Are tbere paid content creator members on this site?
Discussion
I am curious to know if CarGurus company deploys paid content creators to start topics on these forums. Does anyone know?
A few months ago I called out and reported what I believed was an AI bot account from its posting style and syntax. A/the mod(s) seemingly agreed with me and nuked the account.
I can see what I believe to be a paid content creator account from looking at the recent threads started in the Lounge sub-forum over the past week or so. I think it's a human writing the content rather than a bot on this occasion. I appreciate that the default response is probably "nobody is forcing you to reply to their content; just ignore it" but it's not organic content imo and has a distinct whiff of being paid content for the sole purpose of generating traffic/clicks.
Is this a known and accepted thing, or does it break the rules in some way?
A few months ago I called out and reported what I believed was an AI bot account from its posting style and syntax. A/the mod(s) seemingly agreed with me and nuked the account.
I can see what I believe to be a paid content creator account from looking at the recent threads started in the Lounge sub-forum over the past week or so. I think it's a human writing the content rather than a bot on this occasion. I appreciate that the default response is probably "nobody is forcing you to reply to their content; just ignore it" but it's not organic content imo and has a distinct whiff of being paid content for the sole purpose of generating traffic/clicks.
Is this a known and accepted thing, or does it break the rules in some way?
deckster said:
100% there are bots posting on this site but it seems unlikely that they're orchestrated to drive clicks.
Out of interest can you point to any posts you think might be a bot?
I don't wish to fall foul of some 'naming and shaming' rule. When I reported my suspicions the first time my account got mixed up and accidentally deleted by one of the mods before later being restored and apologies sent round Out of interest can you point to any posts you think might be a bot?
. I don't want to risk the same thing happening again, but it shouldn't be hard to work out just from looking at the thread description names in the Lounge over the past week and the member name who created them.It's not organic content imho but my reason for asking was to see if paid forum content creation was already a known and accepted thing here. If so, fair enough, their train set etc.
Other than the original bot poster I spotted some months ago I've not noticed any others since. I'm sure the programming is improving all the time, but the syntax usually stands out a mile for me.
Monkeylegend said:
Somebody called Scrump seems to have started a lot followed by another poster starting with "S"
My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
Money? Only one thread started in last 90 days- he appears as 'starter' of fresh volumes of long running threads but that is not really initiating anything.My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
The source of your scepticism has been busy though!
Am I due a parrot?
Monkeylegend said:
Somebody called Scrump seems to have started a lot followed by another poster starting with "S"
My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
Scrump…who is he?My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
mac96 said:
Monkeylegend said:
Somebody called Scrump seems to have started a lot followed by another poster starting with "S"
My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
Money? Only one thread started in last 90 days- he appears as 'starter' of fresh volumes of long running threads but that is not really initiating anything.My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
The source of your scepticism has been busy though!
Am I due a parrot?
r3g said:
It's not organic content imho but my reason for asking was to see if paid forum content creation was already a known and accepted thing here. If so, fair enough, their train set etc.
As far as I am aware the only paid content creators in the forums are those members in the over 200 month membership club. 
In all seriousness there are no paid content creators in the forums other than the PH articles.
We do get bots join and post. Reporting suspected bots is welcome and helps us identify them and remove their accounts.
Scrump said:
Monkeylegend said:
Somebody called Scrump seems to have started a lot followed by another poster starting with "S"
My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
Scrump…who is he?My moneys on Scrump whoever that is but I am a bit sceptical.
OP might be referring to Skeptisk (formerly Esceptico) as they seem to post a fair old chunk of "just asking" style threads every month. Despite some of the weird thread topics they come up with, i very much doubt it's intentional or click generator based for PH - it just seems to be their "thing". The account has been here for many years and also replies to other genuine threads.
Unlike the bot accounts & wind up accounts that tend to post threads / replies on certain subjects before disappearing and watch the fallout once certain posters get involved - as often seen in SP&L and NP&E.
Unlike the bot accounts & wind up accounts that tend to post threads / replies on certain subjects before disappearing and watch the fallout once certain posters get involved - as often seen in SP&L and NP&E.
AlexRS2782 said:
OP might be referring to Skeptisk (formerly Esceptico) as they seem to post a fair old chunk of "just asking" style threads every month. Despite some of the weird thread topics they come up with, i very much doubt it's intentional or click generator based for PH - it just seems to be their "thing". The account has been here for many years and also replies to other genuine threads.
Unlike the bot accounts & wind up accounts that tend to post threads / replies on certain subjects before disappearing and watch the fallout once certain posters get involved - as often seen in SP&L and NP&E.
Well I can't confirm or deny it is Skeptisk, but.... that is not organic content. Just take a look at all the threads they've started over the past few months. The vast majority of them are contraversial topics purporsely designed to generate a lot of replies and there's a clear intent at trying to disguise them for some reason by posting them all in the lounge when most of them are NPE topics. Half of them have been moved there by the mods. Not even some bored 14 year old on half term would have the energy nor desire to post such a tirade of banal threads loosely posed as questions, then pretty much disappear once the touch paper has been lit.Unlike the bot accounts & wind up accounts that tend to post threads / replies on certain subjects before disappearing and watch the fallout once certain posters get involved - as often seen in SP&L and NP&E.
Look at the subjects - they are nearly all the sort of questions you could envisage people asking AI bots/Chat GPT:
- Has the internet made people more knowledgeable?
- Racism doesn’t exist today?
- How do people afford to buy a house?
- Why does British food have such a bad reputation?
- Could you live in a “wrong” sex relationship?
- Has popular music stopped evolving?
- Why don’t the Tories deliver?
- Where will you be in five years?
- Childless men?
- Where do you stand politically?
- Who still uses cash?
- Why are so many people delusional?
- Would you wear a skirt, if..?
- Why do tides bulge on both sides of earth?
- Facts that shocked you?
- Are you into brands?
- Does diverse casting increase box office sales?
- Wealth inequality?
- Do you have anyone you can confide in?
- Questions for the religious?
- Prejudices you can’t shake?
- Collapse of civilisation?
- Who was the U.K.’s last decent PM?
- World’s most dangerous cities?
- Why be a good person?
- Your favourite word?
- Did Epstein kill himself?
- US to become right wing dictatorship?
- Should the right to asylum be stopped?
- How many countries have you lived in?
- If you could give up work, would you?
- Will your next new car be an EV?
- Is there more than one gender?
- Do you believe in aliens/UFOs?
- Why don’t I / you become vegetarian?
- Is immigration beneficial?
- Brexit - was it worth it? (over 10k replies!)
In my opinion it has all the hallmarks of an AI bot training account. Elon Musk raised awareness about this exact thing a few months back, saying that thousands of accounts had to be banned on his platform which were being used by both real and bot players to train AI to create algorithms. You can't teach an AI bot without first feeding it huge amongst of real human created content to process in order to program their algorithms. I would have a small bet that the same thing is happening here, using our responses in those threads to train an AI bots.
Rufus Stone said:
You think someone who joined eight years ago is a bot?
You haven't read anything I wrote have you? Nowhere have I said the account is a bot. What I have said is that there is an abundance of evidence showing that the content being generated by the account is not organic, with the likely reason for such apparent odd behaviour being that it's not being generated for human consumption, rather it's being done solely to train AI bot programs.Initially it looked like it was paid content creation (a very big thing these days, to generate clicks and site rankings) but as that is apparently not a thing here (the site ranks highly already and has enough free organic content being generated by the user base) then the other only explanation is controversial topic creation for AI learning. It's not a genuine user account imo.
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