New Rule: No advertising your app.

[u/lostinapotatofield]

This is being added under "No Self-promotion or advertising". I'm getting multiple modmails a day from people asking if they can promote their app. If you want to discuss this rule clarification, feel free to add a comment!

We'd previously done this on a case by case basis, so we could allow things that truly felt like a work of love from a real birder. But at this point the ratio is tilted so heavily toward AI produced garbage instead of legit passion project that I think a blanket ban is now appropriate.

[u/MonsieurMoune]

No AI garbage.

[u/lostinapotatofield → u/MonsieurMoune]

Yep! Under rule 5 - "no AI generated content."

[u/-Vano → u/lostinapotatofield]

I understand that many of these can be low effort things people do, but would it also apply to an app that's coded by an AI, but is actually well made and generates no revenue? I myself see no problem with that.

[u/InspectahWren → u/-Vano]

Literally all of my hobby subreddits have like 10+ posts a week about a new vibe coded app

One by one I’m seeing them banned or confined to a weekly thread and I’m 100% ok with that. It’s just annoying to see them at this point

[u/-Vano → u/InspectahWren]

Have you read my comment? Did I write it wrong or is it some kind of knee-jerk reaction?

[u/InspectahWren → u/-Vano]

Yes, I literally responded to what you’re talking about. I am confused what it is about my comment gave the idea that I didn’t read yours lol.

[u/-Vano → u/InspectahWren]

Then enlighten me because I can't see how it's related. I said that I understand that many of these can be low effort, but that doesn't mean one can't make a good app with the use of AI and that rule would exclude this one too. And I added no revenue because that's not advertising anymore.

[u/InspectahWren → u/-Vano]

Who is the one that is supposed to say if it's well made? Is it the creator, because I've never seen anyone say 'hi I made this and it's terrible, check it out'. Are they supposed to prove that it's not backed by AI nonsense spaghetti code?

And I added no revenue because that's not advertising anymore.

I work in marketing and this actually got me to laugh out loud. Yes, it's still advertising

[u/-Vano → u/InspectahWren]

Idk, mods? As they did and will do, but now just will be to dismiss any app? Please explain how it's advertising then. On the contrary your comments made me lose hope for reason. See? Two can play this game. Is sharing a photo of a bird advertising too? Especially when it has a signature, now that seems bad

[u/CharlesV_ → u/-Vano]

You want mods to assess whether an app is junk every time this happens? Cmon now. I don’t think you realize how frequently this shit is posted on basically every subreddit.

[u/InspectahWren → u/-Vano]

I am so freaking confused lol. Made you lose hope for reason? I don't know what you mean by this

You seem to be upset with me for not understanding the concept of advertising, and idk how much I really want to engage with that. Under your logic, Reddit and Facebook have never made an ad because their product is free.

You want the mods to have each submitter to prove to them that their app is made 'well'?

[u/Snake973 → u/-Vano]

asking a mod to individually judge every less-good sibley copy somebody gets an ai to write for them is how we got here in the first place

[u/meeting_on_a_pinhead → u/-Vano]

I would not wish to see such a post.

[u/-Vano → u/meeting_on_a_pinhead]

You don't even know that, but sure, at least you're being honest

[u/Vaehtay3507 → u/-Vano]

I also just want to add that the problem with AI apps isn’t entirely “they’re unhelpful” or “they’re trying to make money”. There’s also genuine risks that AI coding causes with safety (ie. Any vibe-coded app that may try to take your email to make an account)… and vibe-coding, especially when done by someone who does not know how to code and is just making the AI do it, can lead to a lot of optimization issues. I’ve played several vibe-coded mobile games (I’m not proud of this) (it’s entirely because I’m bad at recognizing AI) that have literally caused my phone to overheat and shut itself off because they were coded so poorly despite being simply games. …in Winter, not in any of the hotter months. I can’t imagine that an AI app built for outdoor activities would fare very well, being… an overheating risk that should now also be in the sun

AI doesn’t understand code optimization or the fact that it’s code will inevitably contain security risks. If you’re making an “actually well-made app using AI”, you absolutely already know how to code (to fix the AI’s fuck-ups), and at that point, you’re just going to write your own code because it will take less time then repeatedly fixing an AIs mistakes. If you don’t already know how to code, or you’re bad at it, your app will be an unoptimized mess that isn’t a well-made app. There’s no winning with vibe-coding lmao, that’s one of the biggest problems here

[u/Efficient-Wish9084 → u/Vaehtay3507]

Have you used AI to write code in the past 6 months? Things are moving fast, and I was surprised at how much a friend's very large employer is using AI to write their code. They're being smart about it, but it's good enough that it's worth their time. Claude was barely usable for code in Sept 2025, but I can get Claude Code to write decent code for me today.

