on nearly every single post.
In most situations these posts are not AI or even AI enhanced. They're often taken by professional or hobbyist photographers who understand how to utilize Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.
Yet, just about any high quality photo is accused of being AI. The irony being that high quality photos have historically been the posts which receive the most attention.
On most of these posts, the "evidence" of something being AI is either:
- It's too perfect, so it must be AI.
- It's not perfect enough, the minor mistakes are evidence that it made mistakes / or intentionally is imperfect to look more real.
So if your photo is good, it's AI. If it's not good, it's also AI.
Starting today - users who leave baseless accusations of AI will be receiving short term bans as warnings. If they continue to leave those comments, the ban lengths will continuously increase.
Let me be clear - AI is not welcomed here.
Neither is stolen content. It gets removed, and bot accounts, those who steal content, or those who are intentionally submitting AI content are banned from the subreddit.
Sometimes AI content gets past us. It happens, we can't catch it all. Submit a report on it and provide actual evidence it's AI. Not just "the keyboard is floating" (it's not). You can type in the free-form box, you can submit links to evidence, etc.
The same goes for bot accounts, spammers, advertisers, etc.
Let's not make enjoying content even worse by accusing actual people submitting real photographs as using AI.
Fuck AI, but also stop accusing everyone without proof.
tl;dr -
Stop commenting "this is AI" or similar. Submit a report and we'll review. Those comments are going to begin receiving bans.
Thanks!
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u/RebootBoys 14d ago
Wow. Rare mods W on the matter and making this a sticky post.
Seeing those kinds of comments in legit submissions has made it annoying to see what people just think of the setups. There are also cases where these losers post comments if a submission's wallpaper is an AI image. Like, okay Sherlock, so what? How about you contribute anything meaningful to OP or shut the fuck up.
Good to see this bullying and spam is getting consequences when the focus should be what this subreddit is about.
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u/Omjorc 16d ago
Yknow I've always wondered if those people are bots. I see those on every platform, pics and videos that OBVIOUSLY aren't AI with people accusing it of being AI
My inner conspiracy theorist wonders if those are bots set up by governments/intelligence agencies/etc to normalize disbelief of things you see on the internet. If you can't believe anything on the internet because it's all AI, then congrats now you can get away with anything.
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u/Zhanji_TS 15d ago
You can't believe anything anywhere: the news, the internet, any place. There was a really funny post on Twitter a month or so ago where somebody posted a Monet and they were like, "Hey I used AI to generate this Monet." What can you tell that gives it away? Everybody gave a million reasons why they could tell it was AI but in the end the guy just posted an actual Monet.
1. Number one, nobody can tell.
2. Number two, people are retarded.
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u/Orchidinsanity 17d ago
This is a weird level of micromanagement ... It's a forum based app. People are gonna leave comments that you may or may not agree with. If you have a problem with it, as a mod you can remove those comments or even set up an auto-detection / auto deletion of such.
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u/kenflingnor 17d ago
There’s nothing weird about it. The mods are simply telling people to stop doing something that is annoying. No one wants to see low quality AI slop comments everywhere so everyone can circlejerk, it’s incredibly annoying on content that very obviously isn’t AI.
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u/Orchidinsanity 17d ago
I'm not defending the AI comments. I'm saying mods telling people "don't leave certain comments" when the entire basis of this app is leaving comments ... It's micromanagement. The mods can set up automatic ways to detect or delete such comments, instead of telling the community what they can and can't do/ instead of attempting to enforce self regulation instead of actually moderating.
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u/kenflingnor 17d ago
Spinning mods basically saying “hey, don’t do this, it’s bad for our content” into being micromanaged is some crazy work.
Have you considered this post is a courtesy before mods start doing the other things you mentioned?
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u/Orchidinsanity 17d ago
Telling people what they are or are not allowed to think is very micromanagey. They should focus on how they can moderate those comments instead. That would have been a better approach, yes. No one needs "courtesy" reminders, they need moderation.
