There would be no user voting at all. Instead, one AI handles every upvote and downvote according to guidance written by the subreddit moderator(s).
For example, it might assign 20 votes to one post and -5 votes to another. (Of course, this would require Reddit to implement a feature to allow this for these voting AIs.)
The key part is that the voting guidance is public. Anyone can read the rules that explain how the AI is supposed to vote. For example, the AI might be instructed to reward originality, clarity, kindness, strong evidence, or creative thinking, and to downvote low effort posts, repetition, hostility, or bad faith arguments.
Why this could be interesting:
* It removes mob dynamics, karma farming, and timing effects. Visibility depends on meeting the stated values, not popularity.
* The subreddit develops a very coherent culture. People learn how to write for the AI rather than reminding other humans to “read the rules.”
* Posting becomes a kind of skill. You are not chasing vibes, you are demonstrating that you understood and followed the principles.
* The advice itself becomes part of the experiment. Users can debate whether the AI’s guidance is good, flawed, biased, or incomplete.
Moderators could update the guidance over time and keep a changelog explaining why priorities shifted. There could even be meta threads where users suggest amendments, even if mods keep final control.
What do you think of this idea?
I'd imagine that it's not easy to come up with a set of rules that don't incentivize users to just write to cater to the AI upvoting bot instead of genuinely what they think.
That said, users now on Reddit will often write to get upvotes instead of truly how they feel.
A perfect example is ask Reddit how to get a nice girl friend and the most upvoted post will always be something like "just be yourself, be confident". In reality, the #1 thing is to be attractive and have money.
Just like on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and all the other cancers that would mean that the company or people in control of the AI would get to decide what people see. I don't think that transparency would make that much better as it does not change the fundamental power structure – besides foundation models being non-deterministic and having closed training source does not really allow full transparency – the public prompts would however make it very easy to game the system and only post content that specifically adheres to the metrics given to the model leading to only specifically created spam and slop getting through.
> People learn how to write for the AI rather than reminding other humans to “read the rules.”
Yeah, I dont't want to write for some AI. I want to write for other real humans.
> There would be no user voting at all. Instead, one AI handles every upvote and downvote according to guidance written by the subreddit moderator(s).
I want mods to have less power, not more. I am interested in how we can achieve this as good as possible without destructive forces like traditional spam, trolling and the new AI slop spam ruining everything.
Voting is the process of making collective decisions by means of submitting and then adding up individual choices.
I think it eliminates the whole purpose and value of the voting.
The idea is everyone posts in good faith, and AI moderates the posts before you send.
You can still go ahead if you don't agree with the moderation, so it isn't censorship, it's just that it provides a pause.
The AI also rates the posts and comments, just like you said.
I built it for precisely the reasons you said, because the way it is going, reddit is unsustainable.
I hope they change something.