Woah woah woah okay I just noticed something about YouTube and idk if it’s old news but I just noticed it, it seems new, and it explains a lot, one sec need a screenshot
So.
Have you been on Facebook recently? Probably not. Because it’s unusable. Dead internet theory has become dead internet reality there, and it’s uncanny. AI generated images are commented on and have interaction generated with AI generated comments on blank bot accounts. If there’s human interaction somewhere in the mix, it’s hard to find. There’s enormous amounts of vapid statements that are all same-y, and all have that distinct AI cadence to them.
I noticed that something similar seemed to be happening with YouTube. In ye olden days, YouTube comments were notorious for being moronic as hell. But it’s different now. Where once home grown stupidity roamed freely, there were now grammatically correct, but extremely valid statements that often repeated similar sentence structures and even seem like mad libs. YouTube comments are filled with “this reminds me of [noun]” “I liked the moment when [thing that happened in video]” “this makes me feel [emotion][emoji]” etc etc etc. Just kind of shallow observations about the videos.
I don’t pay much attention to YouTube comments at all, but based on the glances I saw, I just kinda assumed YouTube was going the way of Facebook, and the bots were taking over. This is a change that’s happened within the past year or so, so I assumed that the recent AI boom just resulted in more bots than YouTube can handle and didn’t pay attention.
Today I noticed something though. I was listening to some music that isn’t easy to find on my usual streaming service, and I briefly noticed the comment box.
It’s prompting me, a human, to write a comment in one of those formats. Idk how long this has been there, but this is the first time I’ve noticed this little prompt, giving me a prewritten sentence structures to work with. So idk how long this has been there, or if this is all old news.
So YouTube is prompting very specific, yet very dumb comments. Interesting. Already has implications for the death of organic human interaction online, but eh, not that big a deal.
But the KINDS of sentences that they’re promoting are definitely of note. Because from what I can tell, they’re prompting users to generate content tags en masse to train AI.
“This reminds me of other media” -> helps decide what ads to provide on these kinds of videos
“This makes me feel emotion” -> genre tag for recommendation algorithms
“I liked the part where things happened” -> engagement analytics, and also providing written descriptions for moments in the video to train video recognition.
And of course, lots of the training done isn’t reducible to direct “this type of comment trains this”, but ends up a lot more black boxy. Google also explicit asks you to tag things sometimes, but that gets FAR less engagement than making people think they’re just leaving their innocent little thoughts around.
Now, Google is no stranger to this. They’ve been doing this with recaptcha for… Probably approaching a decade at this point. But it was interesting to notice what seems like the newest iteration of this. This almost strikes me as a creepier, more insidious iteration of a dead internet- one where humans are still ultimately generating interaction and comments, but at the unknown service of a machine.
youtube also recently unveiled new AI “features” for youtubers, now you can get AI generated video ideas which are partially based on the videos you actually make, and with their own AI generated thumbnails!
and even creepier, they added a feature for youtubers to reply to comments with AI generated replies, being obviously trained on your previous replies
God damn. Mask off dead internet. That’s honestly wild, and is probably a huge reason why they’ve added these types of comment prompts in the first place.
Friendly reminder as we head into tax season (for US Americans), that the major tax preparation companies are fully prepared to lie and mislead you into paying for their tax preparation software when you might qualify for free software through the IRS.
Don’t fall for their bullshit. Visit IRS Free File and see what services are available to you. The requirements vary depending on your household status and income, but if you make less than $79,000/year (which is nearly everyone I know), you probably qualify for something.
It has been way over a decade since this happened, so some details are a little blurry, but I still have to tell this story here too:
So, my dad’s colleague was on a trip with their friends, who were a couple. Now, the wife of this couple was a huge U2 fan, and the highlight of this trip was going to a U2 concert. Later that night, after the concert, they went to a restaurant, and who do they see there at another table? Bono. The wife wants so badly to go and ask for an autograph, but in a typical Finnish fashion, she doesn’t want to be a bother because surely Bono just wants to enjoy his night and not be surrounded by fans all the time, so she doesn’t go.
Then, she notices that someone from Bono’s table gets up and goes to the men’s restroom, so she also gets up and goes to wait outside the men’s room, until the guy comes out. She then stops him and goes excuse me, I saw that you were at the same table as Bono, would it be in any way possible that you could ask for an autograph from him for me? (because apparently it is much less mortifying to bother someone else you don’t know than to bother the guy directly, I guess).
The man apparently kinda stands there for a moment, just looking at her, before he asks, sounding just a tad bit confused, if he heard her right. You want me to go and ask Bono for an autograph for you?
Yes, she says. She’s being very polite about it. If you would be so kind. That would be great.
The man says yes, sure, I’ll see what I can do about it.
They then part ways and go back to their own tables and continue the night, and some time later, they notice that Bono and the rest of the people who had been at that table have left.
Oh well, the wife thinks. No can do, maybe he just forgot or something or just didn’t want to do it. It’s okay.
They finish up their meal and ask for the bill. The waiter tells them that their meal has already been paid for, and then tells that they were left with two notes.
The waiter gives them the notes. They are both autographs. One of them says Bono.
ALT
amhrancas 