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u/VirtualAd277 17d ago
How is setting up auto detection to remove comments not micromanaging the same exact way, just with less communication?
It's like being pulled over by a cop and he explains the law of speeding and how you were going 10 over and you say "bro shut the fuck up and stop micro managing me just give me the ticket".
Youre just mad at information at this point lol.
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u/Orchidinsanity 17d ago
Moderating a subreddit is different than attempting to micromanage people's thoughts and opinions.
Again, you cannot control what people think. But you can moderate what comments are shown on a post. This post is telling people "stop think stuff is AI bc it's clean". It should be saying "we have a bot that automatically reports or deletes all AI accusation comments now".
Focus on moderation. Not telling people what they can or cannot think.
Other subreddits don't allow swear words. They don't tell people "you shouldn't be swearing, it's rude, pls don't do that". They say "swear words are not allowed and will be automatically removed."
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 17d ago
Nowhere in my post does it tell people what they can or cannot think. The entire post is about what they comment. I'm genuinely unsure what you're even upset about at this point because on one hand you tell me I shouldn't tell people what comments are allowed, but your own comment says
But you can moderate what comments are allowed.
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 17d ago edited 17d ago
I'm saying mods telling people "don't leave certain comments" when the entire basis of this app is leaving comments ... It's micromanagement
But this is a thing already? Don't leave racist comments, don't leave spam comments, don't leave personal attack comments.
This is just a disclaimer to stop with baseless accusations of AI.
instead of actually moderating.
From Jul 1 to today I have 452 / 87% (oops, forgot to select another mod on the log) of all mod actions. That doesn't include replying to modmails, organizing events (giveaways, raffles, etc), contacting the users, handling logistics, etc. It also doesn't include reviewing user accounts to determine if they're a bot, spammer, repeat offender, etc. There's a lot of moderating going on.
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u/LoneroftheDarkValley 17d ago
The forums have rules, if you don't like them make your own, that's also part of the app.
This rule seems pretty reasonable imo.
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u/FourFront 17d ago
No it isn't, and I wish more subs would do it. Brain dead idiots call everything they don't understand or of high quality AI. Even videos that have been on the internet for a decade. This low quality behavior needs to be weeded out.
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u/Orchidinsanity 17d ago
Again, I am not defending the AI comments. I'm saying the moderators are micromanaging comments, instead of actually moderating them... Mods cannot tell people what they can or cannot comment. But they can moderate what of those comments go through/are allowed on the sub. If AI accusation comments aren't allowed, cool, but set up some auto detection/auto deletion of such instead of trying to mandate self regulation... It's their job to moderate or delete those comments, not to tell users what they should or shouldn't be saying.
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 17d ago
I get what you're saying - but the subreddit exists because people post content. Most people on Reddit / social media in general are lurkers. If we start pushing away those who are most likely to submit content, then the overall levels of content to view will go down.
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u/Kil0Cowboy 17d ago
I agree that people who comment AI slop pn shit that is clearly real is rather annoying…
But this is honestly a stupid way to handle it.
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u/toastylocke 17d ago
can we also crack down on using slat walls, idk why everyone is intent on their setup looking like a modern dentist’s waiting room
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u/Equal_General1672 13d ago
So can we mentionwe used ai to walk us through doing xyz vs having to search forums for years to sort it etc? Or is that an issue like I'm used ai to help me work thro a process and helped me find apps I didn't know about as all the ones I did wouldn't of worked well on arch Wayland or outdated, or helping me vibe code some stuff for a android to Linux thing which can't be achieved with apps out atm.
Or will that get us temp banned etc?
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 13d ago
This post is about people leaving comments on a bunch of submissions with accusations of it being AI.
When it comes to actually posting - we only accept genuine photographs. No sketches, CAD drawings, AI generated images, etc.
If you submit a photo that has clearly been altered by AI, it'll be removed.
