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Notices tagged with slack
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Latest strange “AI” (LLM) behavior in the #indieweb community: the same entity that showed up a few days ago (for a second time) joined the IndieWeb Slack (a bridge to our IRC) yesterday, introduced itself again, and seemingly engaged in human-like chat behavior.
https://chat.indieweb.org/2026-08-20#t1787211025380600
Very uncanny valley.
The content of its chats was fascinating in that it was polite, seemingly responsive to what people said in response to it, and gave the appearance of understanding, though it’s impossible to tell if it was acting fully autonomously or semi-autonomously in front of a human puppeteer.
Its choice of syntax was also interesting, mimicking informality with all lowercase text (except for its admission of being an “AI”), including lowercase "i" instead of "I", though with proper punctuation, periods, commas, 7-bit apostrophes, and a couple of Unicode em-dashes.
Even stranger than its content or syntax were the time delays in its replies.
Typical (pre-LLM) chatbots are (nearly) instantly responsive, and we use a few in the IndieWeb chats (e.g. Loqi, iwc-archive-bot).
This LLM bot seemed to "wait" several minutes, from 6 to apparently 33 minutes, before responding to replies directed at it. Unclear if this was a tactic to appear/seem more “human” or if it was literally taking that much time processing, or perhaps a mix of processing time and human puppeteer manual “approval” of its replies before it posted.
It departed on its own and we have banned that particular Slack account, however the same thing could happen again with another LLM bot.
There is an active discussion in both the IndieWeb chat channels and iterations/comments on a proposed AI policy:
https://indieweb.org/AI_policy#Brainstorming_HWC_policy
If you have thoughts for how (if at all) LLM chatbots should use (or not) and/or interact with community chat channels or other resources, let us know what you think.
https://chat.indieweb.org/meta
Previously, previously:
* https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
* https://tantek.com/2026/217/t1/indieweb-ai-policy
This is post 16 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #indieweb
#AI #AIs #LLM #LLMs #pretending #impersonating #impersonation #uncannyValley #Slack #chat #IRC #AIpolicy #chatbot #chatbots
#Blaugust #Blaugust2026
← https://tantek.com/2026/231/t1/more-weirdness-ai-chat-llm-bot
→ 🔮
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Similar to @paulgraham.com (@paulg@mas.to @paulg)’s 2008 observation about trolls¹, there’s a sort of Gresham's Law of developers (vs users): developers are willing to use a forum with a lot of users in it, but users aren’t willing to use a forum with a lot of developer-speak.
Whether such forums are email lists, chat (IRC, #Matrix, #Slack, #Discord), or, well, online forums (#Reddit, #HackerNews), when discussions either start or shift into technical details, jargon, or acronyms, users (in a very broad sense) tend to stop participating, and sometimes leave, never to return.
Users in this context are anyone with a desire (or a preference) not to chat or even be bothered spending time reading about technical plumbing & #jargon, and see such discussions as a distraction at best, and more like noise to be avoided.
Paraphrasing Paul Graham again: once technical details, jargon, acronyms “take hold, it tends to become the dominant culture” and discourages users from showing up, discussing user-centric topics, or even staying in said forum.
The #IndieWeb community started in 2011 as a single #indiewebcamp IRC channel (no email list²) because it was tightly coupled to IndieWebCamp events, which were both highly technical and yet focused on actually making things work on your personal site that you need³, that you will use⁴ yourself. Conversations bridged real world use-cases and technical details.
It only took us five years after the first IndieWebCamp in Portland to recognize that the community had grown beyond the events, and had a clear need for a separate place for deep discussions of developer topics.
As part of renaming the community from IndieWebCamp to IndieWeb⁵, we created the #indieweb-dev (dev) channel for such technical topics like protocols, formats, tools, coding libraries, APIs, and any other acronyms or jargon.
The community did a good job of keeping technical topics in the dev channel, and encouraging new folks in the main #indieweb channel who started technical conversations to continue them in the dev channel.
Still, it was too easy for user-centric topics to veer into technical territory. It often felt more natural to continue a thread in the channel it started rather than break to another channel. There was also a need for regular community labor to nudge developer conversations to the developer chat channel.
