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Comment by gg82

9 days ago

The safety rules are also being used to block content about protests in the UK. How convenient for them.

https://freespeechunion.org/protest-footage-blocked-as-onlin...

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.”

I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video?

It’s a bad look either way, but I feel like there are important differences between the law leading to overly conservative automated filtering, vs political actors using it deliberately in specific cases. Bad symptom either way, but different medicines, right?

  • > that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video?

    You've misquoted the chatbot, which is a new one.

    The video wasn't "taken down" and Grok never said that. It was blocked for some users in the UK due to the new authoritarian age verification laws which everyone should be concerned about if access to newsworthy content requires "papers please".

  • Of course LLMs are a rubbish source for facts, one should always verify. Not possible in this case so I would assume it just made it up

The fact X flags protest videos as adult content is not entirely the fault of the UK government.