While shark attacks remain rare, these statistics remind us that, despite all our knowledge and precautions, the sea is still wild. [this is their conclusion]
Okay, so this article is definitely just LLM slop and we should blacklist landfills like “amusing planet dot com” from what’s supposed to be an informative community, right?
Hi there. I understand your perspective on the matter. On the other hand, I don’t consider this community active enough to be too restrictive on content. This place gets an average of one post a day. Op has made comments, indicating they’re an actual human being, and the post has not actually broken any rules.
Considering that this post has brought forth actual discussion, I’m going to leave it up.
You’re welcome to post other content from other preferred sources if you like.
Please see this comment. Even in the event this source isn’t LLM-generated, it’s bottom-of-the-barrel garbage; it’s a Blogger “written by” some rando who doesn’t even put in the effort to cite a single source. “Generating a discussion” is exactly the sort of poor, engagement-centric rationale that awful social media companies use to allow and promote dangerous, unsourced crap. I moderate a community for veganism, a cause I deeply believe in and want discussed and thought about. I would remove trash like this even if it were saying everything I wanted to hear and attracting thousands to the community and generating the biggest discussion in recent memory on the basis that I don’t want our community to be a part of this unprecedented era of misinformation where vibes are treated a substitute for critical thinking. I don’t give a single shit about engagement in the communities I moderate if it means platforming uncited, likely LLM-generated swill like this, and I feel like that’s a reasonable expectation to hold other moderators to.
The number of posts per day shouldn’t matter either; if anything, that should make it easier to vet posts like this. If a post can’t meet some reasonable minimum standard of quality, it shouldn’t exist. Lastly, “if you don’t want to see garbage, drown it out with quality” categorically doesn’t work. This is a failed experiment. Literally every platform that allows garbage (see: every major social media platform) devolves into garbage because it’s so, so much easier to create and then unthinkingly post – then the overwhelming majority don’t actually read it to evaluate its quality. If a platform gets big enough on the back of quality posts and isn’t maintained, the quality content inevitably gets outcompeted by slop. It shouldn’t be the user’s job to make sure that better things get posted; it should be the moderator’s to foster an environment where quality actually matters.
(I never insinuated OP is a bot; I said the article itself is likely LLM-generated.)
One of the most obvious hallmarks of LLM slop is platitudinous garbage. LLMs especially like to punctuate stories with some asinine fucking quasi-lesson that I would write as a conclusion to a fifth-grade essay – not something I would write as a trained professional. “This/these X remind us/show that [very obvious thing].” Another one of these quasi-lessons about the Streissand effect found here.
There’s almost always no such thing as “conclusively LLM”, but when you have such an obvious hallmark (I’m sure if I wanted to waste more time entertaining this “but what if it isn’t?”, I could find many more; I specifically checked the conclusion because it’s such a common tell), it arouses suspicion.
Then you get into what “Amusing Planet” really is: a Blogger site run by the person who “wrote” this article – Kaushik Patowary. There’s no evidence Patowary has a background in literally anything. Which in fairness, you don’t have to, but when you write about such a wide range of subjects and then you see this next bit…
Patowary fails to cite literally any of his sources through inline links or a references section like decent publications do. Assuming Patowary doesn’t know enough about 1916 shark attacks to write off-the-cuff about them, he would be going out to find this information. Not only is citing trivially easy if you’re doing original research because you have all (or at least some) of the sources right there, but it actively makes it easier as a writer to make sure what initially publish is correct and to make future corrections. Patowary does this very occasionally such as in this article, but it’s really, really bad that the ostensible majority of recent articles that don’t cite anything.* The absolute bare minimum Patowary could do is sloppily put like two or three links into a references section, and yet he almost always doesn’t. As someone who writes, I’ll it’s harder to write original prose without creating a references section; it’s as much to my mind for the author as it is for the reader.
So we have 1) to my mind, preponderance of evidence, and 2) even in the rare event it’s not LLM slop, this would be regular Blogger slop that isn’t fit for an educational community because the research is anemic at best with almost/literally zero effort to cite resources used. Citing sources is literally the most basic step any even semi-credible resource should use. It’s complete, useless garbage if it is or isn’t LLM-generated; it’s just that it’s more likely the former and that the former is much worse.
* [1], [2], [3, [4] (they sourced the LG website and literally none of the other stuff; great job), [5, etc.
One of the most obvious hallmarks of LLM slop is platitudinous garbage
To be fair, the mayor from Jaws would also tell us that if anything happened, remember that it was an isolated incident, and if it happens again, it’s not his fault, and if it happens again, you deserved it. :P
Okay, so this article is definitely just LLM slop and we should blacklist landfills like “amusing planet dot com” from what’s supposed to be an informative community, right?
