I know there are other ways of accomplishing that, but this might be a convenient way of doing it. I’m wondering though if Reddit is still reverting these changes?
Let’s pretend for a moment that we know that Reddit has any sort of decent versioning system, and that it keeps the old versions of your comments alongside the newer ones, and that it’s feeding the LLM with the old version. (Does it? I have my doubts, given that Reddit Inc. isn’t exactly competent.)
Even then, I think that it’s sensible to use this tool, to scorch the earth and discourage other human users from adding their own content to that platform. It still means less data for Google to say “it’s a bunch of users, who cares about the intellectual property of those filthy things? Their data is now my data. Feed it
to the wolvesto Gemini”.Let’s pretend for a moment that we know that Reddit has any sort of decent versioning system, and that it keeps the old versions of your comments alongside the newer ones, and that it’s feeding the LLM with the old version. (Does it? I have my doubts, given that Reddit Inc. isn’t exactly competent.)
They almost certainly do, if only because of the practicalities of adding a new comment, then having that be fetched in place of the old one, compared to making and propagating an edit across all their databases. With exceptions, it’d be a bit easier to implement it as an additional comment, and increment a version number that you fetch the latest version of, rather than needing to scan through the entire database to make changes.
It would also help with any administration/moderation tasks if they could see whether people posted rule-breaking content and then tried to hide it behind edits.
That said, one of the many Spez controversies did show that they are capable of making actual edits on the back end if they wished.
They almost certainly do, if only because of the practicalities of adding a new comment
If this is true, it shifts the problem from “not having it” to “not knowing which version should be used” (to train the LLM).
They could feed it the unedited versions and call it a day, but a lot of times people edit their content to correct it or add further info, specially for “meatier” content (like tutorials). So there’s still some value on the edits, and I believe that Google will be at least tempted to use them.
If that’s correct, editing it with nonsense will lower the value of edited comments for the sake of LLM training. It should have an impact, just not as big as if they kept no version system.
It would also help with any administration/moderation tasks if they could see whether people posted rule-breaking content and then tried to hide it behind edits.
I know from experience (I’m a former Reddit janny) that moderators can’t see earlier versions of the content, only the last one. The admins might though.
That said, one of the many Spez controversies did show that they are capable of making actual edits on the back end if they wished.
The one from TD, right?
- spez: “let them babble their violent rhetoric. Freeze peaches!”
- also spez: “nooo they’re casting me on a bad light. I’m going to edit it!”
Honestly, parsing through version history is actually something an LLM could handle. It might even make more sense of it than without. For example, if someone replies to a comment and then the parent is edited to say something different. No one will have to waste their time filtering anything.
They could use an LLM to parse through the version history of all those posts/comments, to use it to train another LLM with it. It sounds like a bad (and expensive, processing time-wise) idea, but it could be done.
EDIT: thinking further on this, it’s actually fairly doable. It’s generally a bad idea to feed the output of an LLM into another, but in this case you’re simply using it to pick one among multiple versions of a post/comment made by a human being.
It’s still worth to scorch the earth though, so other human users don’t bother with the platform.
Wouldn’t be hard to scan a user and say:
- they existed for 5 years.
- they made something like 5 comments a day. They edit 1 or 2 comments a month.
- then randomly on March 7th 2024 they edited 100% of all comments across all subs.
- use comment version March 6th 2024
It would.
First you’d need to notice the problem. Does Google even realise that some people want to edit their Reddit content to boycott LLM training?
Let’s say that Google did it. Then it’d need to come up with a good (generalisable, low amount of false positives, low amount of false negatives) set of rules to sort those out. And while coming up with “random” rules is easy, good ones take testing, trial and error, and time.
But let’s say that Google still does it. Now it’s retrieving and processing a lot more info from the database than just the content and its context, but also account age, when the piece of content was submitted, when it was edited.
So doing it still increases the costs associated with the corpus, making it less desirable.
Huh? Reddit has all of this plus changes in their own DBs. Google has nothing to do with this, it’s pre handover.
I’m highlighting that having the data is not enough, if you don’t find a good way to use the data to sort the trash out. Google will need to do it, not Reddit; Reddit is only handing the data over.
Is this clear now? If you’re still struggling to understand it, refer to the context provided by the comment chain, including your own comments.
I’m saying reddit will not ship a trashed deliverable. Guaranteed.
Reddit will have already preprocessed for this type of data damage. This is basic data engineering and trivial to do to find events in the data and understanding timeseries of events.
Google will be receiving data that is uncorrupted, because they’ll get data properly versioned to before the damaging event.
If a high edit event happens on March 7th, they’ll ship march 7th - 1d. Guaranteed.
Edit to be clear: you’re ignoring/not accepting the practice of noting high volume of edits per user as an event, and using that timestamped event as a signal of data validity.
It sounds like what’s needed here is a version of this tool that makes the edits slowly, at random intervals, over a period of time. And perhaps has the ability to randomize the text in each edit so that they’re all unusable garbage, but different unusable garbage (like the suggestion of taking ChatGPT output at really high temp that someone else made). Maybe it also only edits something like 25% of your total comment pool, and perhaps makes unnoticeably minor edits (add a space, remove a comma) to a whole bunch of other comments. Basically masking the poison by hiding it in a lot of noise?
