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Tim Bray on Grokipedia

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Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#161

Post by generationP »

spankibalt wrote: post #128
generationP wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that public opinion and the media landscape are quite different in 2025 from what they were in the 2010s when most prior studies on WP bias have been written. Sufficiently pertinent (sadly this isn't synonymous with high quality) conservative and anti-woke content can reach wide audiences, particularly when Elon puts his thumb on the scale. Besides, to my knowledge, none of the prior attempts at studying…

> "[...] conservative and anti-woke content can reach wide audiences, particularly when Elon puts his thumb on the scale." No shit; it's always been that way since mass media became a thing. Besides, there is no such thing as quality conservative and/or "anti-woke" media. The very concept represents a contradictio in adiecto . And Elon's just the modern version of an industrialist of yesteryear. Back in the day they…

Note that I've said "anti-woke content", not "anti-woke media". I am including the occasional "course correction" opeds and actually well-researched longreads you're seeing in places like NYT, Atlantic and such. Partisan outlets for partisan readers aren't doing the heavy lifting here, but the success of Substack and the unexpected survival of Twitter under Elon have convinced editors to listen. Elon's personality isn't of importance here; he mostly needs to just push a few buttons to make a sub-critical news item go super-critical.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#162

Post by exoverito »

9dev wrote: post #113
__s wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can probably be used to shame the WP into cleaning their shit up what if your goal is for wikipedia to be biased in your favor?

No no no, you see, you got it all wrong. If the Wikipedia article on, let’s say, transsexualism, says that’s an orientation, not a disease—then that’s leftist bias . Removing that bias means correcting it to say it’s a mental illness, obviously. That makes the article unbiased , pure truth.

[flagged]

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#163

Post by StephenHerlihyy »

cowpig wrote: post #151
StephenHerlihyy wrote: post #150

I don’t really know who Tim Bray is and until now I had never been to Grokipedia. I don’t really like Grok - I tried Superheavy and it was slow, bloated and no better than Claude Opus. But I have a bad habit of fact checking. It’s the engineer in me. You tell me something, I instinctively verify. In the linked article, sub-section, ‘References’, Mr. Bray opines about a reference not directly relating to the content c…

If you're going to go through the trouble of checking, you might as well link to the things you checked.

Sure.

Tim Bray’s Grokipedia: https://grokipedia.com/page/Tim_Bray

Relevant text: Serving as the FTC's infrastructure expert, he testified on technical aspects such as service speed and user perceptions of responsiveness, assessing potential competitive harms from reduced incentives for innovation post-acquisition; his declaration, referenced in court filings, emphasized empirical metrics over speculative harms.[49][50]

[49] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/FTCReplytoMetaR...

[50] https://dpo-india.com/Resources/USA_Court_Judgements_Against...

Paragraph 756: Tim Bray, the FTC’s proffered infrastructure expert, opined that “[u]sers’ perceptions of how quickly an online product responds to requests is an important component of the quality of their experience,” and that the delay between a user request and an online product’s response is commonly referred to as latency. Ex. 288 at ¶ 98 (Bray Rep.). Mr. Krieger testified that Instagram saw a “significant latency reduction post-Instagration,” a term referring to Instagram’s migration to Meta’s data servers. Ex. 153 at 76:24-77:5, 287:3-20 (Krieger Dep. Tr.). He prepared a presentation in 2014 stating that there was a “75% latency reduction in our core ‘hot path’ in rendering feeds” after the integration.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#164

Post by drysart »

jameslk wrote: post #95
hocuspocus wrote: post #83

I checked a topic I care about, and that I have personally researched because the publicly available information is pretty bad. The article is even worse than the one on Wikipedia. It follows the same structure but fails to tell a coherent story. It references random people on Reddit (!) that don't even support the point it's trying to make. Not that the information on Reddit is particularly good to begin with, even…

It was just launched? I remember when Wikipedia was pretty useless early on. The concept of using an LLM to take a ton of information and distill it down into encyclopedia form seems promising with iteration and refinement. If they add in an editor step to clean things up, that would likely help a lot (not sure if maybe they already do this)

There's a significant difference between a site being useless because it just doesn't have the breadth yet to cover the topic you're looking for (as in early Wikipedia); versus a site being useless by not actually having facts about the topic you're looking for, yet spouting out authoritative-looking nonsense anyway.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#165

Post by spankibalt »

generationP wrote: post #161
spankibalt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[...] conservative and anti-woke content can reach wide audiences, particularly when Elon puts his thumb on the scale." No shit; it's always been that way since mass media became a thing. Besides, there is no such thing as quality conservative and/or "anti-woke" media. The very concept represents a contradictio in adiecto . And Elon's just the modern version of an industrialist of yesteryear. Back in the day they…

Note that I've said "anti-woke content", not "anti-woke media". I am including the occasional "course correction" opeds and actually well-researched longreads you're seeing in places like NYT, Atlantic and such. Partisan outlets for partisan readers aren't doing the heavy lifting here, but the success of Substack and the unexpected survival of Twitter under Elon have convinced editors to listen. Elon's personality is…

> "Note that I've said 'anti-woke content', not 'anti-woke media'."

