R/opensource bans AI-made and AI-focused projects and non-English speakers | Hacker News Reader

R/opensource bans AI-made and AI-focused projects and non-English speakers

tomshardware.com

I don't really see how this is news. All the main English subreddit are... well, English only.

The other stipulations seem reasonable.

The thing is that Reddit on mobile pushes automated translations so hard that a lot of people are mislead into forgetting about the actual language of the subreddit. I think that's the main reason why a lot of people are posting in their own language on Reddit nowadays.

I think this is really amazing and has the potential to connect people from different cultures

Discussed on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50231722

AI is a means, not an end. What should matter is whether a project is open source, not what tools were used to build it. I build my Mac apps with Claude Code and release them under the MIT license, and I don't see how that makes them any less open source.

This is very true, but difficult to sustain collectively, which I think is the problem. From what I've seen of those communities, there is a lot of spam from low-quality projects, which of course is easier to deliver through AI. That shouldn't invalidate AI solutions categorically, but a ban starts to appear to many as the best solution (not that it is the best solution -- just it appears like it).

Then let the doors be shut on them so they may play the fool nowhere but in their own house!

no-true-open-source

Obvious reactionary faux pas on part of the moderation team, since it's exclusionary, easily gamed, and punishes & drives away honest people. Not the sharpest minds at work here.

Classic Reddit mods. They've ruined that platform beyond repair.

What's really fun is when you get people pushing stupid rules like this is to play the side for more moderation and harder crackdowns. Set up tons of sockpuppets to call everything AI and make false accusations. Attack the people that are providing the most value to the subreddit/forum till they leave and watch the entire thing collapse.

This is how think tanks destroy most movements these days. Don't go against the movement, go for the movement so much that it drives everyone else away.

Or you could be a decent person, respect their wishes to have an AI-free space and go somewhere else if that is not what you want yourself?

I mean, murderers could decide not to murder other people, yet they don't. Dealing with the is/ought problem sucks.

You live in an adversarial world. You must design systems to survive adversarial actors or the systems will collapse. It's very difficult to control people that just want to be assholes, you have to make resilient systems against assholes and that means you can't do whatever you want.

One of the major problems with the modern internet is that you can't tell people who advocate for "always do the worst thing all the time! you're morally justified because systems are supposed to be resilient!" that they should be killed or kill themselves.

But I know you don't truly believe that the only reasonable response to "someone could murder me" is to hole yourself up in a bunker - it'd be a pretty awful way to live! You just think that everything low-trust that you do is justified, without thinking about what a world that operates by these principles would actually look like.

>without thinking about what a world that operates by these principles would actually look like.

It would look like the internet....

No, I think about problems like this all the time, especially when it comes to regarding language and human evolution.

The internet represents a problem that humans are not developed for. We are monkeys with sizable brains and a whole lot of tribalism. I'm not generally worried about people intentionally murdering me when I'm out in the world (though unintentionally with bad driving is another story). This is because of the degree of connectivity. When I drive down the street I'm subjected to a few hundred cars. Maybe a few thousand people. All those people have a uniform set of laws that are applied to them. In general we'll have a somewhat similar view of how society will work.

This does not apply to the internet in any way at all. I am subjected to all 4 billion IPv4 addresses and a zillion jillion IPv6 addresses with people that share little in common with me. I share that same net with every criminal. With every fraudster. With every maniacal government. With people that want to steal my money. With people that want to abuse my identity. It doesn't matter how good everyone else is on the planet, I am (as are you) under attack from people that you will never be able to exact justice on.

The internet in general is a low trust world. Always has been, and unless you're in a private forum with very selected entry, always will be. Standing out and making stupid rules just makes you a bigger target for people that find them annoying. Now, they are free to make the sub private, but they won't because they want to spread their political views without any costs of having those views.

Why not just fix the space itself? Internet janitors who don't know their place our curse upon any hope of a reasonably functioning community.

And I say that with no disrespect to real janitors calling perpetually online Reddit users "moderators" is just enabling their LARPing.

I'm sorry, non-English speakers too?! da actual fuq?!

ya throwing that in there is pretty wild/odd.

> The policy also tells people who do not speak English to find another community, arguing that moderators cannot reliably distinguish AI-written English from AI-translated text.

I don't know if they'll outright ban posts in other languages, but it sounds like AI-translations are banned for the same reason that AI-written content is banned.

Don't you think it's pretty discriminatory to outright ban non-English speakers, even if said person(s) use AI to help translate their "ideas"?

My point wasn’t whether it’s discriminatory or not. I’m saying that their stance appears to be “no-AI, for any reason”.

I agree that it impacts non-English speakers more. But what is the solution here? How would one, as a moderator, stop the AI slop they want to get rid of, if they provide a carve out for anyone claiming to be a non-native speaker?

It's a good question. If by "AI Slop" you mean, you ask ChatGPt to translate something from your native tongue to English so you can participate in a Reddit forum and the result is, probably correct, but a lot of "unwanted test you didn't ask for"?

What if it were you or me (I'm a native English speaker). Why if the tables were turned the other way around? I'm not even sure how I'd honestly be able to communicate with a person say from France, as I know a lick of French really, so I'd be reaching for some kind of translator, anything really. How do I avoid the wrath of those that would ben me over "AI Slop"?!

Assuming they allow it, post your thoughts in the language you form them in. Browsers have local translation built in now. The Babel Fish goes in your ear, not your mouth.

Some repos also ban ai translatations, and explicitly require non-english speakers to write in their native language, then the reader can translate.

> If by "AI Slop" you mean

It sounds like you're taking this the wrong way.

My point is: they have problems with people posting too much AI slop. Native speakers, or even proficient speakers, (well readers) can tell the difference between ai slop and non-slop. So they could at least in theory know if the content they're about to post is slop and change it.

Non-native speakers cannot tell if the thing the AI spit out is as articulate as they were in their nature language, or if it's turned it into English slop.

Then it gets posted to reddit. How does a reddit mod differentiate <someone who just generated slop and posted it> from <non native speaker who used AI to write in English, but ended up with slop since they can't very the result>? My point is that you can't differentiate the too, certainly not when the first group can claim their non-native speakers. So the only workable option here is for non-native speakers to post in their language and for the readers to translate on their end. This, mind you, is how several social media platforms already work,

What do you define as "AI Slop"?

We can disagree on exact term, but for me the following is good enough: text you didn’t write, did not review, or that you cannot adequately review given your grasp on the language or the concepts.

But that’s irrelevant. Post in your own language and let others translate.

It won't be an accurate representation of your ideas or your flavor or your culture. Just botspeak.

No, humans can learn to read and write english themselves and in fact most do that in school since its the lingua franca of the computing age. Not every community needs to include every last person on the planet.

Not at all. Just learn the world's language or find another community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com