Elon Musk says X’s algorithm pushes “too much negativity" while reports suggest the platform will suppress "criticism of the government" and "attacks against powerful people and institutions"
(www.theverge.com)
from thelucky8@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org on 06 Jan 2025 13:49
https://beehaw.org/post/17914899
from thelucky8@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org on 06 Jan 2025 13:49
https://beehaw.org/post/17914899
Musk posted last night that the platform’s algorithm will soon “promote more informational/entertaining content” in order to “maximize unregretted user-seconds.” In response to Musk changing the X algorithm, people asked Grok what is considered “negative” and were told as reported by user Leah McElrath:
• Criticism of the government
• Commentary about misinformation
• Suggestion the public is being manipulated
• Attacks against powerful people or institutions
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He works for the USA. The government isn’t allowed to hinder free speech ESPECIALLY criticism of the government. That’s the main reason why it was there in the first place.
Why did Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm but Elon Musk get’s to keep his propaganda machine?
Because Jimmy Carter wasn’t perfect but at least he tried to do the right thing. Then Reagan came and it became clear the abyss has no bottom, so the absolute sociopaths have an overwhelming advantage on the political space even if they pillage everything in sight.
the republicans have been criminalising free speech for decades
The revolution will not be televised.
weird how criticism of the government is ok when a democrat is in power but when a republican is in power it’s unpatriotic to criticise the president
Am I missing something? Why does whatever Grok say is considered relevant? Is it aware of the details of the policy changes from X?
Not as far as I know, and I’m not even sure the person who posted that was even serious about that being the response Grok provided.
Elon is deranged enough as it is without us having to make stuff up, let’s stay on track.
Clearly they can give them instructions to have specific opinions regarding certain things, so it makes sense for me at least to ask what it has to say if you would like to investigate
it’s possible that the grok model was trained or fine tuned somehow to help with moderation. in that case, it’s possible that things like these bullet points are somewhere up it’s context chain, or in its training data in a manner that it can relatively accurately recall
Yeah we need verges hot take on this …
Talk about lazy journalism. Apparently Grok AI is now treated as the official spokesperson for Twitter.
I was wondering who the hell this Grok person was. I was thinking about what an unfortunate name for a person! No surprise that it’s actually a product and [probably] directly named by an immature billionaire edgelord.
To be clear, I know he didn’t invent the name. But if someone’s parents named them ‘Grok’ I’d understand if they went for a name change.
Isn’t it though? It’s in that position. It’s doing that thing. It seems to have been trained to regurgitate “certain opinions.” It isn’t generally being challenged. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, maybe it’s a duck.
No, it’s actually not. It’s an LLM and it doesn’t have clue what it’s saying. It definitely cannot speak for someone else.
we know that. but as long as Elmo believes it can, i will take everything grok says as official policy from the company.
And where has Elmo said he thinks that?
It has many clues about what it’s saying. It has its training data, it has elmo’s personal biases… Where has elmo contradicted it? Probably he has discreetly removed some things he would personally prefer it not to say, and that’s it, right? By logical necessity, he implicitly approves of the rest of what stays up. It’s pretty much just ai-regurgitating/hallucinating the things the users of the platform say. The more I think about it the more it makes sense as the mascot or sloganeer or spokesbot.
I think perhaps you should examine your own preconceptions here.
Wait, there’s now a paywall on the verge? It’s a/b testing?
I wonder how Twitter came to be such a negative place? Who could be responsible for such a thing?