Comment by SilverElfin
17 hours ago
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.
17 hours ago
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.
hold on, are you saying that you should be able to be jailed for manipulation? Where would that end? could i be jailed if i post a review for a restaurant if you feel it manipulated you? or anyone stating an opinion could be construed as manipulation. that is beyond a slippery slope, that is an authoritarian nightmare.
I believe the context I was proposing would be at the scale of world-wide manipulation. Rigging elections and such. There is a Netflix documentary called "The Great Hack" that gets into what I am discussing though from the perspective of social media algorithm. This only gets more effective when people are chatting with an AI bot that mimics a human and they think is their significant other that laughs at all their jokes and strokes their ego.
I think your interpretation would be more along the line of making 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid's Tale a reality.
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So you think writing a review is somehow on the same magnitude as social media platforms with 300 million-3 billion users?
And how is that different from TV channels/media en large having laws to abide by? Slippery slope arguments are themselves slippery slopes..
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> hold on, are you saying that you should be able to be jailed for manipulation?
Its the usual deal from the that crowd:
- when the left does it, it’s just them using their civil liberties
- when the right does it, its illegal manipulation, election interference, fascism and/or Russian disinformation.
It’s the same crowd which keeps using the phrase “our democracy”.
Behaviour like this really makes me wonder who they are, and who they deem not worthy to be included in “their” democracy.
It's broader and mentioned in the article:
>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.
Broader still.
and fraudulent data extraction by an organised group.
> I think the reason they raided the offices for CSAM
Sigh. The French raid statement makes no mention of CSAM.
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.
[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521
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I am not surprised at all. Independent of whether this is true, such a decision from the EU would never be acted upon. The number of layers between the one who says "ban it" somewhere in Bruissels and the operator blackholing the DNS and filtering traffic is decades.
Why do you think that? It can take a few years for national laws bring in place, but that also depends on how much certain countries push it. Regarding Internet traffic I assume a few specific countries that route most of the traffic would be enough to stop operation for the most part.
Have you ever seen an actual EU-wide decision on such matters and an actual application?
The closest I can think of is GDPR which has its great aspects and also the cookies law (which is incorrectly interpreted). And some things like private IPs being PIIs which promotes nonsnsical "authorities notifications" that are not used afterwards.
We have consulting companies doing yearly audits on companies to close the books. And yet hacks happen all the time. Without consequences.
There is an ocean between what is announced and lives on paper vs. the reality of the application. If you work in compliance and cubersecurity you see this everyday.
There's no tool, technological or legal, to block/ban a website EU-wide.
They banned Russia Today EU-wide.
The EU can declare a company a criminal enterprise and the financial industry must then prevent EU citizens from transacting with them.
They will set their DNS servers to drop all incoming connections to X. That can be done in each country. They can use Deep Packet inspection tools and go from there. If the decision is EU wide then they will roll that out.
Deep packet inspection? What do you mean? Are you talking about domain name confiscation or building a Great Firewall of EU?
There is no law that would permit the EU to do this. This would be a huge thing to introduce and implement, probably a 2-3 year project, and would almost certainly be strongly opposed by multiple member countries.
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.
What do you mean with "this type of platform"? Platforms that don't follow (any) national laws have been banned in multiple countries over the years.
By itself this isn't extraordinary in a democracy.
and France is known for filtering internet access where domains are blocked (over 4000 added per year), including porn, but also news websites
> 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
Paradox of tolerance. (The American right being Exhibit A for why trying to let sunlight disinfect a corpse doesn’t work.)
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.
Almost like the EU can't just ban speech on a whim the way US far right people keep saying it can.
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Why? Has Reddit given their users tools to generate CSAM and non-consensual sexualized imagery? Bluesky certainly hasn't
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> fairly open platform where people can choose what to post and who to follow.
It is well known Musk amplifies his own speech and the words of those he agrees with on the platform, while banning those he doesn’t like.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m...
> could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right?
It’s called far-right because it’s further to the right (starting from the centre) than the right. Wikipedia is your friend, it offers plenty of examples and even helpfully lays out the full spectrum in a way even a five year old with a developmental impairment could understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics
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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj38m11218xo
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Elon fiddles with the algorithm to boost certain accounts. Some accounts are behind an auth wall and others are not. It’s open but not even.
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> where people can choose
How true is this really?
We certainly have data points to show Musk has put his thumb on the scale
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In case you're not playing dumb, the term you're looking for would be centre right.
Far right to me is advocating for things that discriminate based on protected traits like race, sex, etc. So if you’re advocating for “white culture” above others, that’s far right. If you’re advocating for the 19th amendment (women’s right to vote) to be repealed (as Nick Fuentes and similar influencers do), that’s also far right. Advocating for ICE to terrorize peaceful residents, violate constitutional rights, or outright execute people is also far right.
Near right to me is advocating for things like lower taxes or different regulations or a secure border (but without the deportation of millions who are already in the country and abiding by laws). Operating the government for those things while still respecting the law, upholding the constitution, defending civil rights, and avoiding the deeply unethical grifting and corruption the Trump administration has normalized.
Obviously this is very simplified. What are your definitions out of curiosity?
I think your definition is mostly fine, although deporting illegal immigrants is a moderate position, not near right.
And I would agree with the other reply that Musk is not far right by that definition.
By your definition Musk is not far right.
> Avoiding the deeply unethical grifting and corruption the Trump administration has normalized.
Care to give examples of these?
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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.
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It used to be a principle of the left to believe in free speech. Now that is called right wing.
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> 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.
Those innocent "political leanings" get people killed. See the ICE killings in Minneapolis.
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.
> The reason why possession of CSAM was such a serious crime is because its creation used to necessitate the abuse of a child.
Used to? Still does. A convincing fake is still only a fake.
> It's pretty obvious the French are deliberately conflating the two to justify attacking a political dissident.
Agreed. But the same conflation in the comments hereabouts is ... puzzling.
I mean, abuse of a photo == abuse of a child? Like, voodoo dolls? Creepy.
It may not be worse "objectively" and in direct harm.
However - it has one big problem that is rarely discussed... Normalizing of behaviour, interests and attitudes. It just becomes a thing that Grok can do - for paid accounts, and people think - ok, "no harm, no problem"... Long-term, there will be harm. This has been demonstrated over decades of investigation of CSAM.
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