Someone (Russia) is working HARD to spread anti-EU propaganda in Poland. It's a barrage of GenAI, bots, trolls, and what not.
At least to me, living in Europe, the writing on the wall is that anonymous social media - or more likely internet as a whole - is going to end over here.
I figure this is why some platforms, like X, are trying so hard to leverage their political power. They know that some verification / KYC measures are coming, and that they'll get fined or blocked if they can't follow those regulations.
I wish governments would treat things like this as equivalent to fraud.
It might not be taking people's money, but it's taking away access to truth through automated deception, which might even be worse.
Back when it took a madman to pollute discourse the public square, maybe you could have called it their right free speech, but this is not that. This is just computer assisted fraud, and exactly the kind of thing that computer hacking laws should be for.
How is this different from hiring actors to do guerilla marketing, or hiring influencers to pretend to like something, both of which happen constantly?
Time and money. There are laws limiting email spam because the unit cost of sending and distributing them is almost zero, which is a great incentive for bad people. Hiring actors and shooting videos for political propaganda takes time and money, whereas AI slop is nearly free.
Both should be "false advertising", which may not be considered "fraud", but the main point stands that both should be illegal in some contexts.
But not all contexts. People are allowed to lie: e.g., I can tell my friend that a bag of Lay's chips has 0 calories and 100g protein, or (relevant here) that I'm Dua Lipa. People specifically aren't allowed to lie "officially": e.g., I can't sell Lay's chips with inaccurate nutrition facts, or present a fake ID that says I'm Dua Lipa to board a flight.
I think online should work roughly similarly. On the open web, using an AI-generated persona is like lying about your A/S/L, which is like other forms of lying: immoral, but not illegal. However, there should be "authentic" sites, where posting "inauthentic" content gets you banned by the site and maybe (if you're subverting bans) fined.
In fact, this is what we have today: sites have "terms of service", and although breaking them usually only gets you banned, I believe in most places you can technically be sued. The problem here is that popular social media sites don't enforce authenticity, and whoever's making these videos (if they're subverting bans) isn't getting fined.
ngl, i think the fact that this is even possible and can get people is really dope.
I wish there were public studies like, 'We ran an experiment where young, attractive women wearing Polish clothing caused people who would naturally express these ideologies to stop scrolling more often than young, attractive women not wearing Polish clothing, for x demographic"
Something can be simultaneously "dope" and also very obviously extremely destructive to society if one looks past the tip of their nose. Let's try not to get too excited by those things.
It is scientifically proven that people don’t change channels on TV if the ad has a dog in it. I don’t see why this can’t apply to people on screen as well.
I doubt Brexit would've been much different. The constituency nature of UK general elections means that a substantial majority of MPs knew they had to support it even though it was only a 48-52 split in a supposedly advisory referendum.
But to the extent that it might have been different, the many incompatible visions for it that gridlocked UK politics might have coalesced into a single vision, and while that would still have been worse than not having done Brexit as all, it might have been less bad than five mutually incompatible visions that got brushed under the carpet long enough to make it happen only by Boris Johnson promising all things to all people.
OTOH, things can be much much worse than Brexit. Musk's tweets about civil war in the UK, his willingness to support people too far right to even be in the most far-right of the top 8 polling parties, what Grok calls itself…
People keep bringing up the "advisory" nature of the referendum, but that's because referendums are not legally binding in the UK.
There was a vote. The public made their decision. Having carried out the vote it would have been political suicide to have ignored the result.
I think the result was wrong, and I think there should have been a defined threshold of 60% or similar, but those things aside the results were always going to be followed and honoured so long as the 50% threshold was exceeded.
The only way that the result could have been ignored would have been if the reply had been "we'll spend five years coming up with a plan, and let you vote on that" then hoping people forgot.
The whole vote was pointless, the possibilities of leaving so large and a single binary question captured none of the available options. Then the Tories locked in the most brutal exit they could and we were screwed.
But "advisory" was not even the top 50 things in the list of everything that went wrong.
