Easy access to powerful large-scale language models (LLMs) has made it easier than ever for bad actors to spread spam across the Internet. If you’ve spent at least 10 minutes on the internet over the past few years, you’ll know that spam and bot content is an even bigger problem than it used to be.
Reddit has developed tools using LLM to reduce spam, but says much of the spam was created with LLM in the first place. Somewhat ironically, in the age of AI, platforms have no choice but to fight fire with fire. According to the platform, Reddit blocks 23 million spam views per day and catches about 25,000 new spam posts and comments every day.
Social platforms have been building automated spam reduction tools for years, and according to Reddit, these updated tools have a higher rate of catching spam.
“We leverage LLM to catch the most sophisticated and tailored patterns of false behavior and artificial hype that older systems once missed,” a Reddit blog post says. The company claims that it reduced users’ exposure to spam by 20% from January to March compared to the previous three months.
Platforms like YouTube, Meta, and Instagram allow users to post AI-generated content as long as they publish it. TikTok allows users to toggle how much AI-generated content they want to see.
If platforms can detect AI-generated content more quickly, that also means they may be able to report violating content, such as hate speech, more quickly. But platform experts have always reminded us that AI content moderation must be combined with human moderation for the most effective results.