Now you’re talkin .
Intra comment edit threshold would be fun to explore
Let’s also pretend that reddit isn’t a cesspool of bots, marketing campaigns, foreign agents, incels, racists, Republicans, gun nuts, shit posters, trolls…the list goes on.
Is it even that valuable? It didn’t take long for that Microsoft bot to turn into Hitler, feeding reddit into an “AI” is like speed running Ultron.
It’s still somewhat valuable due to the size of the corpus (it’s huge) and because people used to share technical expertise there.
When you edit your comment all you’re doing is adding a “new” comment, the old comment is flagged to not show and the new comment shows in its place.
This achieves nothing.
Reddit was open source until relatively recently. According to the source code, editing comments does overwrite your data. Or at least it used to.
Keeping old data is expensive, and usually a waste of money.
Relatively recently being 6 years ago.
Keeping old data is expensive, and usually a waste of money.
At the same time, text, which Reddit was exclusively, for a good long time, compresses really well. The entirety of Wikipedia goes from 10 TB to 100 GB when compressed, and if it’s just the article text alone, 22 GB.
That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of data that they would have had to deal with when they started deciding to take on video and image hosting.
I assure you that’s not the case anymore
Yeah, do nothing because you wouldn’t take the risk it works.
I’m still pretty happy that I can change all my comments to quips from story of the eye or jaberwalky and I would encourage everyone to do the same. Seems like a good fuck around and find out situation at least. There will likely be other llms that won’t have an official relationship but will crawl reddit. The more we can jumble it up the better.
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Reddit will most likely feed these guys a copy of their DB from before the API switch ensuring an unfucked copy of data before people started messing with it.
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The only way to control your data, even on the fediverse is through DRM, the thing so many people hate, but it’s designed to ensure you control who uses your data and how. I know people say “well what about copyrights and licenses?” Tell that to people building LLMs in other jurisdictions that don’t care about those.
deleted by creator
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Reddit is almost certainly going to throw your old comments to them if you edit stuff. We’re pretty fucked. And if you think Lemmy is any different, guess again. We agreed to send our comments to everyone else in the fediverse, plenty of bad actors and a legal minefield allows LLMs to do what they want essentially. The good news is that LLMs are all crap, and people are slowly realising this
LLMs are great for anything you’d trust to an 8 year old savant.
It’s great for getting quick snippets of code using languages and methods that have great documentation. I don’t think I’d trust it for real work though
LLMs are all crap, and people are slowly realising this
LLM’s have already changed the tech space more than anything else for the last 10 years at least. I get what you’re trying to say but that opinion will age like milk.
Edit: made wording clearer
I’ve been harping on about this for a while on the fediverse … private/closed/non-open spaces really ought to be thought about more. Fortunately, lemmy core devs are implementing local only and private communities (local only is already done IIRC).
Yes they introduce their own problems with discovery and gating etc. But now that the internet’s “you’re the product” stakes have gone beyond what could have been construed as a reasonably transaction, “my attention on an ad … for a service”, to “my mind’s products to be aggregated into an energy sucking job replacing AI … for a service” … well it’s time to normalise closing that door on opportunistic tech capitalists.
If one wanted to really screw the AI, I’d replace each post/comment with nonsense generated by ChatGPT itself on a higher-than-normal temperature setting. AI would be training on its own generated content, and out of context as well.
We are commodities
We exist to be bought and sold
By the ruling class
I have been bought and sold
Many many times
But only my thoughts
And identity
And words
And face
So that’s okay
I’ll just scroll other stolen thoughts
On a phone built by an eight year old
Who was bought
And sold
Half a world away
I have two unrelated questions.
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Can I choose what text to use?
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What is the copyright status of Ram Ranch?
Yes
Ram Ranch? Never heard of it.
Ram Ranch? Never heard of it.
Turn your speakers up all the way*
*Not advisable at work, in public, or in front of anyone whose opinion you slightly care about.
Ram Ranch?
The other comment is the original, but I love this cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24v3C37JLwA
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So they are using redditors as human guinea pigs
It’s not reddit’s data, it’s the users’. Reddit management is just overentitled jerks.
Someone didn’t read the TOS
Admittedly, I haven’t read the TOS… but I don’t need to. At least where I live it would be illegal to claim ownership of someone else’s work (unless you paid a living wage to create it, or something along those lines. A software company for example can claim ownership of employee created software).
Maybe you should read them. They are not claiming ownership. They are claiming that you licenced them to use your contributions for whatever purpose they want. Different thing.
Why non-copyrighted? I want to flood Reddit with copyrighted text from the most aggressively litigious rightsholders available. 🍿
It was irony. The tool is even more clear on that with providing you a link you should NOT use because it’s copyrighted (!!!).
If they really want to spend money on the crap I put out there that is more of their issue vs mine. I don’t even know why they want this data. Like every reddit comment thread is just various degrees of memes + acting more cynical than the parent comment. A LLM trained on reddit is going to know one lines from pop culture before advocating for suicide.