Lots of people are calling this fraud, but I don't see it. Philosophically I don't agree. Propaganda? Sure, but no one is being defrauded. The person being served this content is on TikTok scrolling for exactly trash like this. If they weren't then it would be a simple block / don't recommend content like this.
"Gee whiz, I never thought about it that way before now, but that 15 second clip of an AI-generated woman regurgitating platitudes really changed my mind. It was so profound that I sat in stupor and thought to myself, 'Who is this woman?' I clicked on her profile and saw that her name is Anna. Thanks, Anna."
This all goes away with education. Anna doesn't harass you, you must look for Anna.
> Propaganda? Sure, but no one is being defrauded.
The problem with your position is that if a government, say Poland's, created a structure tasked with producing AI videos defending EU membership, or some other initiative beneficial to the people, the media would scream bloody murder by way of vicious government propaganda.
And then people like you are nowhere to be found to speak up in defense of the government.
I'm not saying that any government propaganda is good, but in cases like this, laying down like a beaten dog is worse. In other words, a solution is necessary and the government should be the initiator and a part of it.
Media-government relations are an unsolved problem which, unfortunately, doesn't depend only on the two of them... but I'm getting into the can of worms I promised not to open this year.
If you can have a nom de plume to speak truth to power, why can't one have a visage de plume as well?
I want future generations to have the power of anonymity, that some use that anonmyity for something I disagree with is precisely why I think it might be worth preserving.
If you invent a person and assume their identity, that's still a false identity.
> I always grew up with the assumption that everything on the internet is most likely fake.
How you interact with the internet is not really relevant to the discussion. The average person does not interact with the internet in the same way that people on this forum do, so that should not be the yardstick by which we judge this.
I think a commission of experts, put into place (but not supervised) by the democratically elected government, with judicial review as check & balance seems like a good first draft, but governance isn't my expertise.
Tbh the details don't really matter, what matters is that we ban this propaganda before it destroys us.
This is why I disagree with the free speech absolutist crowd.
A lot of "speech" online isn't real humans voicing their opinions and having civilized discourse.
It's nation states and moneyed interests weaponizing our naïveté, using what are meant to be public squares as means of disseminating propaganda and dividing our societies.
People arguing for unrestricted free speech online are either complicit (e.g. Musk) or naive and being taken advantage of.
I’m more interested in how you’d restrict speech, in a way that isn’t ineffective or corrupted.
Right now I think that free speech, like decentralization, should exist as a safety net. So most people use centralized platforms where bad content (e.g. this) is censored, but the open internet still exists, if only to keep the centralized platforms in line by providing alternatives if they degrade (e.g. if government propaganda gets so bad that it clearly and significantly contradicts people’s beliefs and real-life experiences).
Indeed. This was not such an issue when everybody had their own website or blog or whatever, and you had to seek out content intentionally... It's the active intervention of an algorithmic megaphone that is causing the damage. To me this is when it stops being free speech and starts being corporate policy that needs to be regulated.
But without free speech you run the risk of not being able to speak out against this exact type of activity.
Imo this isn't a free speech issue, it's fraud, you can criminalize this type of manipulative false testimony without encroaching on freedom of speech.
Yes. It's propaganda, not speech. Also the algorithms favor this sh*t. Also this massive generation of content floods the zone[1]. There is nothing "freedom of choice" about it if it resurfaces all the time. Upvotes/Views count disproportionally in most social media against downvotes/"not interested" (tiktok is better but even there you can't downvote enough AI-videos for them to not resurface. Probably because the algorithm isn't good enough to understand what is AI and what not, so these downvotes often don't count against AI).
The biggest, loudest, most powerful proponents of free speech don't actually believe in it. Musk bans and fires anyone who disagrees with him. Donald Trump rails against news articles and media companies who publish information he personally doesn't like, all while both of them blame the EU for violating a supposed free speech standard that they themselves hate, and also one the EU never really adhered to.
At the end of the day, we're all useful idiots at some point in our lives. I'm someone who leans more on the freedom/libertarian side and dislike what's happening in the EU.
