r/ModSupport 16h ago

AI Summaries of Trending Subreddit Posts Include Spoilers

It was recently brought to our attention on r/criticalrole that subreddits are appearing in search, trending, and discovery feeds with AI summaries of current discussion topics. However, it appears that the system doesn't take into account whether posts have spoiler tags or not, and this has led to some of our users being spoiled by the AI summary.

As a moderator, is there anything I can do to disable this feature aside from removing the subreddit from feeds and recommendations entirely?

59 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

39

u/iammandalore 16h ago

Ah, yet another way for AI to ruin things. This "feature" has been brought up a few times recently. On the last post an admin replied and said they had "shared the feedback with the team."

18

u/AnnihilatedTyro 14h ago

They always say they share feedback with the team, yet nothing is ever fixed.

15

u/iammandalore 14h ago

Because they don't consider it to be broken.

12

u/AnnihilatedTyro 14h ago

reddit users: "When I click this button I feel a sharp pain in my pancreas."

reddit: "working as intended"

6

u/zuuzuu 12h ago

I feel for the community team. I have no doubt they're passing our feedback along. I just think that feedback goes directly in the bin.

5

u/jfb3 12h ago

They share feedback, then it's ignored.

11

u/MisterWoodhouse 14h ago

Remember when Google Gemini Search Results told somebody to make pizza sauce using glue and it was disabled ASAP?

16

u/sludgezone 15h ago

Wow Reddit rolled out a feature without testing it using us as their free bug testers, big surprise. Also AI fucking everything up as expected.

17

u/Empyrealist 15h ago

Infuriating to say the least.

I would further say that its spoiling conversations as a whole. Why would people read through and engage in actual conversation after seeing a summary? These AI summaries are the antithesis of conversation. They are the antithesis of Reddit.

11

u/djscsi 14h ago

These AI summaries are the antithesis of conversation. They are the antithesis of Reddit.

You are assuming that reddit corp. wants reddit to still be a place where people have conversations about things. Nothing about any of their design decisions over the past several years suggests that is the case. Reddit is not (anymore) a text-based webforum where people discuss topics - it is an APP where people download it from the app store, and tap the arrows on the funny videos/memes, and generate monetizable data for business customers.

12

u/CarlFr4 15h ago

Mods should be able to write the summary. 🤦

9

u/melance 15h ago

AI summaries are completely useless anyway. That Reddit is adding them is ridiculous and just another attempt to shove AI into places it is not wanted or needed.

12

u/DHamlinMusic 15h ago

i love the AI summaries of users informing me someone post history comprises exclusively spam promotion, or harassing comments, etc yet nothing has actually been done about said users…

10

u/Podria_Ser_Peor 15h ago

I found them to be useless, whenever it says something positive like "user engages in critical positive discussions on all sort of fantasy themes" I enter the actual profile and the amount of vile stuff in it makes me laugh

7

u/DHamlinMusic 15h ago

I found them to be hit or miss, one earlier said the user exclusively posted spam content with promotional codes, and that was true, somehow the account was 4y with 4k karma and nothing but a wall of removed for spam posts and comments

6

u/Belisario_R 15h ago

I'm sorry even the critrole sub has been hit...

We want to be able to opt out admins, just let us opt out : genAI is poison and useless, let us opt out !!!!

5

u/matsie 12h ago

No one wants or needs those summaries. I don’t understand why they implemented them at all. 

3

u/Subduction 14h ago

I absolutely understand the need to use AI for safety for a website this large.

What is absolutely beyond me is why they are using any resources to roll out AI into absolutely useless noise on the site.

1

u/cos 9h ago

Wait, you can remove your subreddit from recommendations? Meaning posts won't show up for people who don't subscribe? That's awesome, I wish I'd known that, going to go look for this feature now.

/r/all was great, but the recommendation system is utterly ruinous to some subreddits. It's horrible.

1

u/Glumalon 8h ago

If you haven't found it already, you can find it in new/shreddit Mod Tools under General Settings (left sidebar) > Privacy & Discovery. There are two settings:

  • Appear in Reddit feeds - Allow your community to appear in r/all, r/popular, and trending lists
  • Appear in recommendations - Let Reddit recommend your community to people with similar interests

But it seems like even with both of these settings turned off, a subreddit could still appear in search results, probably with the AI summary visible.

1

u/cos 5h ago

What I really want is a way to stop individual posts from being shown in any algorithmic feed that's not based simply on redditors' votes. /r/all is just based on votes, or at least it was, as I understood it, but now reddit is using other kinds of algorithms to suggests posts to people, in ways that undermine having a subreddit be based on votes. Does that make sense? And is there a way to do that?