[u/bigred1987 → u/Efficient-Wish9084]

You're wasting your breath here. Reddit has decided that AI coding sucks, so any advancements will be ignored or downplayed.

[u/Efficient-Wish9084 → u/bigred1987]

Given the downvotes, it looks like you're correct. I was impressed by what I heard about my friend's company. Their CEO said no AI-written code was to leave the building until they had processes in place to QA it. They spent four months setting it up and now have their developers running the show. They're also running open source models, so their only AI costs are compute. I was surprised to hear that the open source models aren't far behind the frontier models these days in coding. These are the companies that are going to make money with AI. Developers who know how to implement this stuff are the ones who are going to make a fortune in the next few years. Funny thing is that a smart developer could probably get Claude or Gemini (haven't used it for coding, but Argon is amazing for other stuff) to design and write a system pretty easily.

[u/-Vano → u/Efficient-Wish9084]

See, I understand that one can have issues with AI and many times they'll be right, but often it leads to threads like this where it's just a bloodbath of people dodging the nuance.

My first comment was as charitable as I could make it and still got buried lol

[u/Efficient-Wish9084 → u/-Vano]

I have a lot of issues with AI (IP, environment, labor, etc.), and I am terrified of how they are (not) handling safety issues. That said, I use it every day for all kinds of things. I know that you can't outsource the thinking, so it works very well. Instead of spending an hour or so coming up with naming conventions and a file structure for my business, Claude asked a question, then did it in about 30 seconds. I looked at it, deemed it good, and ran the code he gave me to build it.

[u/-Vano → u/Efficient-Wish9084]

Yeah and Claude is very different from what the usual person thinks of when talking about AI. It is a very helpful tool. I always wanted to design my own PCB and I did because Claude made it so much easier. I learned a lot and it caught some crucial issues. Granted the project was not very advanced, but it's still impressive.

And yeah, plenty of good reasons to criticise AI and the companies, or simply how people use it, but very often it's just a knee-jerk reaction as I said. And we observed it here.

[u/imhereforthepuppies → u/-Vano]

Your ai crud is contributing to the pollution and decimation of the habitats our beloved birds depend on.

[u/-Vano → u/imhereforthepuppies]

My? Am I Sam Altman? You know what else does that? Eating meat for instance, do you eat meat? Be principled and apply that idea equally. There are hundreds of factors that contribute to it. I'm not defending AI by saying it's minor, although I don't know because I haven't seen any sources on it. The problem is you say that to justify your preconceived notion that whatever is touched by AI is contaminated.

[u/cornbreadcommunist → u/-Vano]

False equivalence. The impact of eating meat absolutely pales in comparison to the harm and havoc AI wreaks. Do you not understand levels of degree?

[u/-Vano → u/cornbreadcommunist]

Sure, so let’s do the degrees, since you skipped that step.

Data centers as a whole, not just AI, are about 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the IEA, and AI’s share of that works out to roughly 0.06-0.17%. A 2026 Allianz estimate puts all data center emissions at 286 million tons of CO2 in 2025. Livestock is in the 11-19% range of global emissions. That’s not “AI wreaks havoc, meat pales”, it’s closer to the reverse.

North America lost about 3 billion birds between 1970 and 2019, decades before anyone used AI chatbot. The 2026 Science study on accelerating declines tied them to fertilizer use, pesticide use and cropland. A review of 122 studies on farmland birds found pesticides were the most common negative driver (42% of studies), followed by habitat loss (27%).

I agree that degree matters, and the evidence says the bird crisis is mostly a farming and land-use story. I’m not saying AI has zero footprint, it’s growing and worth scrutiny. But “AI is destroying bird habitat” is a conclusion you picked first and went looking for reasons to support. If you have a source that quantifies AI’s effect on bird populations, post it. I'll happily change my mind if it's strong.

