Surprised the EU hasn’t banned it yet given that the platform is manipulated by Musk to destabilize Europe and move it towards the far right. The child abuse feels like a smaller problem compared to that risk.
In my opinion I think the reason they raided the offices for CSAM would be there are laws on the books for CSAM and not for social manipulation. If people could be jailed for manipulation there would be no social media platforms, lobbyists, political campaign groups or advertisements. People are already being manipulated by AI.
On a related note given AI is just a tool and requires someone to tell it to make CSAM I think they will have to prove intent possibly by grabbing chat logs, emails and other internal communications but I know very little about French law or international law.
>French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.
I had to make a choice to not even use Grok (I wasn't overly interested in the first place, but wanted to review how it might compare to the other tools), because even just the Explore option shows photos and videos of CSAM, CSAM-adjacent, and other "problematic" things in a photorealistic manner (such as implied bestiality).
Looking at the prompts below some of those image shows that even now, there's almost zero effort at Grok to filter prompts that are blatantly looking to create problematic material. People aren't being sneaky and smart and wordsmithing subtle cues to try to bypass content filtering, they're often saying "create this" bluntly and directly, and Grok is happily obliging.
Given America passed PAFACA (intended to ban TikTok, which Trump instead put in hands of his friends), I would think Europe would also have a similar law. Is that not the case?
Are you talking about this [1]? I don't know the answer to your question whether or not the EU has the same policy. That is talking about control by a foreign adversary.
I think that would delve into whether or not the USA would be considered a foreign adversary to France. I was under the impression we were allies since like the 1800s or so despite some little tiffs now and again.
"Manipulated by Musk to destabilize Europe and move it towards the far right" - this is a very strong claim to make about a fairly open platform where people can choose what to post and who to follow.
Also, could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right? Do you have any examples of the near right?
This is obviously diversion but anyway:
Bunch of "American and European" "patriots" that he retweets 24/7 turned out to be people from Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia. These accounts generate likes by default by accounts with "wife of vet" in bio and generic old_blonde_women.jpeg aka bots.
While there may be some feeds on Xitter that are basic algorithms, (1) it's not the only one (2) there may still be less mechanical algorithmic choices within following (what order, what mix, how much) (3) evidence to the contrary exists, are you freeing yourself of facts?
I haven't dug into whatever they open sourced about the algorithm to make definitive statements. Regardless, there are many pieces out there where you can learn about the evidence for direct manipulation.
de Gaulle would be considered insanely far right today. Many aspects of Bush (assuming GW here) would be considered not in line with America's far-right today.
Assume good intent. It helps you see the actually interesting point being made.
> de Gaulle would be considered insanely far right today
As much as it pains me to say this, because i myself consider de Gaulle to be a fascist in many regards, that's far from a majority opinion (disclaimer: i'm an anarchist).
I think de Gaulle was a classic right-wing authoritarian ruler. He had to take some social measures (which some may view as left-wing) because the workers at the end of WWII were very organized and had dozens of thousands of rifles, so such was the price of social peace.
He was right-wing because he was rather conservative, for private property/entrepreneurship and strongly anti-communist. Still, he had strong national planning for the economy, much State support for private industry (Elf, Areva, etc) and strong policing on the streets (see also, Service d'Action Civique for de Gaulle's fascist militias with long ties with historical nazism and secret services).
That being said, de Gaulle to my knowledge was not really known for racist fear-mongering or hate speech. The genocides he took part in (eg. against Algerian people) were very quiet and the official story line was that there was no story. That's in comparison with far-right people who already at the time, and still today, build an image of the ENEMY towards whom all hate and violence is necessary. See also Umberto Eco's Ur-fascism for characteristics of fascist regimes.
In that sense, and it really pains me to write this, but de Gaulle was much less far-right than today's Parti Socialiste, pretending to be left wing despite ruling with right-wing anti-social measures and inciting hatred towards french muslims and binationals.
They wrote "Bush was right wing" (unless it was edited), so what's your point in saying "Many aspects of Bush (assuming GW here) would be considered not in line with America's far-right today." ?
Believing in free speech is neither left nor right, it's on the freedom/authority axis which is perpendicular. Most people on the left never advocated to legalize libel, defamation, racist campaigns, although the minority that did still do today.
The "free-speechism" of the past you mention was about speaking truth to power, and this movement still exists on the left today, see for example support for Julian Assange, arrested journalists in France or Turkey, or outright murdered in Palestine.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter and promised free speech, he very soon actually banned accounts he disagreed with, especially leftists. Why free speech may be more and more perceived as right wing is because despite having outright criminal speech with criminal consequences (such as inciting violence against harmless individuals such as Mark Bray), billionaires have weaponized propaganda on a scale never seen before with their ownership of all the major media outlets and social media platforms, arguing it's a matter of free speech.
