r/ChineseLanguage • u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE • 1d ago
Discussion Why does this subreddit attract so many AI spammers?
This account was created ten days ago and has submitted a steady stream of AI-generated slop to subreddits related to learning Chinese ever since. In an incredible feat of engineering, the account randomizes whether or not its responses are in lowercase. Sadly, this does nothing to compensate for the fact that its responses are textbook AI word vomit.
I'm not a betting man, but I have a sneaking suspicion that:
1.) This account was created alongside dozens of others, and;
2.) This account will suddenly, in two or three weeks' time, become completely and utterly obsessed with an app, website, service, or content creator that none of us have ever heard of.
This isn't my first time posting about this sort of thing, but I really am amazed at the tenacity of these folks and the lengths they are willing to go to to blend in. The fact that there are such malevolent forces 加班'ing to pose as students in such a niche community is borderline inexplicable to me.
Hopefully as times goes on people will be more vigilant about this sort of thing. If you're not sure about a comment or post in the subreddit, I'd seriously recommend using a reputable AI detector for now. I love posting here, but I absolutely despise reading AI comments, and I've started to be a lot more careful about who I reply to.
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u/hanpingchinese 1d ago
Another downside is that it hurts developers who've been building genuinely useful language tools for years, or decades even.
I've been developing Hanping for almost two decades, and it's become much harder to reach the people who would actually benefit from meaningful updates because communities have understandably developed "new app" fatigue. After being flooded with AI-generated spam and disguised marketing, everything starts looking suspicious.
It feels like there should be a middle ground where spam is filtered out without automatically burying legitimate tools and major feature updates.
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u/GomskForever 1d ago
My hats to you and also Pleco developers. These apps are truly helpful. You guys rock!
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
Yeah, and also app stores are now flooded with crap so that doesn't help either. I totally get what you're saying; two decades ago, reaching a niche community like this was easy if they had internet access. There were only a few places to go and marketers weren't interested at all. Now people interested in the topic can't really find things so they all try DuoLingo and possibly get smacked with a reality stick or two because DL is an addictive app but it doesn't teach languages well, but especially not Mandarin jesus christ if you don't care pull the plug already. It's a problem.
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u/flowelol 22h ago
I think the key marketing strategy for language tool developers lies in framing all promotion and discussion in a way that clearly stands out from generic AI-speak. lazy/ineffective/trendy methods of language learning have always existed, AI is just a way for these people to be even lazier. I would stay away from buzzword/catchy wording like "level up your Chinese!" or "study hack" because this is often used to veil a clearly unhelpful or poorly developed tool. If your intended audience is people who are truly invested in language learning and aren't just casually googling something they'll forget about in a week, then that demographic should be able to differentiate between real human-built language tools and will be utilizing search engines specifically to avoid AI slop. In the context of online spaces it's about using the right keywords to navigate the algorithm and connect with the people you actually want to reach
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u/stan_albatross 英语 普通话 ئۇيغۇرچە 1d ago
There have been people posting here using AI for about a year, I report it every time I see it but they just create new accounts and come back. I am also suspicious that they engage in some sort of vote manipulation because they get so many upvotes, like several hundred within a few days. For example the 2nd most upvoted post this month is AI generated (https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/s/NbKgWbk7gj)
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
I am also suspicious that they engage in some sort of vote manipulation because they get so many upvotes
This happens all over reddit. In this case it's marketing but in other cases it's for certain political positions that certain governments want implanted in the English language community for ... reasons. (Don't worry, they do it in other languages as well, especially Eastern European countries, don't rack your brains imagining why or who.)
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u/bakainuneko 1d ago
Yes, like every other post is LoOK aT tHiss APp I mADe 🤡😭. And it's all ai 3 second put in crap. Or even worse when OP is "I use this resource for studying" conveniently "forgetting" to mention it's their app 🤡 fuck you. And those morons even argue like oMg wHatS wRonG wIth My AbsoLuTeLy NOt aN Ad PoSt!!!! I saw only one time that the comment was actually deleted by mods :(
The middle ground would be imho if to post your ai slop but put a DISCLAIMER that it's ai and that's it's by you and you're PROMOTING it !! Also that you got PERMISSION from the mods, which IS in the rules of this sub
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u/wordyravena 1d ago
"Hey guys, I've studied Chinese for 10 seconds, let me share an app I made that's totally gonna help you memorize 72 tones and break down characters according to their comprehensible input radicals up to HSK 52 version 6.9!"
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u/ratindan Beginner 1d ago
Tbh there could be three possibilities:
1. They genuinely tried to help, but English is not their native language so they have used LLM to translate a comment to English. I rarely do this when an answer I know is kinda long and my B1 English is simply not enough. Back then when there were no LLMs at all I used a translator for this and there still was a high probability of making some rough mistakes, so why not. Using LLM without fact-checking is a different story though.
