“If you don’t speak English, you need to find a different community,” the post reads. “We cannot distinguish between AI-written and AI-translated. Since you don’t speak English, you can’t even verify yourself if it translated correctly.”
There’s power-tripping, then there’s stupid.
Reddit added auto-translation to their client, so non-English speakers are deliberately misled by the UX into thinking the thread originated in their native language.
Of course, this led to a self-imposed Tower of Babel situation where naive users are regularly unknowingly talking to people in their native tongue where no one else speaks it.
Blame the admins, not the mods.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/1dfnsub/how_do_i_stop_the_automatic_translation_of_all/
I’m still on old reddit which doesn’t have this feature so instead I get to see random non-english posts interspersed in a conversation and get confused before I remember there’s an auto-translate feature on the site now
Oh! That’s what’s going on. I thought people were just writing non sequitur alt-language posts
Huh, talk about a feature that’s so close to great. With a little “automatically translated from language by Reddit” that sounds awesome.
Multiple times, in the US, I’ve clicked on a Google link to a reddit thread and it loads in like Turkish or something. Usually it just takes a refresh of the page to get back to english, but it’s still weird that it’s happened to me multiple times.
Using a VPN? Usually that my reason
I see google results for Steam forums default to weird languages all the time without being on a vpn and along side perfectly fine english default results (inculding often the same forum thread just in a different default language), so I’m more inclined to say there’s something about that part of the algorithm that’s just fucked.
Not on my built-in Google app. I do use a VPN on Opera, and Ecosia has a built-in ad blocker that works pretty well too, but I don’t do anything fancy to my Google other than YouTube Revanced.
Yea absolutely, some of these automatic translated threads seemed easy to spot IMO with something about the writing being just a little off or unnatural.
I had some situations where I was not 100% sure myself.
Not to mention people that are unaware this is even a thing, could easily be fooled. Any platform that does this should really be stating that content is being automatically translated for them.
People reading and responding to AI generated text and both not knowing due to auto translation. Great…
Specific non english subs are probably the best place to avoid accidentally reading LLM comments with it being less likely to encounter other language users.
To be fair, these days Reddit is overrun with clearly AI generated content. The Linux subreddit is seeing slop posts about multiple new vibecoded projects every day. So, I don’t envy anyone trying to moderate and preserve real communities over there.
Edit: For example, I just checked and saw this https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1xfgctx/i_built_my_own_kernel_on_top_of_linus_claude_code 🙄 At least they were honest about their slop, because most others are not…
Reddit is unusable and overflowing with slop.
pretty much why reddit is forcing logins from USers who are scare of getting banned. they cant make money off of AI slop.
c’est la vie
SPEAK ENGLISH IS THIS AI?!
que sera sera
Quizás, quizás, quizás
SPRICH
DEUTSCH
DU
HURENSOHN!
Meinen sie Kesslervieh?
People power-trip while stupid all the time. Actually, it’s usually more of a prerequisite I think.
i’m surprised the shareholders allowed such a racist move.
TBH, I’m cool with personal use LM-based translation as long as the training data is ethical sourced and the use of process disclosed, maybe with original message as context so it’s clear that it’s a translation rather than an outright generation.
After all, isn’t that what language models are made for? Modelling language?
You guys still on Reddit ? 😂😂😂
Most people are gonna be on Reddit until it shuts down
You and … Bots?, most people quit in 23
I don’t use Reddit anymore and some people still use it
As long as this is the top comment on every post in this community I’m not leaving it.
Perhaps you are not aware but nobody gives a shit what you do or don’t.
Good news this comment is the second comment on this thread not the top
Ah, they ban translated texts. Because there are loads of non-native speakers who have a way better command of the English language than a large percentile of the native speakers…
You’re right, it’s obviously jealousy. /S
I hate Reddit as well. These days I just use it to find solutions and tips quickly. Other than it’s useless. Old Reddit is not even Usable w/o an account.
RIP Non-english speakers lol
Get off reddit, it’s almost as bad as Facebook and X. You will not find anything but misery there.
I’ll take my down votes for this but facebook is better than reddit if you just lurk. I basically get cooking videos. I hate to say it but the cooking videos have been actually helpful. I mean there’s no point in advertising to me since I have other expenses.
Giving them any access to your devices and network is dangerous. They’re openly breaking the law now and their intentions with your data are hostile. The algorithm is bad enough on its own, but it’s not the main reason to avoid meta, privacy is.
I use the web browser for it and it’s very buggy. I’m sure it still gets a fair share of data but I don’t have a luxury of privacy because of where I worked and whom I’m associated with.
Ah I see, that’s unfortunate :(
Meh. It’s Reddit. They have a ban quota.
“a revolt” as if there when weren’t a million alternative communities on Reddit and Fedi already.
Another baby step in the relentless march towards idiocracy.
Doesn’t Reddit already translate posts and comments? What a stupid rule.
Why is it stupid? Reddit is auto-translating using LLMs. That means any text from a non-English speaker has to be AI generated. Non-English speakers are incapable of submitting non-AI text to a forum in English that bans AI text. It’s literally impossible to ban AI text without banning AI-translated text.
Does reddit make it clear when a text is auto translated into another language or do they try to pass it off like it is the original comment that was posted by a native speaker?
The latter.
That’s an insane way to do something lol
Things always get lost in translation. A reader should at least be able to see the original so they can consult a different translator if necessary
It serves multiple stupid purposes. They’re trying to appeal to international users. But also by auto-translating they’ve been increasing reddit’s presence in search engines. That floods search engines with useless duplicate data. Am I the only one whose been seeing this? The same reddit posts in different languages will show up in search engines.
A lot of people don’t seem to have noticed they also have been injecting content from other threads as “related content” or whatever. Site indexers pick up junk data. Irrelevant posts have been getting falsely marked as relevant to a search query.
Reddit is a nuisance. It amazes me how people are so attached to the idea that it’s got content they can’t find anywhere else. Are people using the same internet I am? Reddit is a poisoned well. It’s nearly useless.
It’s one of the only ‘Third Places’ available
touché.