But on the other hand, I do think someone type of content shouldn't be allowed... And it gives me a bit of cognitive dissonance. Take this polish AI crap for example: I think people should be able to freely speak about these issues, and I'm not opposed to them reaching for anonymity even through AI. But on the other hand, we also don't know if this is a foreign misinformation campaign or just a politically disgruntled Pole. I'm okay with the disgruntled Pole voicing their opinion, but I'm not okay with foreign actors manipulating people's opinions.
> But on the other hand, we also don't know if this is a foreign misinformation campaign or just a politically disgruntled Pole
The videos contain at least one mistake that indicates that they were written by a native speaker of Russian (the use of the word prawilny, which is a Russian word (правильный) and doesn't exist in Polish).
It's circumstantial evidence, granted, but enough to point at a Russian origin, at least in the absence of further information.
Someone (Russia) is working HARD to spread anti-EU propaganda in Poland. It's a barrage of GenAI, bots, trolls, and what not.
At least to me, living in Europe, the writing on the wall is that anonymous social media - or more likely internet as a whole - is going to end over here.
I figure this is why some platforms, like X, are trying so hard to leverage their political power. They know that some verification / KYC measures are coming, and that they'll get fined or blocked if they can't follow those regulations.
> Someone (Russia)
One of the videos uses the non-existent word prawilny, which is Russian (правильный). The Polish equivalent would be prawidłowy or właściwy.
You are right, but it should be added that "prawilny" is used as a slang for "good guy" among some young people subcultures. It's no longer used much.
I wish governments would treat things like this as equivalent to fraud.
It might not be taking people's money, but it's taking away access to truth through automated deception, which might even be worse.
Back when it took a madman to pollute discourse the public square, maybe you could have called it their right free speech, but this is not that. This is just computer assisted fraud, and exactly the kind of thing that computer hacking laws should be for.
How is this different from hiring actors to do guerilla marketing, or hiring influencers to pretend to like something, both of which happen constantly?
Time and money. There are laws limiting email spam because the unit cost of sending and distributing them is almost zero, which is a great incentive for bad people. Hiring actors and shooting videos for political propaganda takes time and money, whereas AI slop is nearly free.
Both should be "false advertising", which may not be considered "fraud", but the main point stands that both should be illegal in some contexts.
But not all contexts. People are allowed to lie: e.g., I can tell my friend that a bag of Lay's chips has 0 calories and 100g protein, or (relevant here) that I'm Dua Lipa. People specifically aren't allowed to lie "officially": e.g., I can't sell Lay's chips with inaccurate nutrition facts, or present a fake ID that says I'm Dua Lipa to board a flight.
I think online should work roughly similarly. On the open web, using an AI-generated persona is like lying about your A/S/L, which is like other forms of lying: immoral, but not illegal. However, there should be "authentic" sites, where posting "inauthentic" content gets you banned by the site and maybe (if you're subverting bans) fined.
In fact, this is what we have today: sites have "terms of service", and although breaking them usually only gets you banned, I believe in most places you can technically be sued. The problem here is that popular social media sites don't enforce authenticity, and whoever's making these videos (if they're subverting bans) isn't getting fined.
How come such kind of content is never promoting equality, fair salary, worker rights, wealth redistribution?
ngl, i think the fact that this is even possible and can get people is really dope.
I wish there were public studies like, 'We ran an experiment where young, attractive women wearing Polish clothing caused people who would naturally express these ideologies to stop scrolling more often than young, attractive women not wearing Polish clothing, for x demographic"
Something can be simultaneously "dope" and also very obviously extremely destructive to society if one looks past the tip of their nose. Let's try not to get too excited by those things.
Not exactly the same, but I've seen some studies where people are shown things, art, music, people, cars, etc and asked to rate them.
Its very easy to influence their rating by showing them fake ratings from other people.
Additionally they can show who rated it a certain way and influence the test subjects ratings even more.
It is scientifically proven that people don’t change channels on TV if the ad has a dog in it. I don’t see why this can’t apply to people on screen as well.
We live in crazy times. I shudder what Brexit would have been like today with all these AI fakes, truly scary times.
