wtf is going on over there

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlM
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    1 year ago

    wtf is going on over there

    Odds are that Reddit noticed that the overall quality and diversity of its content decreased, since almost nobody with a functional brain contributes with it nowadays. That’s what I believe to be the reason for the AI porn carveout - to explicitly tell people “hey, it’s fine to post AI porn here~ please post it~ as long as it doesn’t depict real humans, it’s fine~”.

    I think that it’ll backfire; SFW AI pics are often crap and extremely generic, and odds are that the porn AI pics are the same. They’ll just further bury the content that people actually want to see.

    What I’m interested the most is however on the side note of the article:

    Speaking of Rule 4, it got an adjustment today as well: “Do not share content depicting or promoting neglect, physical, or emotional abuse against minors.” Minor abuse is a brand-new category of depiction that Reddit doesn’t tolerate.

    Rules in Reddit are almost never enforced for their own sake. There’s only Rule Zero (“don’t prevent our profit”), everything else is just an excuse for that that may or may not be enforced depending on Reddit Inc.'s goals. It gets worse because those rules are often evoked in situations that have jack shit to do with them; like, a poster says “Alice told Bob to kill himself” and the poster gets banned for encouraging harm. (Yup, it’s that dumb.)

    So this carveout makes me ask, which demographic is Reddit trying to get rid of, and how do they conflict with Reddit Inc.'s profit? I have no idea.

    • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Regarding the new rule against abuse content, I suspect they’re either trying to boost their wholesome image to advertisers, or it’s in response to complaints about specific things on the site. I don’t think they’d prohibit content unless someone is posting it, horrible as that sounds.

      To put it in your terms: they’re trying to drive away some creeps that might scare advertisers.

      Regarding allowing AI porn… since advertisers don’t like porn, these new policies should cancel each other out, lol. I suspect neither of these changes is directly related to any of the recent drama.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.mlM
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        1 year ago

        To put it in your terms: they’re trying to drive away some creeps that might scare advertisers.

        This makes sense.

        Regarding porn: advertisers hate it but it’s a low-hanging fruit to attract users. r/GoneWild is now reposting on Mastodon and r/hentai joined the protests; odds are that the platform knows that they won’t hang around for too long.