AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time • Hacker News Board

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#111

Post by hdgvhicv » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

iammrpayments wrote: post #99

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

The way facebook uses automation to manage their products is a disgrace, they can’t even manage to keep themselves automatically banning a lawyer who happens to be called Mark Zuckerberg: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mark-zuckerberg-lawsuit-imper... If you advertise on facebook you’re almost guarantee to have your ad account restricted for no apparent reason and no human being to appeal to, even if you spend big mo…

Yet oddly they never seem to be able to stop scam adverts.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#112

Post by lumost » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #110

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

The underlying issue here isn’t AI based policing, it’s the fact private entities have enough unregulated influence on peoples’ daily life that their use of these or any such policy mechanisms are undemocratically effecting people in notably significant ways. The Facebook example is, whatever, but what if it’s some landlord renting making a decision, some health insurance company deciding your coverage, etc. Now obvi…

We already live in this world for health insurance. The ai can make plausible sounding denials which a doctor can rubber stamp. You have no ability to sue the doctor for malpractice, you cannot appeal the decision.

Medical insurance is quickly becoming a simple scam where you are forced to pay a private entity that refuses to ever perform its function.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#113

Post by whyenot » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

It seems highly unlikely to me that it will be banned by congress in the next few years, if ever. So, what we really should be asking is how do we live in a world of pervasive surveillance, where everything we do and say is being recorded, saved, analyzed, and potentially used to manipulate us.

As I write this, sitting in Peet's Coffee in downtown Los Altos, I count three different cameras recording me, and I'm using their public wifi which I assuming is also being used to track me. That's the world we have now.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#114

Post by novok » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

firesteelrain wrote: post #37

novok wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is functionally much harder to pull off than software because model weights are essentially more like raw media files than code, and that is much easier to convert to another runtime

Codeium had an airgap solution until they were in talks with OpenAI and pulled it back. It worked on prem and they even told you what hardware to buy

You can still extract the model weights from an on-prem machine. It has all the same problems of media DRM, and large enterprises do not accept unknown recording and surveillance that they cannot control

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#115

Post by hdgvhicv » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:28 PM UTC

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #69

jazzyjackson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could fund an as campaign to free people from the perception that ads are to sell you products Ads are there to change your behavior to make you more likely to buy products, e.g., put downward pressure on your self esteem to make you feel "less than" unless you live a lifestyle that happens to involve buying X product They are not made in your best interest, they are adverserial psycho-tech that have a side…

This, yes, thank you. Advertising is behavioral modification. They even talk about it out in the open, and if you are unconvinced, hear it from the horse's mouth: https://brandingstrategyinsider.com/achieving-marketing-obje... "Your ultimate marketing goal is behavior change — for the simple reason that nothing matters unless it results in a shift in consumer actions"

It is literally brainwashing.

Brainwashing is the systematic effort to get someone to adopt a particular loyalty, instruction, or doctrine.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#116

Post by floundy » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

terribleperson wrote: post #103

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

I'm suspended on reddit for, as best as I can tell, posting a DFhack bug fix script. For the uninitiated, this is a bug fix script for a program commonly used in Dwarf Fortress moderating, not anything illicit. If this kind of low-quality AI moderation is the future, I'm not sure if these major platforms will even remain usable.

That's hilarious given that Reddit is utterly overrun with blatant, low-quality LLM accounts using ChatGPT to post comments and gain karma, and several of the "text stories" on the front page from subs like AITA are blatant AI slop that the users (or other bots?) are eating up.

I suspect sites like Reddit don't care about a few% false positive rate, without considering in context that bot farmers literally do not care, they'll make another free account, but genuine users will have their attitude towards the site turn significantly negative when they're falsely actioned.

Don't worry, Reddit's day of reckoning comes when the advertisers figure out what percent of Reddit's traffic that they're paying to serve ads to are just bots.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#117

Post by trod1234 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:33 PM UTC

terribleperson wrote: post #103

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

I'm suspended on reddit for, as best as I can tell, posting a DFhack bug fix script. For the uninitiated, this is a bug fix script for a program commonly used in Dwarf Fortress moderating, not anything illicit. If this kind of low-quality AI moderation is the future, I'm not sure if these major platforms will even remain usable.

I'm banned from a few subreddits for correctly pointing out that ricing is not a pejorative, and the history of the culture that led to extreme customization.

You have malevolent third-party bots taking advantage of poor moderation to conflate similar/same word different context pairs to silence communication.

For example, the reddit AI bots considers "ricing" to be the same as "rice boy". The latter definitely is pejorative, but the former is not.

Just wild and absolutely crazy-making that this is even allowed, since communication is the primary means to inflict compulsion and torture these days.

Intolerable acts without due process or a rule of law lead to only one possible outcome. Coercion isn't new, but the stupid people are trying their hand for another bite at the apple.

The major platforms will not remain usable because eventually you get this hollowing out of meaning, and this behavior will either drive away all your rational intelligent contributors, or lead to accelerated failures such as evaporative cooling in the social networks. People use things because they provide some amount of value. When that stops being the case, the value disappears not overnight, but within a few months.

Just take a look at the linuxquestions subreddit since the mod exodus. They have a automated trickle of the same questions that don't really get sufficiently answered. Its all slop.

All the experienced people who previously shared their knowledge as charity have moved on because they were driven out by caustic harassment and lack of proper moderation to prevent that. The mod list even hides who the mods are now so people who have had moderated action can't appeal to the Reddit Administrators with the specific moderator who did something as a fascist dictator incapable of basic reading level comprehension common to grade schoolers (AI).

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#118

Post by toasted-subs » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

Yeah I've basically refused to ever have kid's because I cant imagine them growing up knowingly becoming slaves. As a parent I'd basically expected CPS to be called on me for having kid's in this environment.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#119

Post by username332211 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #105

username332211 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessary. If economies of scale exist, that means that a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one. Companies that advertise effectively can offer a better product precisely because they advertise and have large market share. (Whether they do it or not is a question of market conditions, business strategy, public policy and ultimately their own decision…

a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one. This is so far from the reality of so many things in life, it's hard to believe you've thought this through. Maybe it works in the academic, theoretical sense, but it falls down in the real world.

Really? Because the most common place I've seen this logic break down, is the bizarre habit of people to derive some sort of status and self-worth from using an unpopular product. And to then to vehemently defend that choice in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

No "artisanal" product, from food to cosmetics to clothing and furniture is ever worth it unless value-for-money (and money in general) is of no significance to you. But people buy them.

I really can't go trough every product class, but take furniture as a painfully obvious example. The amount of money you'd have to spend to get furniture of a similar quality to IKEA is mind-boggling. Trust me, I've done it. Yet I know of people in Sweden who put considerable effort in acquiring second-hand furniture because IKEA is somehow beneath them.

Again, there situations where economies of scale don't exist and situations where a business may not be interested in selling a cheaper or superior product. But they are rarer than we'd like to admit.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#120

Post by sherburt3 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

0x696C6961 wrote: post #6

AI makes large scale retroactive thought policing practical. This is terrifying.

I would argue that's been happening for a long time with much simpler methods. Take this website for example, I get points for posting comments that people upvote. If I post a comment that people don't like, I will get downvoted. I obviously want more points because... so I naturally work to craft the comment that I believe will net the most upvotes. This isn't 100% terrible because this helps weed out the assholes, but I think it has much more insidious effects.

Feel free to call me an accelerationist but I hope AI makes social media so awful that no one wants to use it anymore. My hope is that AI is the cleansing fire that burns down social media so that we can rebuild on fertile soil.