I doubt Brexit would've been much different. The constituency nature of UK general elections means that a substantial majority of MPs knew they had to support it even though it was only a 48-52 split in a supposedly advisory referendum.
But to the extent that it might have been different, the many incompatible visions for it that gridlocked UK politics might have coalesced into a single vision, and while that would still have been worse than not having done Brexit as all, it might have been less bad than five mutually incompatible visions that got brushed under the carpet long enough to make it happen only by Boris Johnson promising all things to all people.
OTOH, things can be much much worse than Brexit. Musk's tweets about civil war in the UK, his willingness to support people too far right to even be in the most far-right of the top 8 polling parties, what Grok calls itself…
On that kind of theme, there's a psych study, Robbers Cave, worth reading about. Also note some summaries fail to mention that both groups resented being manipulated by the researchers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic_conflict_theory#Robb...
People keep bringing up the "advisory" nature of the referendum, but that's because referendums are not legally binding in the UK.
There was a vote. The public made their decision. Having carried out the vote it would have been political suicide to have ignored the result.
I think the result was wrong, and I think there should have been a defined threshold of 60% or similar, but those things aside the results were always going to be followed and honoured so long as the 50% threshold was exceeded.
The only way that the result could have been ignored would have been if the reply had been "we'll spend five years coming up with a plan, and let you vote on that" then hoping people forgot.
The whole vote was pointless, the possibilities of leaving so large and a single binary question captured none of the available options. Then the Tories locked in the most brutal exit they could and we were screwed.
But "advisory" was not even the top 50 things in the list of everything that went wrong.
I mean... They still voted to leave and we didn't have the technology... so... can't have been worse, hah!
Lots of people are calling this fraud, but I don't see it. Philosophically I don't agree. Propaganda? Sure, but no one is being defrauded. The person being served this content is on TikTok scrolling for exactly trash like this. If they weren't then it would be a simple block / don't recommend content like this.
"Gee whiz, I never thought about it that way before now, but that 15 second clip of an AI-generated woman regurgitating platitudes really changed my mind. It was so profound that I sat in stupor and thought to myself, 'Who is this woman?' I clicked on her profile and saw that her name is Anna. Thanks, Anna."
This all goes away with education. Anna doesn't harass you, you must look for Anna.
> Propaganda? Sure, but no one is being defrauded.
The problem with your position is that if a government, say Poland's, created a structure tasked with producing AI videos defending EU membership, or some other initiative beneficial to the people, the media would scream bloody murder by way of vicious government propaganda.
And then people like you are nowhere to be found to speak up in defense of the government.
I'm not saying that any government propaganda is good, but in cases like this, laying down like a beaten dog is worse. In other words, a solution is necessary and the government should be the initiator and a part of it.
Media-government relations are an unsolved problem which, unfortunately, doesn't depend only on the two of them... but I'm getting into the can of worms I promised not to open this year.
If you can have a nom de plume to speak truth to power, why can't one have a visage de plume as well?
I want future generations to have the power of anonymity, that some use that anonmyity for something I disagree with is precisely why I think it might be worth preserving.
There is a difference between hiding your identity for the purpose of privacy and for the purpose of deception.
There’s a difference between writing anonymously and assuming a false identity.
>assuming a false identity
Whose identity is being faked?
I always grew up with the assumption that everything on the internet is most likely fake.
That girl you're talking to? Probably a dude. The Nigerian prince asking for money. Probably a scammer.
Unless it's a government website with secure ID login, every account you see online is probably fake.
If you invent a person and assume their identity, that's still a false identity.
> I always grew up with the assumption that everything on the internet is most likely fake.
How you interact with the internet is not really relevant to the discussion. The average person does not interact with the internet in the same way that people on this forum do, so that should not be the yardstick by which we judge this.
>assuming a false identity
Is vertigo22 a real identity or a fake one?
>The average person does not interact with the internet in the same way that people on this forum do
How other "average" people (am I not average too?) choose to use the internet is irelevant to everyone needing to doxx themselves online from now on.
Because it takes power to do massive AI influence operations.