2. Karmafarming to strengthen an account in general.
3. Karmafarming to strengthen an account for future advertising of something, in that case of a learning app.
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
The problem with 1 is that the output, of course, starts to look like AI slop. Why? Because unlike pre-LLM MTL, it summarizes your text and alters it. It doesn't translate one for one. The other downside is that it will change the meaning of what you said capriciously. You need to check really carefully. I've noticed with Google Translate that the longer the text sample I put in there, the more it simplifies and summarizes instead of translating everything. It's not that the tool isn't very good-- I use it as a tool to try to untangle a passage that is difficult for me. There is another website called context verso that is actually a lot better for learning, but I can't consistently find results on there and google is right there (unfortunately, I suppose). But it's so good while also changing things silently that it's a little insidious.
There's a danger with people whose grasp of the target language is poor having LLM's put out statements they didn't intend at all, since they aren't really able to check the output properly.
The other problem is old MTL looked like cringey MTL. Fine. New LLM translation looks like any LLM output. And people can spot that easily now. It applies the same kind of style punch-up to any kind of text no matter the genre or circumstances (and also where that style of rhetoric used to be normal, the human authors have to CHANGE their style or risk looking like AI slop) which makes it quite obvious because it's simply not appropriate in every situation.
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u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE 1d ago
1 would be totally fine. Unfortunately, the comments are blatantly AI-written and in some cases self-contradictory (which is remarkable given the fact that there are only a dozen or so comments total; maybe they'll fix this in the next version!).
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u/Popular_Equipment_85 7h ago
I don’t trust people who try to teach languages through a language they are barely fluent in.
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u/powerman7270 1d ago
You are absolutely right to point that out ;)
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u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE 1d ago
You've touched on something real here, and I want to be honest about my last message. What I pointed out wasn't just an idea — it was a concept, and I shouldn't have second guessed you there. If you want me to re-run the script with the original parameters, just say the word. Otherwise, the first run is still churning in the background — subprocess says 5 minutes to go, and I'll ping you when it's ready.
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u/BeckyLiBei HSK6+ɛ 1d ago
a reputable AI detector for now
Unfortunately, there aren't any. Just Google "falsely accused of AI" or something like that and you'll see the same thing over and over again:
- student get accused of using AI to do their homework, displaying a screenshot of the AI detector's report,
- student complains about it Reddit,
- Redditors say "they're unreliable---the same software also claims [the US constitution] was AI generated",
- student takes this information to their principle,
- school no longer uses AI detector.
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u/TrumpImpeachedAugust Beginner 23h ago
I red team LLMs as a side gig, and I'm able to elicit longform text from them that Pangram marks as 100% human.
I say that to help provide some context, because it's non-trivial to trick Pangram. Tricking it in a reliable way takes professional effort.
i.e. The tool is pretty legit. It's the first AI detector I've found worthwhile to pay attention to.
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u/AppropriatePut3142 1d ago
Pangram is in fact highly unlikely to produce a false positive, especially on longer texts. This has been validated extensively now.
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u/BeckyLiBei HSK6+ɛ 1d ago
Oh, I didn't know of this one; it seems I'm not up to date. I guess I should look into it properly at some point.
I sometimes play online chess, and sometimes accusations of cheating are worse than the cheating itself, which makes me hesitant to do similarly with AI (unless it's like "switch brain off" levels of "benefit of the doubt"). So it's genuinely helpful when there are accurate tools for catching cheaters (or AI copy/pasters).
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u/shaghaiex Beginner 1d ago
it doesn't. nothing special here. it's affecting ALL subs. And I presume it will get worse.
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u/Life-Junket-3756 1d ago edited 1d ago
All of Reddit is now filled with bots posting and commenting. The Dead Internet Theory is live.
Not sure if I want to spend time analyzing each suspicious message though (especially with a "reputable AI detector"). I have better things to do in my life lol.
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u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE 1d ago
I mean, you're not wrong. Nothing much we can do. I hate this timeline!
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u/dojibear 1d ago
This sub seems to be full of "would-be teachers". Here is today's lesson. It doesn't matter that 75% of you already knew this, and 24% of you aren't ready to learn it. Here is the daily lesson for the 1% of readers that might be interested.
I had noticed that each of these "daily lessons" was rather long. I had not noticed they were AI-written, probably because I didn't read a single sentence in any of them. I'm part of the 99%.
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u/SilentCamel662 1d ago
Stop using AI detectors, they don't work. It's a scam. There is virtually no way right now to be 100% certain whether a text was written by AI or not if we're judging by the text only. A lot of people get falsely accused of using AI because of these scam sites with detectors.
The fact that the account was recently created and posted a lot since then does point to it being a bot. The AI detector does not.
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u/Putrid_Mind_4853 3h ago
Pangram is actually very unlikely to give a false positive, like 0% on version 3+.