Hi there. I understand your perspective on the matter. On the other hand, I don’t consider this community active enough to be too restrictive on content. This place gets an average of one post a day. Op has made comments, indicating they’re an actual human being, and the post has not actually broken any rules.
Considering that this post has brought forth actual discussion, I’m going to leave it up.
You’re welcome to post other content from other preferred sources if you like.
“Today I learned made up shit from AI slop.”
Please see this comment. Even in the event this source isn’t LLM-generated, it’s bottom-of-the-barrel garbage; it’s a Blogger “written by” some rando who doesn’t even put in the effort to cite a single source. “Generating a discussion” is exactly the sort of poor, engagement-centric rationale that awful social media companies use to allow and promote dangerous, unsourced crap. I moderate a community for veganism, a cause I deeply believe in and want discussed and thought about. I would remove trash like this even if it were saying everything I wanted to hear and attracting thousands to the community and generating the biggest discussion in recent memory on the basis that I don’t want our community to be a part of this unprecedented era of misinformation where vibes are treated a substitute for critical thinking. I don’t give a single shit about engagement in the communities I moderate if it means platforming uncited, likely LLM-generated swill like this, and I feel like that’s a reasonable expectation to hold other moderators to.
The number of posts per day shouldn’t matter either; if anything, that should make it easier to vet posts like this. If a post can’t meet some reasonable minimum standard of quality, it shouldn’t exist. Lastly, “if you don’t want to see garbage, drown it out with quality” categorically doesn’t work. This is a failed experiment. Literally every platform that allows garbage (see: every major social media platform) devolves into garbage because it’s so, so much easier to create and then unthinkingly post – then the overwhelming majority don’t actually read it to evaluate its quality. If a platform gets big enough on the back of quality posts and isn’t maintained, the quality content inevitably gets outcompeted by slop. It shouldn’t be the user’s job to make sure that better things get posted; it should be the moderator’s to foster an environment where quality actually matters.
(I never insinuated OP is a bot; I said the article itself is likely LLM-generated.)
It’s not the best writing, but how is that conclusively LLM? Is there anything in the article that is definitively made up?
One of the most obvious hallmarks of LLM slop is platitudinous garbage. LLMs especially like to punctuate stories with some asinine fucking quasi-lesson that I would write as a conclusion to a fifth-grade essay – not something I would write as a trained professional. “This/these X remind us/show that [very obvious thing].” Another one of these quasi-lessons about the Streissand effect found here.
There’s almost always no such thing as “conclusively LLM”, but when you have such an obvious hallmark (I’m sure if I wanted to waste more time entertaining this “but what if it isn’t?”, I could find many more; I specifically checked the conclusion because it’s such a common tell), it arouses suspicion.
Then you get into what “Amusing Planet” really is: a Blogger site run by the person who “wrote” this article – Kaushik Patowary. There’s no evidence Patowary has a background in literally anything. Which in fairness, you don’t have to, but when you write about such a wide range of subjects and then you see this next bit…
Patowary fails to cite literally any of his sources through inline links or a references section like decent publications do. Assuming Patowary doesn’t know enough about 1916 shark attacks to write off-the-cuff about them, he would be going out to find this information. Not only is citing trivially easy if you’re doing original research because you have all (or at least some) of the sources right there, but it actively makes it easier as a writer to make sure what initially publish is correct and to make future corrections. Patowary does this very occasionally such as in this article, but it’s really, really bad that the ostensible majority of recent articles that don’t cite anything.* The absolute bare minimum Patowary could do is sloppily put like two or three links into a references section, and yet he almost always doesn’t. As someone who writes, I’ll it’s harder to write original prose without creating a references section; it’s as much to my mind for the author as it is for the reader.
So we have 1) to my mind, preponderance of evidence, and 2) even in the rare event it’s not LLM slop, this would be regular Blogger slop that isn’t fit for an educational community because the research is anemic at best with almost/literally zero effort to cite resources used. Citing sources is literally the most basic step any even semi-credible resource should use. It’s complete, useless garbage if it is or isn’t LLM-generated; it’s just that it’s more likely the former and that the former is much worse.
* [1], [2], [3, [4] (they sourced the LG website and literally none of the other stuff; great job), [5, etc.
To be fair, the mayor from Jaws would also tell us that if anything happened, remember that it was an isolated incident, and if it happens again, it’s not his fault, and if it happens again, you deserved it. :P
I’m good with blacklisting them. Sounds good.