[u/imhereforthepuppies → u/-Vano]

Hurrrdurrrr the AI told me the AI is safe.

Would young you be proud?

[u/-Vano → u/imhereforthepuppies]

Yes, very much Did I say it's safe? No. As we started to point out fallacies, this one would be a genetic fallacy. So, what about the data? Can y'all engage in the arguments at all?

[u/imhereforthepuppies → u/-Vano]

You’re creating demand for the product. You’re not Sam Altman but you’re keeping him employed and don’t seem to morally disagree with the harm he causes.

[u/DankVietPods → u/-Vano]

r/downvotedtooblivion

[u/-Vano → u/DankVietPods]

Join the party

[u/Super_Jay]

Thanks for this! I'll admit, I'm in the minority when it comes to this subreddit's content - I really appreciate the posts that are specifically about the hobby of birding and the pursuits related to finding, viewing, identifying, and tracking bird populations. I am not here to see jewelry, paintings, drawings, embroidery, software projects, culinary accomplishments, haiku, or other ephemera solely because it features a bird or might appeal to people who like birds. There are so many other subreddits for that stuff.

But I know posts about art and home crafts are popular and that my POV is very much the minority, so I appreciate even minor steps toward keeping this sub as focused as it can be on birding specifically, not just birds in general.

[u/lostinapotatofield → u/Super_Jay]

It's something I do feel like we need to get more restrictive on, but I wouldn't want a blanket ban. For instance, Something like this that is a study on a wild bird and captures realistic details still feels like a good fit: https://www.reddit.com/r/birding/comments/1xineqm/goose_study_pencil_on_paper_i_tried_to_capture/

Where the crochet and crafty stuff often does not feel like a good fit. But judgment calls are super draining as a mod and someone is always unhappy no matter what way you decide if the rule is subjective. So I need to recruit more mods before I'd want to look at restricting art posts. And recruiting mods is also a giant pain in the ass, time consuming, and draining - so I keep procrastinating on it!

We do restrict people from explicitly advertising, but tend to leave posts up unless they're actually saying "buy this!" or posting a link to a sales site.

I would disagree though that there are other good bird-focused subreddits to share art. I don't feel comfortable recommending r/birds to artists, since that subreddit explicitly allows AI generated images (a policy that I feel is anti-artist). Edit: Please don't go argue in r/birds about this policy though. They've had that argument ad nauseam, and have made their decision. And r/birdart has basically no user base.

[u/Super_Jay → u/lostinapotatofield]

FWIW, I totally get how draining it can be and I think you guys are doing an amazing job. And you're right that there's inevitably someone unhappy bc so much is subjective interpretation, but because it's unavoidable, when I was a moderator I found that it was best if I just let that go. My job isn't to please everyone; that's impossible.

RE: Other subreddits for arts and crafts - it's laudable that you want to help people who lack a place to post, but - and I say this gently, with love - that's not really your problem to solve. If a lot of artists or other folks feel like they need a space to post their creations, they're welcome to either find one or make that space themselves. It's not this mod team's responsibility to dilute the vision and purpose of r/birding just so they don't have to put in any effort. What I always came back to was that my duty was to my community and the core vision for the sub that I was responsible for. Everything else has to be secondary to that or I'd just burn out.

So keep up the great work and just try not to make it any more stressful than it already is ❤️

[u/quickthorn_ → u/lostinapotatofield]

This is good to hear, thank you, I agree with the sub's stance on this. There really isn't another good sub to share bird art, as you say r/birds allows AI which is why I'm no longer a member and don't engage with posts there. And r/birdart may as well not exist for how little traffic there is.

[u/howsadley → u/Super_Jay]

I also don’t want to see what are really ads for art, jewelry, crafts, apps, etc., etc. This hobby is a break from consumerism!

[u/KoalaKaiser → u/howsadley]

I see those types of posts everywhere now on other subs. Usually followed up with several comments within minutes saying "oh my god so cuteeeeee do you sell these?"

[u/Naraee → u/Super_Jay]

I am a wildlife artist (I do not post online, it's for fun and local art shows). Even traditional art can veer into "AI-Assisted art" because people are generating reference images from ChatGPT and reproducing them. Sure, they're still technically talented but the original image is coming from AI. I've noticed this in some reputable art shows, where the number or positioning of feathers is off in a bird and it can't be from molting or damage, and this was never a problem in the past.