> The child abuse feels like a smaller problem compared to that risk.
I think we can and should all agree that child sexual abuse is a much larger and more serious problem than political leanings.
It's ironic as you're commenting about a social media platform, but I think it's frightening what social media has done to us with misinformation, vilification, and echo chambers, to think political leanings are worse than murder, rape, or child sexual abuse.
In fairness, AI-generated CSAM is nowhere near as evil as real CSAM. The reason why possession of CSAM was such a serious crime is because its creation used to necessitate the abuse of a child.
It's pretty obvious the French are deliberately conflating the two to justify attacking a political dissident.
Definitely agree on which is worse! To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with the French raid. Just that statements about severe crimes (child sexual abuse for the above poster - not AI-generated content) being "lesser problems" compared to politics is a concerning measure of how people are thinking.
Big platforms and media are only good if they try to move the populace to the progressive, neoliberal side. Otherwise we need to put their executives in jail.
Simply because if you were to ban this type of platform you wouldn't need Musk to "move it towards the far right" because you would already be the very definition of a totalitarian regime.
But whatever zombie government France is running can't "ban" X anyway because it would get them one step closer to the guillotine. Like in the UK or Germany it is a tinderbox cruising on a 10-20% approval rating.
If "French prosecutor" want to find a child abuse case they can check the Macron couple Wikipedia pages.
Weird how this is happening simultaneously in many states. Washington is considering a vague 3d printer and CNC law to address ghost guns. Gun crimes are mostly committed with regular pistols but that isn’t stopping politicians from passing all sorts of restrictions under the guise of keeping people safe. Meanwhile these states have serious budget problems that go unaddressed …
It is not weird in the slightest. These things are coordinated at the state level all the time.
This is probably one of those good tests of "is your 'conspiracy theory' meter properly calibrated", because if it's going off right now and you are in disbelief, you've got it calibrated incorrectly. This is so completely routine that there's an entire branch of law codified in this way called the "Uniform Commercial Code": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code and see the organization running this' home page at https://www.uniformlaws.org/acts/ucc .
And that's just a particular set of laws with an organization dedicated to harmonizing all the various states laws for their particular use cases. It's not the one and only gateway to such laws, it's just an example of a cross-state law coordination so established that it has an entire organization dedicated to it. Plenty of other stuff is coordinated at the state level across multiple states all the time.
This is an important battle across all of society, not just National Parks. While I also use credit cards a lot, there needs to always be a way to function with anonymity and without needing to buy devices or be a customer of a private financial company. Cashless stores destroy all of that. In a world where the government is abusing surveillance powers, it is more important than ever to defend cash.
The deal they made values xAI at $230 Billion. It’s a made up number, with no trustworthy financial justification to back it up. It is set to provide a certain return to xAI’s investors (the valuation decides the amount you get per share), who in turn are bailing out the earlier acquisition of X (Twitter). All of this is basically a shell game where Elon is using one company to bail out another. It’s a way of reducing the risk of new ventures by spreading them out between his companies. It’s also really bad for SpaceX employees and investors, who are basically subsidizing other companies.
The thing is, everyone knows Elon is not a real CEO of any of these companies. There isn’t enough time to even be the CEO of one company and a parent. This guy has 10 companies and 10 children. He’s just holding the position and preventing others from being in that position, so he can enact changes like this. And his boards are all stacked with family members, close friends, and sycophants who won’t oppose his agenda.
Most of the investors don’t even have a choice. Nor do all the other shareholders like employees. And the boards of Musk companies are stacked with his yes men.
I thought this was already revised? Jensen Huang said they’ll be investing more than ever:
> Nvidia is likely set to make its “largest ever investment” in ChatGPT firm OpenAI, despite reports that the deal may be under threat in recent weeks. The chip giant’s CEO, Jensen Huang, didn’t say exactly how big the investment would be, but said it would be “nothing like” the $100 billion figure mentioned in the September partnership agreement.
It also makes it impossible for Twitter/X to die, as it deserves. It is by far the most toxic mainstream social network. It has an overwhelming amount of far right supremacist content. So bad that it literally resulted in Vivek Ramaswamy, a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, to quit Twitter/X - nearly 100% of replies to his posts were from far right racists.
Obviously advertisers have not been fans. And it is a dying business. But rather than it dying, Elon has found a clever (and probably illegal) way to make it so that SpaceX, which has national security importance, is going to prop up Twitter/X. Now our taxpayer dollars are paying for this outrageous social network to exist.
