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‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ | The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment. (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (10 children)

This is probably the most ethical you'll ever see it. There are definitely organizations committing far worse experiments.

Over the years I've noticed replies that are far too on the nose. Probing just the right pressure points as if they dropped exactly the right breadcrumbs for me to respond to. I've learned to disengage at that point. It's either they scrolled through my profile. Or as we now know it's a literal psy-op bot. Already in the first case it's not worth engaging with someone more invested than I am myself.

[–] skisnow 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I was thinking exactly this.

It's easy to point to reasons why this study was unethical, but the ugly truth is that bad actors all over the world are performing trials exactly like this all the time - do we really want the only people who know how this kind of manipulation works to be state psyop agencies, SEO bros, and astroturfing agencies working for oil/arms/religion lobbyists?

Seems like it's much better long term to have all these tricks out in the open so we know what we're dealing with, because they're happening whether it gets published or not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

actors all over the world are performing trials exactly like this all the time

I marketing speak this is called A/B testing.

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