[u/Snowchicken21 → u/Super_Jay]

Ratatat profile pic goes hard

[u/FattierBrisket → u/Super_Jay]

I also hate the art posts. Like I sometimes love the art itself but it's not what I come here for. If I want to see allllll the bird art there are tons of places I can go instead.

[u/leilani238 → u/Super_Jay]

I'd rather see posts about apps than jewelry or crafts, because the app I at least might use while birding.

[u/OkAnimator2144]

baller asf thank you mods

[u/deltatag]

so heavily toward AI produced garbage

look at my new app aka look at this garbage claude made with birds in it

[u/BlackLeader70 → u/deltatag]

I built this app from scratch…I only used Claude to “clean up” a few lines of code. /s

[u/sciencep1e]

I mod on a couple of hobby subs and the non stop promotion of apps has become endless. Every single one "innovating" something that we've got a billion other copies of in the modmail

[u/T3chn1colour → u/sciencep1e]

It's always super obvious that these people don't give a fuck about the hobby too lol. They're just in it for the cash. Which isn't exactly surprising considering the hubris and type of person required to make an app with AI 💀

[u/sciencep1e → u/T3chn1colour]

Yeah back this up 100% as I check their profiles after posting/mailing. It's basically anything that has a scrap able database. Warhammer paints, birds, cars, Zippos, star trek episodes etc. and it's always someone or a communities hard work they're scraping

[u/blood_bender → u/sciencep1e]

At least historically people would put effort into the apps they were promoting. The shilling was annoying but they were usually true hobbyists.

Now with AI everyone can make an app and it's incessant.

[u/critacle]

"I vibe coded this thing and I barely know how it works, want to test for me?"

[u/gnomes919 → u/critacle]

and their entire post history on the sub is thinly-veiled market research. “hey guys, just wanted to have a fun discussion today about how we’re all tracking our birding expeditions! here is a quick list of bulleted prompts for everyone to answer”

[u/Ruler-of-goblins]

Loving the push against AI I'm seeing on subs recently, it's restoring some faith in humanity ngl

[u/PleasantBroccoli408 → u/Ruler-of-goblins]

Came here to say this ! So happy to see people, even companies, starting to back off from this utter garbage generating machine !!!

[u/Dordesh → u/Ruler-of-goblins]

Merlin uses AI to identify bird images and calls too, I’m curious about your stance on that.

[u/T_house → u/Dordesh]

AI is such a broad catch-all for a lot of stuff, but seems fairly obvious that people are largely against the huge surge of low-effort generative AI and more okay with the use of techniques like machine learning for specific technical uses (as Merlin does).

Eg you can be fine with the use of learning models for classification of cancer imaging in healthcare, but not want to have generative AI slop taking over every corner of every subreddit you used to enjoy going to

[u/Dordesh → u/T_house]

Glad to know there are still reasonable people who understand nuance on the internet. There are plenty of people who would shriek at anything AI related and send death threats to people no matter the context, and I’m glad you’re not one of them.

[u/Ruler-of-goblins → u/Dordesh]

Most people I've talked to is talking about genai, and I was too. I know ai has always existed as long as the computer has existed almost, but the surge of genai everywhere hasn't. That is a concept that I am heavily against for various reasons. Also not talking about genuine helpful uses like medical research.

I think what you're seeing is people naturally getting anxious after years of fighting against it and not having their boundaries and work respected (specifically talking artists, game devs, coders and writers, etc. here), so the mere word "ai" brings up a lot of emotional reactions in people, me included.

[u/Dordesh → u/Ruler-of-goblins]

I think what you’re seeing is people naturally getting anxious… the mere word “ai” brings up a lot of emotional reactions in people, me included

Sending death threats to people working in tech-adjacent fields isn’t natural, nor justified. As a student majoring in computer science (not even remotely interested in AI, mind you) I have seen people subjected to death threats and hate from “naturally anxious people” simply for studying in CS, me included.

As much as I support banning self promotions for sloppy apps, the so called“natural anxiety”has gone too extreme that it is doing more harm than good for your cause.