In the context of my argument a distinction without difference.

> "I am including the occasional "course correction" opeds and actually well-researched longreads you're seeing in places like NYT, Atlantic and such."

Well, that's the crux: There is no such thing for me as "actually well-researched anti-woke content". That's just a pathetic, and ultimately tragic, hallucination in the same vein as "actually well-researched" pieces of flat earthers, pushing their trash. Et cetera.

> "Elon's personality isn't of importance here [...]"

I can tell you're one of those guys who paid "actually a lot of" attention when The Cult of Personality was negotiated in the classroom.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#166

Post by tstrimple »

exoverito wrote: post #162
9dev wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no no, you see, you got it all wrong. If the Wikipedia article on, let’s say, transsexualism, says that’s an orientation, not a disease—then that’s leftist bias . Removing that bias means correcting it to say it’s a mental illness, obviously. That makes the article unbiased , pure truth.

[flagged]

It only seems to be a problem for bigots like you. Trans folks just want to live their lives. Why can’t you leave them the fuck alone?

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#167

Post by jameslk »

drysart wrote: post #164
jameslk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just launched? I remember when Wikipedia was pretty useless early on. The concept of using an LLM to take a ton of information and distill it down into encyclopedia form seems promising with iteration and refinement. If they add in an editor step to clean things up, that would likely help a lot (not sure if maybe they already do this)

There's a significant difference between a site being useless because it just doesn't have the breadth yet to cover the topic you're looking for (as in early Wikipedia); versus a site being useless by not actually having facts about the topic you're looking for, yet spouting out authoritative-looking nonsense anyway.

> versus a site being useless by not actually having facts about the topic you're looking for, yet spouting out authoritative-looking nonsense anyway.

You just described Wikipedia early on before it had much content, rules around weasel words, original research, etc

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#168

Post by dragonwriter »

physarum_salad wrote: post #49

"Wikipedia, in my mind, has two main purposes: A quick visit to find out the basics about some city or person or plant or whatever, or a deep-dive to find out what we really know about genetic linkages to autism or Bach’s relationship with Frederick the Great or whatever." Completely agree with the first purpose but would never use wikipedia for the second purpose. Its only good at basics and cannot handle complex in…

Its often good for the latter when, as a tertiary source should be, it is used not just for its narrative content but for its references to secondary sources, which are themselves used for both their content and their references.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#169

Post by LastTrain »

onetimeusename wrote: post #125
LastTrain wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Wikipedia works. People can edit it. People who are members of organizations can edit it. The edits are transparent, and the history is preserved. It is open to anyone. It is like you're saying the whole world is biased and stacked against your point of view. The example you provide doesn't suggest any kind of centralized control or gatekeeping at all. Just some interested parties trying vying to contribut…

No. I don't think I am mischaracterizing it and I did not say the whole world is biased against me. I am not the person you replied to in case you're confusing me with them. I gave an example of an astroturfing campaign and yes, the ADL did not disclose what they were doing until they got caught. I don't think that should be casually dismissed as merely just interested parties. I think it is a genuine problem with Wi…

“Couldn't the same argument be applied that he's just an interested party?”

No, that isn’t even remotely comparable. One person having total control over the content and tone of every single article is not the same thing as millions of independent contributors. Especially if your complaint is /bias/, which is the subject of this thread.

Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia

#170

Post by tstrimple »

siliconc0w wrote: post #140
sunaookami wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was unintended as observed by Simon here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/11/grok-musk/ and confirmed by xAI themselves here: https://x.com/xai/status/1945039609840185489 >Another was that if you ask it “What do you think?” the model reasons that as an AI it doesn’t have an opinion but knowing it was Grok 4 by xAI searches to see what xAI or Elon Musk might have said on a topic to align itself with the compan…

The problem is it's part of a pattern of several 'bugs' and even 'unauthorized prompt changes' that have caused Grok to be more Elon-aligned. And when asked by right wing people about an embarrassing Grok response that refutes their view, Elon has agreed it's a problem and said he is "working on it".

It’s amazing the see the credulity of Elon stans. It’s the exact same reason grifting is so profitable among the right wing. It literally doesn’t matter how much evidence there is. If dear leader gives an excuse, they all believe and repeat the excuses. They are conditioned to it at this point. Any sources that refute their position is just leftist bias. This world fucking sucks.
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