It's not enabling speaking truth to power. It's letting the already powerful dictate the perception of truth.
Whose the one deciding what the truth is?
Not a green account on HN, that's for sure.
But what about ones with malicious comments breaking HN rules like yours?
Definitely not foreign influence operators.
You're beating it around the bush not answering the question.
I think a commission of experts, put into place (but not supervised) by the democratically elected government, with judicial review as check & balance seems like a good first draft, but governance isn't my expertise.
Tbh the details don't really matter, what matters is that we ban this propaganda before it destroys us.
This is why I disagree with the free speech absolutist crowd.
A lot of "speech" online isn't real humans voicing their opinions and having civilized discourse.
It's nation states and moneyed interests weaponizing our naïveté, using what are meant to be public squares as means of disseminating propaganda and dividing our societies.
People arguing for unrestricted free speech online are either complicit (e.g. Musk) or naive and being taken advantage of.
I’m more interested in how you’d restrict speech, in a way that isn’t ineffective or corrupted.
Right now I think that free speech, like decentralization, should exist as a safety net. So most people use centralized platforms where bad content (e.g. this) is censored, but the open internet still exists, if only to keep the centralized platforms in line by providing alternatives if they degrade (e.g. if government propaganda gets so bad that it clearly and significantly contradicts people’s beliefs and real-life experiences).
no expectation of free speech if you use modern technology.
free speech over the mail, phone, in writing, in books, in newspapers, in radio, in television, in shouting on the street
but not on the internet.
it's just irresponsible to allow someone to both reach millions of individuals, and be anonymous. either one, or the other.
Indeed. This was not such an issue when everybody had their own website or blog or whatever, and you had to seek out content intentionally... It's the active intervention of an algorithmic megaphone that is causing the damage. To me this is when it stops being free speech and starts being corporate policy that needs to be regulated.
But without free speech you run the risk of not being able to speak out against this exact type of activity.
Imo this isn't a free speech issue, it's fraud, you can criminalize this type of manipulative false testimony without encroaching on freedom of speech.
This is exactly what EU anti disinformation campaigns are trying to fight, the same ones that get a lot of hate by free speech warriors.
I think this is exactly the crux of the free speech issue - should manipulative false testimony be allowed? I'd say no, but others disagree.
Yes. It's propaganda, not speech. Also the algorithms favor this sh*t. Also this massive generation of content floods the zone[1]. There is nothing "freedom of choice" about it if it resurfaces all the time. Upvotes/Views count disproportionally in most social media against downvotes/"not interested" (tiktok is better but even there you can't downvote enough AI-videos for them to not resurface. Probably because the algorithm isn't good enough to understand what is AI and what not, so these downvotes often don't count against AI).
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone
Or bots.
The biggest, loudest, most powerful proponents of free speech don't actually believe in it. Musk bans and fires anyone who disagrees with him. Donald Trump rails against news articles and media companies who publish information he personally doesn't like, all while both of them blame the EU for violating a supposed free speech standard that they themselves hate, and also one the EU never really adhered to.
[flagged]
https://jamestown.org/russian-disinformation-targets-the-eur...
At the end of the day, we're all useful idiots at some point in our lives. I'm someone who leans more on the freedom/libertarian side and dislike what's happening in the EU.
But on the other hand, I do think someone type of content shouldn't be allowed... And it gives me a bit of cognitive dissonance. Take this polish AI crap for example: I think people should be able to freely speak about these issues, and I'm not opposed to them reaching for anonymity even through AI. But on the other hand, we also don't know if this is a foreign misinformation campaign or just a politically disgruntled Pole. I'm okay with the disgruntled Pole voicing their opinion, but I'm not okay with foreign actors manipulating people's opinions.
> But on the other hand, we also don't know if this is a foreign misinformation campaign or just a politically disgruntled Pole
The videos contain at least one mistake that indicates that they were written by a native speaker of Russian (the use of the word prawilny, which is a Russian word (правильный) and doesn't exist in Polish).
It's circumstantial evidence, granted, but enough to point at a Russian origin, at least in the absence of further information.
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