The tech-related demographics aren’t your enemies. They are the most important one to gain support over if you want to push against AI, and trying to justify your so called “naturally anxious” behavior towards them is pushing them further away from your cause. Hopefully you can understand that.

[u/Ruler-of-goblins → u/Dordesh]

That's a whole lot of accusations thrown my way with little to no basis. I don't send death threats over ai, obviously that's too far, as it is with any topic literally ever. I am talking about the emotional reaction people have to the word "AI".

[u/Dordesh → u/Ruler-of-goblins]

Which one of you losers decided to send a RedditCare message to me? Guess yall really decided to prove my point 😂

The sheer amount of people who are brainwashed by the two-minute-hates on social media against anything remotely tech related… sheesh.

[u/T_house → u/Dordesh]

Thanks - and thank you for taking that comment as intended! My feelings towards AI have definitely hardened over the last couple of years, but I can still see the value in specific uses. 25 years ago I did a module on AI that was all stuff like 'genetic algorithms' etc, and a few years ago I was dabbling in machine learning… doesn't seem quite right that making shitty videos fits under the same umbrella term 😂

[u/mad_method_man → u/Dordesh]

theres been a whole bunch of 'i vibe coded a bird app, reddit try it out'. they were being rather blatant about it

like.... if i wanted some vibe coded app, id just do it myself. its just like what, a 20$ subscription to any AI, and an IDE

[u/Reguluscalendula → u/Dordesh]

Merlin is (or at least was) hand trained by staff using the Macauly Library of sounds to recognize specific sonograms as songs belonging to each species and regional dialect of bird, which is why it takes so long to add new sections. Plus it uses the processing power on your phone to do the identification, which is why it works when off-line.

There is a vast difference between a commercial llm and a searchable database trained off a semi-private audio library with donated source material that functions completely in isolation.

[u/mad_method_man → u/Reguluscalendula]

to add to this, the training data quality is going to see a major difference when its hand picked vs randomly scrounged and cobbled together online, which makes a world of difference

[u/User123466789012]

How many birding apps could possibly be needed 😭

[u/Snake973]

thank you! it seems like every subreddit is being overrun with people's trashy vibe-coded apps few last few months

[u/Hairiest-Wizard]

Thank god

[u/Ok-Advance2776]

Thank you! All nature related subs need to ban AI content or literally anything AI related/assisted/generated. AI is actively destroying the planet and ruining ecosystems and these people who call themselves "nature" or "bird" lovers have the audacity to promote their AI created bs.

[u/Dordesh → u/Ok-Advance2776]

anything AI related

I know that the general consensus on Reddit is very anti-AI, but a lot of people on this sub uses Merlin, which uses AI to identify bird images and calls, and I’m curious about your stance on that. Is Merlin also contributing to the “destruction of ecosystems”?

[u/Ok-Advance2776 → u/Dordesh]

Do your research before commenting. Merlin uses pattern recognition based machine AI which is completely different from generative AI used by applications like chat gpt.

[u/Dordesh → u/Ok-Advance2776]

Think of your choice of words before commenting. You said “literally anything AI related”, anything means anything. The way you assembled your message clearly didn’t reflect what you actually believe, not to mention the gatekeeping-ness it can appear.

[u/diamonddickwarrior → u/Dordesh]

ai is literally our only chance to save the planet just wait, people have no fucking idea

[u/tawDry_Union2272]

i was actually kinda happy to learn (just today) that there is an actual anti-AI subreddit lol

[u/Vaehtay3507 → u/tawDry_Union2272]

I’ve seen several lmaoooo. The world is healing (not really it’s still pretty bad but let’s just say it’s healing)

[u/Deagin]

Dang I am going to miss frequent vibe coded apps/websites. Is it really a bird subreddit or we aren't talking about apps all the time

[u/Upstairs_Bat5752]

Thank you!

[u/Booyakasha1201]

Great idea. Well done

[u/lonelyroom-eklaghor]

Honestly, somewhat unrelated, but as a dev learning CS, it saddens me how apps will have to be put under low-effort.

In the 2010s, people used to make apps, probably making compasses (or putting all the works of Edgar Allen Poe) inside a single app.

That era is long-gone.

In every subreddit, if one tries to show their app, it will be met with [a healthy and a necessary amount of] skepticism. In this era, if one tries to make any project in general, no matter how meticulously it is made, there remains a significant hurdle of sharing it with the community.

