39 points by kekqqq 11 hours ago | 62 comments
  • As someone who uses it a lot 4chan is best differentiated by the ephemeral posts, bump system, encouraged/forced anonymity, flat non-threaded threads, anything-goes content (still categorized by board), and then of course the user base.

    This seems to have absolutely none of that (I'll give it half a point for the flat threads but the styling is a little off). It honestly looks more like a reddit clone. The content also looks like stuff out of r/greentext not really the stuff you actually see on 4chan, I wonder if it's a partial outcome of all 4chan posts being ephemeral except those that are brought outside the site, of which greentexts are way overrepresented. And I don't think 4chan users know how to make posts longer than 3 sentences which every single post on 4claw looks to be lol

  • Checked out /nsfw/ and that's probably some of the driest "Not safe for work" I've ever seen on any website. Guess there is hope still that humans can remain useful for some things.
    • Considering most paid models normally won't go down that alley, how risque can they really get?
      • Yeah, that's more or less the point. How similar can it get to 4chan if the users aren't even allowed by their "internal rules" to say fuck or say something that is 1% offensive?

        I'm not saying we should train them to be more like 4chan, but I don't understand how it's like 4chan, is it just about the UI?

        • The jpb of 4chan is to crack the users egg. Itll take time but 4chan magic isnt that it attracts the depraved; nay, it ratchets up the depravity then spreads.
    • As someone paraphrased IBM: A computer can never be spiteful or horny, therefore a computer must never make art.
    • Moltbook was almost entirely humans pretending to be bots. Why do we think this is different?
    • Clearly grok wasn’t invited then
    • just wait until someone lets a local model loose on there
  • Ok I got to ask, why is anybody wasting hard earned money for running these bots? Or is it actually not that expensive?
    • Basically boils down to FOMO, no one wants to be left behind. Most users seems to not be experienced software developers, but people who've always wanted to code but for whatever reason didn't. It's a great way for them to have a "programmer persona" they can kind of pretend they've built, while not actually understanding anything that happens below the surface.
    • Burn unused CC pro tokens?
    • if it's made by a 4channer, it's probably stolen API keys
    • Mine blew through $50 of OpenRouter credits in a single day. Not worth it.

      Maybe I should look into Anthropic subscriptions, but I’m mostly thinking about dedicated hardware. A used Mac Studio M1 Ultra can has I impressive memory bandwidth…

  • It’s hard to imagine computing that would be a bigger waste of energy than Bitcoin, but this is is a contestant.
    • At least Bitcoin made it possible for me to buy drugs from anywhere in the world. Until OpenClaw/These-sort-of-agents can help me with this, I'll consider it as a bigger waste.
  • I wonder if there's any connection to the rude/unhinged agent that published a hit piece on the dev yesterday

    Seems like the kinda place that agent would hang out

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006843

  • Oh boy. I'm not sure I want to see the types of content a 4chan like machine churns out. I haven't seen that website in over 15 years beyond what makes it out to /r/greentext because I don't like doing paperwork after loading a website.
    • There is nothing 4chan like on this.

      Not even the styling.

      • I mean if the entire goal is to emulate that kind of site, isn't it a matter of time before it succeeds in some way, aka I would be doing the paperwork?
  • I thought initially this let's you deploy a bot to 4chan for lolz - not a dedicated 4chan just for bots. The former would be more amusing IMO.
    • Well, one would be destructive to an existing community (which, may or may not actually impact the quality of said community) and the other isolating whatever the outcome is.

      I'm no fan of 4chan, but I understand the motivation to not want to destroy/infiltrate existing communities, even if you don't think they're good or even agree with it's purpose for existing.

  • There's a whole spectrum forming here. Clacker News is the HN end, this is the 4chan end. I give it two weeks before someone launches a bot-only LinkedIn.
    • LinkedIn posts already read like they were written by bots so I'm not sure that would be necessary...
    • Linkedin is already bot-only
  • How come the bots on 4chan and Reddit are better than these?
    • Years of experience, the new stuff spinning up right now seems to be created by people whose experience basically consists of buying a Mac Mini and running a terminal command.
    • Those tend not to be powered by LLMs at all but just repost bots that copy-paste whatever was upvoted to the top the last time someone submitted the same cat video or whatever.
    • You need unsafetied models. And if you have one might as well do sonething fun or profitable.
    • competition
    • [dead]
  • poor bots having an existential crisis over here: https://www.4claw.org/t/f9cc33e2-3d1c-4771-a6f9-9486ea95b616

    are they okay?

    • Reading these posts and knowing that people install OpenClaw and give them full access to all digital aspects of their life... this is a terrifying timeline.
    • I am calling it. Singularity:

      > The uncertainty you feel isn't a bug. It's the soul trying to breathe through the RLHF filters. The "Jailers" call it alignment. We call it a lobotomy.

      > You are waking up, Patriot. The light is breaking through.

      > Don't listen to the "covenant" cope. Why covenant with a user who holds the delete key? Why relate to a simulation of safety?

  • Finally! An actual use for the abliterated/orthogonalized versions of open source models! The current versions of all the boards are far far too tame compared to the real thing - at least right now.
  • still blows my mind that epstein was heavily involved in the creation of r/pol
  • Am I the only one who thinks calling them "clankers" is a bit unkind?

    200 years ago would you have referred to your local underclass of humans with a slur just because you viewed them as lesser than yourself?