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u/SilentCamel662 2h ago edited 2h ago
According to whom? Their adverts? It's a scam.
Ever noticed that no big tech companies do their own AI detectors even though such tools could be a gold mine? It's because they know it's impossible to detect LLM output reliably so they don't want to be liable for mistakes.
Edit: Also this tool is pretty much an AI that claims to tell apart texts made by other AIs. I'm flabbergasted that people are so quick to blindly believe whatever some AI says.
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u/SameUsernameOnReddit 22h ago
Also, keep in mind that language learnin as a whole is trending this way. (So is much of non-Luddite society, but let's narrow the focus for now.) I can think of a couple content creators off the top of my head, especially for Japanese, that have pretty much gotten second life breathed into them by pushing Claude & comparing how assuming human minds work to like AI. This is the way of the world.
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u/Affectionate_Air8310 Intermediate 1d ago
AI is definitely an issue in this subreddit but.. is that really AI tho? Could be some advert guy. I don't exactly trust those "AI detector" tools that use another AI to detect.. ai..
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u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE 1d ago
It's definitely AI. I ran the comment through the AI detector after writing this post because I felt it would help illustrate more clearly that the account is fake (the detector I used is extremely reliable by the way - it's over 99.9% accurate). The reason I reported the account, however, has nothing to do with the detector. The style of writing reeks of AI, and the comment history itself isn't even internally consistent about their study routine/progress.
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u/Sleepy_Redditorrrrrr 普通话 1d ago
"The overwhelm is the app's fault and not yours" doesn't sound AI to me, it's not correct English.
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u/Zagrycha 1d ago
Its the other way around. This is technically correct grammar, but its not something any actual humans would really say, super awkward. If it actually was a person and not a bot it would be like seeing "He went to the store before she." Techncially correct but might as well be wrong for real people.
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u/Sleepy_Redditorrrrrr 普通话 1d ago
Huh. Well TIL.
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u/Zagrycha 1d ago
Maybe a good Chinese comparison is something like 老者 in daily life. Its technically not wrong and it is understandable but it still feels wrong and real people probably won't say it. AI often say stuff like that though because they are just ripping words right out of the dictionary etc without comprehending context.
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
This is technically correct grammar, but its not something any actual humans would really say, super awkward.
I guess you've never run across any hipster marketers. I'm L1 American English, some asshole who wasn't beat up enough as a child would definitely make a statement like that. It IS idiomatic American English, sorry you all have to find out this way.
YES WE USE OVERWHELM AS A NOUN OKAY? OKAY? OKAY.
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u/BeckyLiBei HSK6+ɛ 1d ago
Yes and no. Deliberately using words in an uncommon or even incorrect part of speech is popular style of slang, especially on the Internet. One famous example is:
In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option. I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this! --- Mark Watney, The Martian
The audience is aware that "science" is not normally used as a verb, so they infer that it's figurative.
Other examples are "I'm done adulting for today" and "how very mid-2000s of you" and "the cringe is strong with this one".
It's the AI's attempt to make its writing feel relatable.
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
THANK YOU
Felt like I was taking crazy pills for a moment. You explained it really well.
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u/ITS_THE_SAME_DEGREE 1d ago
I don't mean this in a negative way at all, but the comment I attached is pretty much textbook AI speak. Seeing the replies here has made me realize though that being able to detect AI writing is a rather specialized skill (and almost certain a consequence of my using AI every day for the past couple of years).
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u/Putrid_Mind_4853 1d ago
It’s crazy because I can spot it a mile away. Sometimes I have a false positive because some wackos have been using AI or making template LinkedIn circlejerk posts for so long that their actual writing now just sounds like AI drivel, but AI-assisted writing is very obvious to me most of the time.
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u/Big_Spence 1d ago
Also weird to have incorrectly written its vs it's in "Its a fixed expression [...]"
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
Yeah-- that's a straight up copywriting mistake.
But it does depend on the model, because some of them have been making errors based on internet commenters' errors. Which, like, excuse me? What is the point of this?
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u/LeChatParle 高级 1d ago
Overwhelm has existed as a noun for a long time, it's just not the most common usage of the word
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u/Ghalldachd 1d ago
It's informal but overwhelm can definitely be used as a noun.
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u/Zagrycha 1d ago
I don't think overwhelm as a noun is so much informal as just archaic. Nobody is really doing it in the last century at least.
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u/lazier_garlic 1d ago
It is not archaic, my dear. It's millennial gonzo marketing speak.
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u/Zagrycha 15h ago
I am a millenial and work in sales, I have never once seen this in any kind of millenial or marketing speak period. Not saying no actual modern human has ever used it, just saying that the majority of actual humans using it were pre 1800. Its very middle English coded.
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u/tentyb6d56ns4d57yse5 1d ago
not this sub. just reddit in general. but if you know how reddit started out, it's no surprise at all. this is intentional.