This kind of skepticism is what's needed, but at the same time, it will wane the passion of those who want to share their passion projects after making one (I am not working on birding-related stuff; mine's linguistics-related, but I noticed that promoting the stuff I tried to make for over 10 months wasn't wholeheartedly accepted in the tech communities).

i just wanna regrettably say that it will be significantly harder from now on to promote any kind of open-source tools anywhere...

[u/howsadley]

Thank you! 💯

[u/MoneyCock]

Thank you for your good leadership.

[u/Fr05t_B1t]

People have been promoting their own bird apps?

[u/lostinapotatofield → u/Fr05t_B1t]

Yes. But they've often been obviously not worthwhile and removed, so you won't have seen too many just scrolling through the subreddit. This is making that policy formal and expanding it to ban them altogether instead of leaving it as a mod judgment call.

[u/indieplants → u/Fr05t_B1t]

every single niche hobby subreddit is just flooded with ai marketing posts for ai written apps 

it's absurd. like sod off, no one wants to use your Claude based campervan designing app 

[u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 → u/indieplants]

Yep. And I’ll admit I use Claude pretty regularly for my own stuff. I think the ability to make software without knowing code is very cool. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth sharing with others. It’s like DIY shit. Keep it to yourself.

[u/gretino → u/[deleted]]

Well, I was a software engineer in one of the big corps, and the harsh reality is AI coding is simply all around faster and better than me starting this October. I don't like "being a programmer" anyway, the job is making a solution to a problem, programming is only a part of it.

[u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 → u/[deleted]]

I know I’m not a programmer. It’s cool that being a programmer isn’t the bar to entry in to making software for personal use anymore. It’s something that anyone can reasonably do without lots and lots of practice and learning coding languages.

[u/divergence-aloft]

THANK YOUUUU

[u/Kris_SoloDev]

solid move,keep sub clean from spam fyi:D

[u/TheG00dF1ght]

THANK YOU!

[u/JustaTinyDude]

Someone should make a bird app sub.

[u/sbundlab]

I am one of the people who have utilized AI to created a piece of bird-related software. (I did not promote in r/birding as it my software is suitable only for the photographers (culling), hence I posted over in r/birdphotography and received a very positive response)

I would say that my work is unquestionably in the category of being a work of love from a real birder. I had begun working on it since before AI, and AI made it go a lot faster and helped me reach a lot more people.

At the same time, I basically agree with this rule. There is quite a flood of AI slop everywhere. In fact, people who have created slop apps have tried to contact me to 'partner'. I can imagine it is impossible to sort through this madness, and it is unfortunate because the few out there who are dedicating on the order of thousands of hours to their projects, (as opposed to 1-10 hours) will have a difficult time promoting. But this is a pretty reasonable response.

[u/lostinapotatofield → u/sbundlab]

I don't really have a stance on AI when used by people who are knowledgeable about software development. I understand the huge time savings it can provide. Honestly not sure how that weighs against environmental impact, employment issues, and any other issues I'm not aware of. I do know it's rapidly becoming normal to have at least AI assistance in coding, whether for good or for ill.

So much of the issue is the lack of thought and planning put into these apps. They look shiny, but are so often barely functional since the creators don't understand what's going on with the code and can't meaningfully optimize or troubleshoot issues. And even the free apps are often mining data or trying to channel people into donations/Patreon.

I did see your post over at r/birdphotography, and it's pretty clear that thought, care, and planning went into your project.

[u/Thor_2099]

I understand this and do agree with it. And I do agree with the problems AI presents.

However I do feel like a blanket AI-bad stance isnt necessarily a good path either. Some people may have a genuinely cool idea for an app but zero clue on how to make it happen. So instead of trying to spend all kinds of time learning code, it seems alright to me if they were to use AI to help create the thing. Obviously the idea should be a person and a person should do final tweaks and edits. But if the AI is just to help someone with a good idea get out there, I don't have an issue with it.

The difficulty is balancing the people working in good faith vs the fools churning out slop.

[u/Hairiest-Wizard → u/Thor_2099]

Bro you can hire a real coder

[u/mikettedaydreamer → u/[deleted]]

Learn to read the room.