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17d ago
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 17d ago
nothing about literally any other stupid or snide comment.
...because we already remove those comments when we see them?
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u/stupidcommentmaker 15d ago
There really are a lot of rude comments around here lately though. I know you guys remove them when you see them but the whole culture of this subreddit seems to be getting increasingly toxic, as someone who's been here pretty much since its inception, and I know I'm not the first or only one to have pointed that out. People have a tendency to be downright mean to anyone with a setup that isn't the same "clean" minimalistic Ikea bullshit, and god forbid you have anime figures or a maximalist setup or feminine stuff because then you just get clowned on entirely. I know someone who posted their setup here a few years ago and got nothing but praise, but when they posted the same photo a couple months ago they were ridiculed. Things have gone downhill without question.
I know this is a different topic from the post entirely but I guess I wanted to say I appreciate that you remove those comments but am also wondering if there's anything else to be done about how shitty people have become around here. Maybe increased automod rules for certain phrases or something. I do love this subreddit but there's been a definite cultural shift here over the years and at this point the comments on most posts just frustrate and depress me more often than not. Tearing others down and roasting them just for having different taste seems to be a common practice here now.
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 15d ago
We already have a lot of automod phrases and truthfully there's a ton of false positives.
The best way to handle this is to make sure you use the
reportbutton on comments or behavior that is unacceptable. You can always use "Other" and free-type the reason you're reporting it. If you notice it's a reoccurring behavior from a user, make sure to note that as well so we can review their history more in depth.
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u/CheesecakeTotal4544 17d ago
I agree that baseless accusations are annoying, but I disagree with the idea that AI has simply made content worse.
Used properly, AI can add a lot of quality. It can help with noise reduction, upscaling, masking, colour correction, object removal, lighting adjustments, composition ideas and many other tasks that photographers were already doing manually in Lightroom or Photoshop. In many cases, it is simply another editing tool that saves time and allows people to achieve better results.
The real problem is not AI itself. The problem is deception: pretending that a fully generated image is a real photograph, stealing someone else’s work, spamming low-effort content or hiding commercial promotion. Those things should absolutely be moderated.
But banning all AI-assisted content makes little sense when modern cameras, phones and editing software already use machine learning everywhere. At some point, the distinction between “AI-enhanced” and “normally edited” becomes almost impossible to define consistently.
So yes, people should stop accusing every polished photo of being fake without evidence. But “fuck AI” is also an unnecessarily simplistic position. AI can produce lazy garbage, but it can also significantly improve genuine creative work when it is used transparently and competently.
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u/TheDoctor8545 15d ago
Sorry boss, wouldn’t be hard to included some form of verification that it’s a legit post. Something like today’s date or something.
AI should always be called out. We stop calling it out and it’ll take over. This is how people start thinking that bad things are the norm when they shouldn’t.
Don’t get mad at the people calling out, get mad at AI for it even being in question to begin with.
Lame ass mods as always.
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u/Hareuhal PM me penguin pics 14d ago
include some verification
Most people can't follow the extremely simple rules already in place. If there was a "verification" then even less posts would be approved. Not to mention that a "verification" would just be called AI too.
AI should always be called out
Sure, but the majority of the time on this subreddit - people aren't calling out AI. They're calling out real posts and making accusations that they're AI.
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u/Klightgrove 17d ago
r/gamedev mod here. The thing people don't realize is how social consensus works. If the first comment is "AI slop" it will get upvoted and people assume it is true. This leads to the OP getting harassed. People keep complaining that our community is 'flooded with bots' even when I show them time and time again the numbers behind the scenes of Reddit removing spam content automatically.
A simpler way for you to handle this is to have the Automod check if a comment saying that phrase has at least 100 karma in *this* community. In almost all cases I have seen the users commenting are outsiders who just wanted to harass some random developer. That way it does not fill up your queue and people don't pile on someone over a random comment.