I find HN and the tech circles to be one of the main community pillars holding up X. None of my social friends use it anymore, but links absolutely abound here, and it seems like the standard line is to pretend Elon, Grok, all the one button revenge and child porn etc don’t exist. I truly can’t fathom the amount of not thinking about it it would take to keep using the platform.
I have a blocker set up in my browser to prevent accidental clicks and sending any traffic to them when I'm not careful to check a given HN link to a posting. I've never had an account there (nor any of the popular social media networks) but I don't want to send even my few clicks their way.
No it isn't, the sensible people you followed 5 years ago left and stopped posting. The "Your followers" feed is now just the terminally addicted and the angry demagogues.
Vivek getting his face eaten by the leopard while running for the "leopards eating OTHER people's faces" party isn't really something I feel we should sad about.
> Obviously advertisers have not been fans. And it is a dying business. But rather than it dying, Elon has found a clever (and probably illegal) way to make it so that SpaceX, which has national security importance, is going to prop up Twitter/X. Now our taxpayer dollars are paying for this outrageous social network to exist.
There is a difference between a dying business and and influential one though. Twitter is dying, but it is still influential.
Toxic = Not a progressive echo chamber. It takes serious blinders to think Twitter is dying any more than the myriad of tech companies operating at losses. And rather than liberals sucking it up and engaging in open disagreements and fire, or attempting tl correct the far right in any way, they flee to blueski (which is actually not doing well). It really is pathetic.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not conservative, I dont particularly care for Elon or X or this merger. I just despise intellectual dishonesty and selective outrage.
The only intellectual dishonesty is “blaming it on the libs” argument. Ignoring the partisan arguments, the platform was quite literally being used by users to undress women and produce CSAM. [1] Just one of the many examples where you can argue the platform is toxic.
It was easy to support SpaceX, despite the racist/sexist/authoritarian views of its owner, because he kept that nonsense out of the conversation.
X is not the same. Elon is actively spewing his ultraconservative views on that site.
Now that these are the same company, there's no separation. SpaceX is part of Musk's political mission now. No matter how cool the tech, I cannot morally support this company, and I hope, for the sake of society, it fails.
This announcement, right after the reveal that Elon Musk reached out to Jeffrey Epstein and tried to book a trip to Little St. James so that he could party with "girls", really doesn't bode well.
It's a shame you can't vote these people out, because I loved places like Twitter, and businesses like SpaceX and Tesla, but Elon Musk is a fascist who uses his power and influence to attack some of the most important pillars of our society.
Elon has spent months and months calling for the Epstein files to be released, even had a big spat with Trump over that and some other things. The idea that he was actually raping girls with Epstein can only be believed by people who will believe anything if it puts their enemies in a bad light. Which are also generally the same people making fake emails and sharing them to defame people they dislike, or editing family photos to pretend they were abuse.
Trump himself, one of Epstein's most frequent fliers, was at one time one of the most openly vocal supporters of releasing the files when it was politically convenient for him to do so. He knew he was prominent in those files, but had no real intention of actually releasing them if he could help it. Elon is no different. When it was convenient to be outspoken about it, he did, despite knowing his name was included.
So why was Elon begging to visit Epstein island years after Epstein was already convicted and sentenced and registered as a sex offender? That’s what the emails obtained by the DOJ show - Elon reaching out to Epstein to ask about when the “wildest party” would be. Let’s not be naive - he was asking to attend parties for the obvious reason.
Elon is moderate at best. If a democrat supported cutting the budget, having an actual border to the country, and keeping men out of women's bathrooms you'd get Elon.
Check out his X feed. He regularly posts unhinged things about white culture, western values, etc that are supremacist and often, lifted from other supremacists. In the last year he became far more radicalized towards the far right. If it was just the things you said I might agree.
> It also makes it impossible for Twitter/X to die, as it deserves. It is by far the most toxic mainstream social network. It has an overwhelming amount of far right supremacist content.
Twitter also has more (not total, but more) free speech than any other social networking site. For example, you are allowed to discuss empirical research on race, crime and IQ. That would get you rate limited or banned quickly on other websites, including HN.
You can happily say all sorts of vile things - every slur that exists - about every minority on Twitter and not face any issues. But not cis. Why do you think that is? Does that sound like free speech or a biased far right platform manipulating users?
Apparently my previous reply got shadow banned by HN. Oh the irony. To repeat: the ban of cis was a reaction to the previous ban of t_r_a_n_n_y. If you are fine with the latter ban you should be fine with the former.
I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point. It’s the most profitable of these companies. So basically SpaceX employees and shareholders are covering up for the failing Tesla business and the already-failed xAI business.
