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 wolves to 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!”
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
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.
What if we edit the comments slowly, words or even letters at a time. Then, if they save all of the edits they will end up with a lot of pointless versions. And if they dont, the buffer will eventually get full and original gets lost
I’ll ping @lemmyvore@feddit.nl because the answer is relevant for both.
Another user mentioned the possibility that they could use an LLM to sort this shit out. If that’s correct neither slow edits nor multiple edits will do much, as the LLM could simply pick the best version of each comment.
And while it’s a bit silly to use LLM to sort data out to train another LLM, this sounds like the sort of shit that Google could and would do.
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.
Even if they had comment versioning, who’s gonna dig through the versions to figure out which are nonsense. Just use the overwrite tool several times and then wish them good luck.
