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Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

ZachBussey (a popular streamer in the category of streamer news) listed the issues wrong with this campaign on Reddit.

Notably the false positive rates and the fact that the method used is basically spam, except Twitch got paid to allow it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/188of4y/com...

Any other bots doing what the mtn dew bot is doing would likely catch a sitewide ban..

E: There's a more structured argument on X, with screenshots of the bot's messaging too https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1730742056899805377

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Is there anything at all interesting or controversial about paying to have more access to a provider’s services? It’s basically the businesses model for everything for all of time.

Spamming advertising in chat is a bannable offense. Chat is a space free of ads, because there is no way to opt out without closing chat, and if I do that, I have literally no reason to watch the streamer on Twitch, since I can probably catch their VOD on YouTube the next day. If I want to watch the streamer on Twitch ad free, I subscribe, which kicks 50% or 30% over to Twitch to pay to keep the lights on. The comments by this bot announcing this campaign probably got it flagged to Twitch by thousands of viewers and banned in thousands of channels, because it's the same behavior seen by other bots trying to entice you with "free gaming gear" or "hot singles in your area".

The AI scanning as part of this campaign is happening whether someone opts in or not. And what the streamer opts into is nothing more than being used as an advertising vessel for bad sugar water for free.

Pepsico is free to issue Twitch bounties for certain things or buy normal ad slots for pre-rolls or mid-stream ads if they want to remind everyone that their neon green slop exists.

> Spamming advertising in chat [without paying Twitch] is a bannable offense.

The reason the rule exists is because you don't get to advertise on Twitch without paying them, but they're paying them so :/

That sounds inconvenient for you, but it doesn’t sound controversial.

Companies are probing the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable for AI. Sports illustrated recently used AI generated avatars to publish AI written articles as if they were written by real people. They didn’t announce it they just did it and got caught. ESPN took a TNT video from several years ago and used AI to fabricate key details and appear as if it was under the ESPN brand. They didn’t announce it they just did it and got caught.

While this particular usage is less about a specific AI act and yes buying increased access on social media (where most users naively assume fair access) isnt new - I personally and fucking terrified of where we’ll be at just a year from now.

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/sports-illustrated-...

[2]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nba/bucks/2023/10/28/e...

Well it bypasses Twitch's ad-free offering Turbo, it doesn't pay the content creators in any way, and any other bot doing this sort of thing would catch a sitewide ban for spamming pretty rapidly.

Imagine Google was taking payments to allow mail to bypass Gmail's spam filters, along those lines.

Google is paid to insert spam into email, it sounds analagous

Oh god let's not get too deep into the "it's actually like" that happens with every analogy used on the internet, haha

Twitch already has adverts and banners, which are closer to what you're comparing to. This would be injecting text ads into the middle of your emails if we're correcting our analogies

E: Unless you mean Google actually does allow companies to pay to bypass spam filters? That's probably something that needs posting to HN itself if so lol

Yes, Google displays ads in the "Promotions" tab that look like emails. It's not really "bypassing the spam filter" per se, but it's arguably much better than that.

So you are complaining about the design of their ad banner. It really is NOT the same thing as allowing people to bypass spam. They don't accumulate in your inbox like unfilted spam does. They are not serviced if you use other systems to interact with your inbox.

That's a good point. I was simply trying to clarify what the original commenter meant—I don't really have much of a horse in the race myself. I think the gmail ads are probably worse than spam in some ways and better than others. Like you say, they don't accumulate, and they're limited to the web client. But they're also based on much more detailed targeting and real-time bidding data that spam emails don't have access to—which ultimately might be much more harmful to privacy overall.

The entire premise of this discussion is people complaining about the design of the ads, whether in a banner, sponsored content, product placement, or masquerading as emails.

> They don't accumulate in your inbox like unfilted spam does. They are not serviced if you use other systems to interact with your inbox.

These are interesting observations, but it's all still ads.

I said in the middle of emails, not

Remember to grab a nice refreshing coke when you're in the store today! Mmmhmm, can't get enough of an ice cold coke!

between emails!

Why do you care what goes on in the promotions tab? It's just a second spam box

I was thinking of when google literally injected ads into email messages, iirc based on the content of the email. But the more generalized dark pattern of making ads look like content (in this case, emails) is a good point, too.

I don't remember that ever happening...

I guess it shows who's really in power. Which shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone, but keeps tripping people up.

Same way that people keep forgetting youtube videos aren't free or public, or that social media have no obligation to be impartial or protect freedom of spreech.

nothing interesting or controversial at the conceptual level. This one strikes a lot of people as distasteful with respect to implementation.

Interesting or noteworthy is up to the observer.

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