Let’s not forget, xAI is the parent of Twitter/X (the social network). So now, taxpayers are paying to keep Twitter/X alive. After all, it is taxpayer money going to the contracts the government gives SpaceX for launches. Nice way to subsidize what is effectively a one sided campaign machine for the GOP and far right.
> I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point.
I think that is also likely, unless Tesla can stage a major turnaround, it is going to be beaten by Chinese competitors nearly everywhere that they are allowed (which is everywhere but the USA.)
> I suspect SpaceX will acquire Tesla at some point.
Tesla will have to lose its meme status first, otherwise they would be paying real money to make the acquisition close. The other acquisitions are using VC valuations which Musk has a big hand in. Matt Levine did a whole thing on it when xAI acquired X.
This was my immediate thought as well. A great time to ask yourself — why am I literally paying for any of this? At best I literally don't use any of these services, at worst they are actively used against me.
I get what you're saying, but that taxpayer money is paying for the launch services at a very competitive rate (possibly the cheapest of all available options), not a subsidy scheme.
Let’s be honest - this is just a way to prop up Twitter/X. It makes SpaceX shareholders subsidize X, and also American taxpayers who are giving contracts to SpaceX for highly sensitive things. The government should ideally refuse to give SpaceX work unless it unwinds this.
Because Twitter/X is distorting our politics (with ann unbalanced scheme of censorship / amplification / suppression) and destroying the country by mainstreaming far right supremacist politics. Twitter/X does not deserve a single dollar of taxpayer money. If SpaceX is now part of that machine, it doesn’t deserve a single dollar either. I would rather pay more for alternatives and encourage their growth. I also look at any money given to this company as the equivalent of GOP campaign funding, so I feel it should be treated as illegal under the law.
The government is prevented from doing that by a little thing called the first amendment. "Mainstreaming far right supremacist politics" is just a hyperbolic way of saying he has politics you don't like and is exercising his freedom of the press by promoting it on the media platform he owns. Legally that is no different then the rights that every newspaper and TV station in the country has.
First of all, the current government doesn't give a shit about the first amendment and is successfully putting a chilling effect on it through various means. Both through illegally using government funding as a hammer to require independent companies to curtail their speech, or by using regulation.
Second, history will look back and realize that without taking into account the volume of your voice, you don't really have free speech in a way that matters. If you the person next to you can use a megaphone that is so loud that no one hears you, you effectively have no speech. A great many democracies implicitly realize this and thus have election spending limits tied to the number of supporters. The US, through it's lobby system, and through party affiliated control of third party networks, does not.
Musk is, indeed, allowed under the 1st to promote whatever he wants to promote. Him being a hypocrite about "free speech absolutism" is not a crime.
However, the current US administration appears to be actively violating the 1st and 5th in a bunch of ways, the 14th that one time, and making threats to wilfully violate the 2nd for people they don't like and the 22nd to get a third term. It is reasonable, not hyperbolic, to be concerned about Musk's support of this.
Actually the Trump administration is trying to strip legal status from people and deport them by way of an obscure law that gives the Secretary of State the discretion to do so if they deem those people a threat to the foreign policy goals of the US.
If these laws are still on the books when the next D administration takes over, they should use them against Elon, Thiel, etc - strip them of US citizenship, deport them, and nationalize their companies (followed with repealing those laws)
> If these laws are still on the books when the next D administration takes over, they should use them against Elon, Thiel, etc - strip them of US citizenship, deport them, and nationalize their companies (followed with repealing those laws)
Or the current R admin, next time Musk has a spat with Trump.
Would definitely be a popcorn moment; doubly so if Canada has changed its rules on citizenship by then and has also stripped Musk of that, leaving him only with South African.
I disagree. He would be using taxpayer money to boost his preferred speech. And it is essentially campaign funding for the GOP. It should be treated as such.
Shouldn't the government be aiming to pay the lowest price for the best goods and services rather than using procurement as a way to promote or suppress certain political opinions?
If anything, I think this is actually the other way around - channeling crazy AI bubble money towards SpaceX, after the funding from goverment contracts has dried up. Twitter is just the icing on the cake.
Quite ingenious, you have to give Musk that. This is why he is making so much money.
It’s also a way to distract from the fact that alleged pedophile and rapist Elon had 3 underaged foreign nationals trafficked to him at the space x headquarters by convinced pedophile and rapist Jeffrey Epstein, per the Epstein files.
I hope that gets denied since I think our night sky should be protected. But I have a feeling this administration may blindly approve whatever Musk asks for.
Is this some sort of corrupt way to prop up xAI with the money of shareholders in Tesla? Or is it legitimate somehow? I remember also reading that SpaceX was buying up unsold cybertruck inventory.
reply