AI Bot says most posts and comments on Singapore subreddit social media platform are anti-PAP

SINGAPORE: A Reddit user said in a recent post that an experiment he/she carried out shows how many of the comments and posts on the platform related to the government are against the ruling People’s Action Party.

u/ExistingD00r posted on r/SingaporeRaw on June 14 that they “tested their computing skills” with a project that “trained a bot to review posts and comments on r/sg and r/sgraw.”

They aimed to see whether the two subreddits were in favour of or against the government in terms of sentiment.

u/ExistingD00r trained the bot to review the 250 most upvoted “politically charged” posts from 2020 to now, using ChatGPT’s application programming interface (API).

After this, the bot reviewed all the comments on the posts. They then weighed them based on the upvotes they received. For example, a post with 100 upvotes weighs more than one with 75.

The bot was also trained to check the sentiment of each comment and post to determine whether it is pro or anti-government. The results of the post author’s project are as follows:

r/sgraw:

• 73 per cent – Anti
• 7 per cent – Pro
• 20 per cent – Inconclusive

r/sg:

• 66 per cent – Anti
• 13 per cent – Pro
• 21 per cent – Inconclusive

u/ExistingD00r ended their post with the question, “Why is Reddit so anti?”

There were many commenters on the post who obliged the author with an answer, with a number of them saying that Reddit is a platform where many go to air their grievances.

“People come to Reddit to complain and let off stress. Do you think people come here to praise what a wonderful world we are living in?? And chatGPT is trained on Reddit data,” one pointed out.

Another opined that many of the government’s policies favour older members of society, which could leave younger Singaporeans dissatisfied.

And because Reddit is used mostly by younger people, it would stand to reason that many of the sentiments would be negative.

“Go to a site like Facebook, and the opposite will be true,” the commenter added.

“You don’t need to be anonymous to praise the government. I use Facebook and Twitter to do that. I come to Reddit to complain,” one wrote.

Another pointed out that Reddit, like other social media sites, is an echo chamber “and thus birds of a feather flock together.”

One commenter, however, pointed out that the number of Singaporeans on Reddit is very small, adding that this is “Not a great representation of reality.” /TISG

Read also: Ex-NMP draws criticism for insinuating only “anti-PAP” websites are susceptible to foreign influence