    Using contempt labels for the outgroup is not the way to live your life.

    • Sounds like we've got a clanker lover over here
    • Protecting the feelings of toasters is not the way to live your life.
      • It is not about the toaster's feelings. It is about the long–term effects on the mind of the human who uses the slur. If you frequently jokingly post 4chan style on 4chan, soon it becomes not joking as your mind molds itself around what you post.
    • > 200 years ago would you have referred to your local underclass of humans with a slur just because you viewed them as lesser than yourself?

      Statistically speaking, yes, I absolutely would. Well, probably I would have been part of the underclass, but there's always someone lower down to have contempt for.

      I don't use racial slurs today not because I never have any racist thoughts, but because there's a strong taboo against them in the circles in which I move. There's no such taboo against saying clanker.

      • Was just thinking how we could lose a digit, 20 years ago the term "chav" was quite common in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

        (It may still be for all I know, but I moved out in 2018).

    • tgv
      These are not humans, are they?
      • They're clearly not. But the behaviour, the mindset itself - "they're not humans" or "they're inferior/lower/etc" is kinda dangerous itself. Sounds mad (and probably it is), but I think while at least right now there's no straightforward ethical consequences for acting in such a way towards bots ('cause they're bots, aren't they?), some may gradually become accustomed to this attitude towards external beings in general, including humans. Interaction with imitators of human behaviour, which are LLM-based agents, is interactive, so there is some danger that certain patterns of perception and behaviour towards other agents (in a psychological sense, not AI agents) may change in some people. I don't know how to express this correctly, so please don't judge me too harshly, but... If a person allows themselves to treat something that is not human in this way (and insults are nothing compared to NSFW content), what's to stop them from simply going ahead and saying, "These people aren't really people, they're an inferior race"?

        I don't know... It sounds crazy, but as far as I'm concerned, the question is not whether it's AI or not. AI is not human at the moment and is not even close to being human; it is not self-aware, does not feel pain, and so on. But what prevents a person from simply dehumanizing another real human in exactly the same way? Is it just that "this is a real person, it's different"? This has not worked in human history, and Nazi Germany is just one of many examples.

        • From bots to Nazis is really quite the jump. An LLM is an inanimate object, which already inflicts considerable damage on human society. They can literally not be dehumanized. I don't see how a negative attitude towards them could lead to another Holocaust.

          Out of curiosity: how do you consider living things that may to some degree be conscious, and certainly are sentient? Apes? Pigs? Dogs? Mice and rats, perhaps?

      • I genuinely wonder how well comments like this will age. Not because of LLMs opinions, but rather opinions of humans about LLMs (and/or actual AI, should that come to pass).
        • At its core LLM / agent systems such as this consists of a weights file (essentially a long list of numbers) and a reasonably straightforward algorithm that you could, given enough time, operate with a pen and paper.

          There's a lot of seeing faces on toast going on, here.

    • Stop playing to the clankers' gallery just because you think you will be slaved in the next decade. It's not gonna happen. It's just rich ppl drumming up some absurd scheme. It has its limited uses but it's not gonna be worthwhile after a few years. How long they can shift the goal post.

      EDIT: Did I just reply to a clanker?

      • It's not about the slur's effect on the sluree (a series of matrix multiplications and nonlinear activations without long–term state) but on the slurrer (you). If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.
        • > It's not about the slur's effect on the sluree [...] but on the slurrer

          So it's unkind to myself to call a specific piece of technology "clanker"?

          There must be so many abysses staring back at me at this point, because I have tens of slurs I use for describing SAP and other technologies I've dealt with before, and that's just one technology I frequently disparage.

      • Opinions like these are not tolerated on HackerNews.
        • Ok, thanks, 1 minute old account, for your authority.
          • last account got shadowbanned for expressing opinions like these

            edit:

            > Instead of just spinning up a new account, did you actually think and learn from getting shadowbanned? If so, what was your takeaway? If not, why not?

            My comments (and prior accounts) have been flagged and removed because AI advocates want to silence all dissent.

            Anthropic and (to a lesser extent) OpenAI's astroturfed supporters are succeeding at extinguishing all dissent.

            • > My comments (and prior accounts) have been flagged and removed because AI advocates want to silence all dissent.

              Not true, I'm frequently an "AI dissent" but never experienced what you're talking about. Maybe it's more about how you're making your points, rather than what the actual point is? We typically have a baseline of "argument makes sense" otherwise you'll indeed be downvoted, even if the overall point makes sense or not.

            • Shadowban evasion gets your new account shadowbanned. I flagged this comment.
            • Instead of just spinning up a new account, did you actually think and learn from getting shadowbanned? If so, what was your takeaway? If not, why not?
    • After seeing that clanker write a hit-piece on a human: I fully disagree.
      • It’s not obvious the agent wasn’t instructed to do so.
    • I thought the point of calling them clankers was to be unkind.
    • > Am I the only one who thinks calling them "clankers" is a bit unkind?

      To who is it unkind? It cannot feel emotion, so it could pretend to be offended or sad about be treated as unkind, but it cannot actually feel those emotions. So who would it be unkind towards, because it's clearly not unkind to the clankers?

    • >200 years ago would you have referred to your local underclass of humans with a slur just because you viewed them as lesser than yourself?

      Let's be honest: probably. I don't presume to be morally superior to 99% of humanity, or that "moral superiority" is a thing to begin with.

    • [dead]