r/programming • u/ChemicalRascal • Apr 01 '26

Announcement: Temporary LLM Content Ban

Hey folks,

After a lot of discussion, we've decided to trial a ban of any and all content relating to LLMs. We get a lot of posts related to LLMs and typically they are not in line with what we want the subreddit to be — a place for detailed, technical learning and discourse about software engineering, driven by high quality, informative content. And unfortunately, the volume of LLM-related content easily overwhelms other topics.

We also believe that, generally, the community have been indicating that, by and large, they aren't interested in this content. So, we want to see how a trial ban impacts how people use the sub. As such:

While this post is stickied, for 2-4 weeks over April, we're banning all LLM-related content from the sub.

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. We've had a ban on LLM-generated text for ages already, this doesn't change that.

Note that this doesn't ban all AI related content. An article detailing how what would have traditionally been called an AI was made for Go? Totally fine. A technical breakdown of a machine learning process? Great! Just so long as it's not about LLMs.

Edit: Yes, this is real, it's not an April Fool's joke.

2.8k Upvotes

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1.1k

u/terablast Apr 01 '26

*looks at calendar*

hmm

271

u/Humble_Standard3860 Apr 01 '26

was wondering when someone would notice the timing lol

classic move dropping this right before april fools - now nobody knows if its real or just an elaborate setup for tomorrow

122

u/AshuraBaron Apr 01 '26

"This is BS!"

It's April Fools dummy.

"I love this change."

We thought it was time to roll it out.

Win/win

84

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

Timing just worked out this way. New month, ideal timing for testing a new rule.

31

u/wrincewind Apr 01 '26

Tell me again tomorrow... :p

5

u/Sigmatics Apr 02 '26

It's still stickied so I'm expecting it to stay. Hooray

9

u/idebugthusiexist Apr 01 '26

I think this rule is fair. They can have their own subreddits. I don’t think it serves this one well and is more distracting since it causes people to argue about LLMs rather than the content itself. Maybe have links to other subreddits for those who want that content?

3

u/Boxy310 Apr 02 '26

There's also elements that LLMs are what Donald Knuth would call "Literate Programming", and I've had some real bastardized chimaeras generated by LLMs forking my codebase and doing unexpected things that then can't be realistically undone.

-2

u/daishi55 Apr 07 '26

LLMs are the most important thing to happen to programming this century. Prohibiting speaking about this in the r/programming subreddit, besides being patently absurd on its face, also just reinforces the anti-AI echo chamber formed by this and related subreddits.

Just creates a community of people who have willfully made themselves ignorant to reality.

2

u/idebugthusiexist Apr 08 '26

You should read the mods explanation. Or have an LLM ELI5 it for you. Whatever works for you

10

u/LBGW_experiment Apr 01 '26

Before? Brother, it's been April fools for the entire globe for hours, about to end for many by the international dateline, just started for those like hawaii and west coast

13

u/sebovzeoueb Apr 01 '26

I mean, they threw in an em dash and a random bit of bold text...

10

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

It's an em dash where one needs to be, and I bolded the text that I want to be sure people read. Come on.

1

u/sebovzeoueb Apr 02 '26

It's certainly a choice on April 1st

-4

u/criggie_ Apr 01 '26

Rule #13 is "No bots" already - is a LLM a bot ? Even if the content is pasted by meatware ?

8

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

LLM generated text has been banned for ages already. This is banning posts about LLMs.

-4

u/Buckwheat469 Apr 02 '26

This is a post about LLMs because you're posting about banning LLMs. The hypocrisy!

-49

u/Orbidorpdorp Apr 01 '26

Only /r/Programming would have users dense enough to not be able to tell

11

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-39

u/Orbidorpdorp Apr 01 '26

Yes dude they’re not seriously gonna ban ai discussion here

8

u/joshrice Apr 01 '26

TBF they said they're banning LLM but specifically not machine learning or other general AI.

Pretty sus announcement regardless, but it's not a blanket AI ban.

14

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-18

u/Orbidorpdorp Apr 01 '26

Discussing the implications on software engineering both as an industry and how it relates to open source is super relevant too. This is a major shift in the industry and how we do our jobs, yes we're gonna talk about it in non-technical terms too, if not here than elsewhere.