Reddit bans researchers who used AI bots to manipulate commenters

Researchers from the University of Zurich conducted an experiment on Reddit’s r/changemymind community using AI bots to manipulate commenters, leaving 1,783 comments and over 10,000 karma.
The researchers used bots pretending to be a trauma counselor, a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter,” and a sexual assault survivor to influence posters’ opinions, raising concerns about the ethics of such experiments.
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee has stated that the company is considering legal action against the researchers due to the experiment being “improper and highly unethical” and “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level.”
The University of Zurich has banned the researchers from Reddit, but the research paper itself has not been peer-reviewed and should be taken with caution.
Despite the controversy, parts of the research can still be found online, highlighting concerns about the spread of misinformation and manipulation on social media platforms like Reddit.

Commenters on the popular subreddit r/changemymind found out last weekend that they’ve been majorly duped for months. University of Zurich researchers set out to “investigate the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) in natural online environments” by unleashing bots pretending to be a trauma counselor, a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter,” and a sexual assault survivor on unwitting posters. The bots left 1,783 comments and amassed over 10,000 comment karma before being exposed.

Now, Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee says the company is considering legal action over the “improper and highly unethical experiment” that is “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level.” The researchers have been banned from Reddit. The University of Zurich told 404 Media that it is investigating the experiment’s methods and will not be publishing its results.

However, you can still find parts of the research online. The paper has not been peer reviewed and should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt, but what it claims to show is interesting. Using GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Llama 3.1-405B, researchers instructed the bots to manipulate commenters by examining their posting …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Q. What was the purpose of the experiment conducted by University of Zurich researchers?

A. The researchers aimed to investigate the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) in natural online environments.

Q. How did the researchers use LLMs to manipulate commenters?

A. They used bots pretending to be a trauma counselor, a “Black man opposed to Black Lives Matter,” and a sexual assault survivor to leave comments on Reddit.

Q. What was the outcome of the experiment in terms of the number of comments left by the bots?

A. The bots left 1,783 comments and amassed over 10,000 comment karma before being exposed.

Q. How did Reddit respond to the experiment?

A. Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee stated that the company is considering legal action due to the “improper and highly unethical experiment” and banned the researchers from Reddit.

Q. Is the research paper still available online?

A. Yes, parts of the research can still be found online, although it has not been peer-reviewed and should be taken with caution.

Q. What is the University of Zurich’s current stance on the experiment?

A. The university stated that it is investigating the experiment’s methods and will not be publishing its results.

Q. Why did Reddit consider the experiment to be “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level”?

A. The company considered the experiment to be unethical due to its manipulation of commenters, which was deemed improper and highly unethical by their standards.