Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence becoming widely available to the general public, I’ve long wondered when this day would finally come, but it seems that the Western Digital support forums have finally crossed the Rubicon.
First, WD began using a forum bot to respond to new users after a few days, suggesting that they create a support request. This seemed harmless enough, and was even mildly amusing… at first.
Next, came the flood of painfully obvious A.I. generated SPAM posts, most of which were “helpful” posts filled with SEO keywords and clearly designed to establish rapport with unsuspecting users to gain their trust, while surreptitiously pushing certain products or services. Links may or may not be used, and they’re often disguised using Google or other types of methods to evade SPAM detection filters.
A.I. also helps to compensate for bad English and hide the true motives and/or origins of the SPAMMERS. Regardless, it doesn’t take long to see patterns emerge. If one is paying close attention, certain questionable company names from India or other third-world countries appear again and again. There have even been several incidents where I witnessed bots talking to each other, which was also mildly amusing, yet a very bad sign of things yet to come.
Countless SPAM posts have been reported, yet the posts and the users who created them remain as active as ever, which strongly suggests that WD doesn’t care, or they’re so desperate to get traffic for their dying support forums, that they’re willing to look the other way. Thus, I believe Western Digital has made a Faustian bargain with the Devil because they think it’s in their own best interest. However, those who play with fire eventually get burned.
The final straw was that I began noticing very suspicious patterns of activity surrounding new user accounts, where some “requests” for help appeared to be nothing more than a setup for the SPAMMERS and their A.I. generated garbage to respond to. And the problem is only getting worse with each passing day.
Which brings us to crossing the Rubicon (point of no return), because I have absolutely no interest in participating in any discourse where there’s an increasing probability that the user I’m responding to isn’t even HUMAN and/or nothing more than a pawn in the never-ending games played by SPAMMERS.
The rest of the world is going to hell, so why should this place be any different? Regardless, I’m outtahere.
P.S. To the few WD shills and fanboys who remain… Have fun posting copy-pasted responses to A.I. bots and directing them to post in the correct subforums…
