I used to comment frequently on a very niche hobby subreddit with fewer than 2 000 subscribers. After the Reddit API changes and the rise of AI-generated posts, I got sick of reddit and deleted my account.
Before deleting my account I made sure to obfuscate all my valuable contributions (for example as long term reviews of products and detailed analyses with pros and cons) so that if reddit somehow managed to restore them, they would be of no use. I thought this should have done the job, but it wasn’t.
Today I decided to google my old reddit username. Found some comments because other users had mentioned/pinged me in their comments. I don’t mind that. I couldn’t find any of my posts or comments on reddit and was happy.
As I scrolled through the Google search results, I stumbled upon a blog I had never heard of before. My Reddit username appeared in the search result preview which got my interest.
Could it be that another user that coincidentally chose the same username? I wanted to see what this other person had written.
I opened the blog post which discussed a product related to that niche hobby. Of course the post was infested with Amazon affiliate links everywhere. I continued scrolling to the comment section to see what “I” had written.
To my shock, it was the exact review I had posted on Reddit before editing and deleting my stuff.
The blog owner had copied my original reddit post and used my reddit username as the blog comment username. I felt upset because I hadn’t given anyone permission to reuse my posts elsewhere.
I don’t want to name the blog, hobby and reddit username so that blog don’t get more undeserved views.
Fake blogs scraped from Reddit used to be fairly common and they weren’t even exclusive to product reviews. Although it is surprising you found one that’s still up, I’d assumed they would die off after the api purge.
Op, I may be misunderstanding. Are you saying the blog owner used your quote in the article, or are you saying a botted comment used your name and content?
The former is fair use, the latter is outrageous.
There is of course a third possibility, and that is that you should check your Carbon Monoxide detectors.
Always a good idea to check the CO detectors, just in case.
Unfortunately that was common even before LLMs. I’ve ancountered at least half a dozen websites that mirror Stack Overflow questions, along with answers and comments, in a blog-like presentation.
Along with the other comments, your review may have been supplied or archived well before you obfuscated your history.
As I tell my daughters, the Internet is forever.
felt upset because I hadn’t given anyone permission to reuse my posts elsewhere.
?? This is the internet. Anything you post can and will be scraped. That was true before AI came onto the scene and will be true long after today.
I have a question. Is the mildly infuriating part for you the part where there is account masquerading as you on the internet, using your words and proliferating data/information essentially in your name?
Or is it that you wanted to deprive the internet at large of whatever advice or information was imparted in that comment and someone else/a bot is reuploading that information without your consent?
Because on the one hand, I agree that using your username and your written comment to validate an account that’s likely a bot account is dodgy and underhanded and messed up.
But on the other hand, if that advice is valuable to other people and the intent was to impart that information to others outside of reddit and this is attempt to attribute it to you, rather than an attempt at plagiarism, I’m not sure I would necessarily agree.
But this is unfortunately one of the downside to putting any comments/information on the internet.
I don’t want to name the blog, hobby and reddit username so that blog don’t get more undeserved views.
In that case I’ll assume your review was about a massive dildo.
See that’s why you need niche hobby reviews: it’s not always about the size.
I was told it was never about the size, it was about how you used it!
I dont see a major issue here unless reviewing was the blogs sole purpose. You reviewed a product and someone else said “as per this revie by xyz”. They credited and quoted you. This is the foundation of discourse.
yeah very much a welcome to the internet, everything that can be copied, will be copied
Insert every artist who made an image and found it a short time later cropped so their name is taken out, compressed and pixelated, with a 9GAG trampstamp … and that’s the version that spreads all over the web
Stop looking at me!
They cited you for your words and presented them accurately. What more would you want from them? Permission to read your public forum post? Even of you didn’t specifically agree to reddit owning anything you post, you must’ve known other people would see it
You gave reddit permission whenever you posted anything to their site. The fact that they actually “cited” you at least in a rudimentary fashion is more than most. I could quote this or any other post whenever and there’s nothing to stop me. There’s no damage to you and no privacy posting in public.
