AI Slop is ruining Reddit for everyone

Share reddit A bride asking her wedding guest to wear a specific, unflattering color is sure to spark anger, let alone a bridesmaid or mother of the groom who wants to wear white. A scenario in which a parent asks someone on a plane to switch seats so they can sit next to their young child is likely to elicit the same burst of anger. But these posts may lead to… Reddit Moderator is upset for a different reason, they are common topics in a growing type of topics Amnesty International-Fake posts created.

These are the examples that come to mind for Cassie, one of her dozens of supervisors r/AmItheAsshole. With over 24 million members, it is one of the largest subreddits on Reddit, and it explicitly prohibits AI-generated content and other made-up stories. Since late 2022, when ChatGPT was first released to the public, Cassie (who wanted to be referred to by first name only) and other people who volunteered their time to moderate Reddit posts have been struggling with an influx of AI content. Some are entirely generated by AI, while other users edit their posts and comments using AI software like Grammarly.

“It’s probably more widespread than anyone really wants to admit, because it’s very easy to send your post to ChatGPT and say ‘Hey, make this more interesting,’” says Casey, who believes that about half of the content posted on Reddit may have been created or reworked using AI in some way.

r/AmItheAsshole is a pillar of Reddit culture, a format that has inspired dozens if not hundreds of derivatives like r/AmIOverreacting, r/AmITheDevil, and r/AmItheKameena, a Reddit subreddit with over 100,000 members described as “Am I the Asshole, but the Indian version.” Posts tend to feature stories about interpersonal conflicts, where Redditors can determine who’s wrong (“YTA” means “you’re an idiot,” while “ESH” means “everyone is bad here”), who’s right, and the best course of action to take is to move on. Users and moderators across r/AmItheAsshole variants have reported seeing more content they suspect is AI-generated, and others say it’s a site-wide issue occurring across all types of subreddits.

“If you have a public wedding or AITA, or relationships, or something like that, you’re going to get hit hard,” says one moderator of r/AITAH, a variant of r/AmItheAsshole, which has nearly 7 million members. This moderator, a retiree who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had been active on Reddit for 18 years — most of its existence — and also had decades of experience in online business before that. It views AI as a potential existential threat to the platform.

“Either Reddit itself will have to do something, or the snake will swallow its own tail,” she says. “We have reached the point where AI is feeding AI.”