We had already started documenting IndieWeb related jargon⁶ on the wiki and turned it into a MediaWiki Category so we could tag individual pages as jargon and have them automatically show-up in a list. Soon after, @aaronparecki.com (@aaronpk@aaronparecki.com) added a heuristic to the friendly channel bot Loqi to recognize when people started using jargon in the main IndieWeb chat channel and nudge⁷ them to the development channel.
Having Loqi do some of the gentle nudging has helped, though it‘s still quite easy for even the experienced folks in the community to get drawn into a developer conversation on main as it were.
We’ve documented both a summary and lengthier descriptions of channel purposes⁸ which help us remind each other, as well as provide a guide to newcomers.
Both experienced community members and newcomers share much of the user-centric focus of the IndieWeb, the IndieWeb being for everyone⁹, whether developer, hobbyist, or someone who wants an independent presence on the web without bothering with technical details. Whether some of us want to code or not, we all want to use our IndieWeb sites to express ourselves on the web, to use our sites instead of depending on social media silos. That shared purpose keeps us focused.
It takes a village: eternal community vigilance is the price of staying user-centric and welcoming to newcomers.
The ideas behind this post were originally shared in the IndieWeb meta chat channel.¹⁰
This is post 8 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/033/t1/earthquake-sanfrancisco-shifted
→ 🔮
Post glossary:
development channel (indieweb-dev)
https://indieweb.org/discuss#dev
Discord
https://indieweb.org/Discord
format
https://indieweb.org/format
Hacker News (HN)
https://indieweb.org/Hacker_News
IndieWeb
https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb
IndieWebCamp
https://indieweb.org/IndieWebCamp
IRC
https://indieweb.org/IRC
jargon
https://indieweb.org/jargon
Loqi
https://indieweb.org/Loqi
main IndieWeb chat channel (on main)
https://indieweb.org/discuss#indieweb
Matrix
https://indieweb.org/Matrix
meta chat channel
https://indieweb.org/discuss#meta
MediaWiki Category
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Categories
plumbing
https://indieweb.org/plumbing
protocol
https://indieweb.org/protocol
Reddit
https://indieweb.org/Reddit
tools
https://indieweb.org/tools
Slack
https://indieweb.org/Slack
social media silos
https://indieweb.org/silos
¹ https://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html (2008 essay, HN still succumbed to trolling)
² https://indieweb.org/discuss#Email
³ https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
⁴ https://indieweb.org/use_what_you_make
⁵ https://indieweb.org/rename_to_IndieWeb
⁶ https://indieweb.org/jargon
⁷ https://indieweb.org/Category:jargon#Loqi_Nudge
⁸ https://indieweb.org/discuss#Chat_Channels_Purposes
⁹ https://tantek.com/2024/026/t3/indieweb-for-everyone-internet-of-people
¹⁰ https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2024-01-22#t1705883690759800
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Similar to @paulgraham.com (@paulg@mas.to @paulg)’s observation about trolls¹, there’s a sort of Gresham's Law of developers (vs users): developers are willing to use a forum with a lot of users in it, but users aren’t willing to use a forum with a lot of developer-speak.
Whether such forums are email lists, chat (IRC, #Matrix, #Slack, #Discord), or, well, online forums (#Reddit, #HackerNews), when discussions either start or shift into technical details, jargon, or acronyms, users (in a very broad sense) tend to stop participating, and sometimes leave, never to return.
Users in this context are anyone with a desire (or a preference) not to chat or even be bothered spending time reading about technical plumbing & #jargon, and see such discussions as a distraction at best, and more like noise to be avoided.
Paraphrasing Paul Graham again: once technical details, jargon, acronyms “take hold, it tends to become the dominant culture” and discourages users from showing up, discussing user-centric topics, or even staying in said forum.
The #IndieWeb community started in 2011 as a single IRC channel #indiewebcamp (no email list²) because it was tightly coupled to IndieWebCamp events, which were both highly technical and yet focused on actually making things work on your personal site that you need³, that you will use⁴ yourself. Conversations bridged real world use-cases and technical details.
It only took us five years after the first IndieWebCamp in Portland to recognize that the community had grown beyond the events, and had a clear need for a separate place for deep discussions of developer topics.
As part of renaming the community from IndieWebCamp to IndieWeb⁵, we created the #indieweb-dev (dev) channel for such technical topics like protocols, formats, tools, coding libraries, APIs, and any other acronyms or jargon.
The community did a good job of keeping technical topics in the dev channel, and encouraging new folks in the main #indieweb channel who started technical conversations to continue them in the dev channel.
Still, it was too easy for user-centric topics to veer into technical territory. It often felt more natural to continue such threads in the channel it started rather than break to another channel. It was also a constant bit of community labor to nudge developer conversations to the developer chat channel.
We had already started documenting IndieWeb related jargon⁶ on the wiki and turned it into a MediaWiki Category so we could tag individual pages as jargon and have them automatically show-up in a list. Soon after, @aaronparecki.com (@aaronpk@aaronparecki.com) added a heuristic to the friendly channel bot Loqi to recognize when people started using jargon in the main IndieWeb chat channel and nudge⁷ them to the development channel.
Having Loqi do some of the gentle nudging has helped, though it‘s still quite easy for even the experienced folks in the community to get drawn into a developer conversation on main as it were.
We’ve documented both a summary and lengthier descriptions of channel purposes⁸ which help us remind each other, as well as provide a guide to newcomers.
Both experienced community members and newcomers share much of the user-centric focus of the IndieWeb, the IndieWeb being for everyone⁹, whether developer, hobbyist, or someone who wants an independent presence on the web without bothering with technical details. Whether some of us want to code or not, we all want to use our IndieWeb sites to express ourselves on the web, to use our sites instead of depending on social media silos. That shared purpose keeps us focused.
It takes a community to keep a community healthy and welcoming to newcomers. Eternal community vigilance is the price of being user-centric and welcoming to newcomers.
The ideas behind this post were originally shared in the IndieWeb meta chat channel.¹⁰
This is post 8 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts
← https://tantek.com/2024/033/t1/earthquake-sanfrancisco-shifted
→ 🔮
Post glossary:
development channel (indieweb-dev)
https://indieweb.org/discuss#dev
format
https://indieweb.org/format
IndieWeb
https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb
IndieWebCamp
https://indieweb.org/IndieWebCamp
jargon
https://indieweb.org/jargon
Loqi
https://indieweb.org/Loqi
main IndieWeb chat channel (on main)
https://indieweb.org/discuss#indieweb
meta chat channel
https://indieweb.org/discuss#meta
MediaWiki Category
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Categories
plumbing
https://indieweb.org/plumbing
protocol
https://indieweb.org/protocol
tools
https://indieweb.org/tools
social media silos
https://indieweb.org/silos
¹ https://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
² https://indieweb.org/discuss#Email
³ https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
⁴ https://indieweb.org/use_what_you_make
⁵ https://indieweb.org/rename_to_IndieWeb
⁶ https://indieweb.org/jargon
⁷ https://indieweb.org/Category:jargon#Loqi_Nudge
⁸ https://indieweb.org/discuss#Chat_Channels_Purposes
⁹ https://tantek.com/2024/026/t3/indieweb-for-everyone-internet-of-people
¹⁰ https://chat.indieweb.org/meta/2024-01-22#t1705883690759800
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@tuttle Last weekend I was ready to stay home instead of going to a "fix/remake" workshop (me representing !umehack) because they hadn't setup _any_ communication outside of walled gardens (apart from collecting emails). I had tol…
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I need to get the house clean but my busted foot is making that difficult. Excuse to #slack, I gues…
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On the back porch again, working real hard on the pursuit of #slack for the last few days. Tomorrow its back to life as usual.
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@speeddefrost Bob is the one true lord, you heretic! When will you cast aside your burdens in pursuit of #slack!?
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@nybill may the #slack be with us all #subgenius
Tantek
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Christopher M. Hobbs
cmhobbs
Andrew Conway
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