Good one. No platform ever should allow CSAM content. And the fact that they didn’t even care and haven’t want to spend money for implementing guardrails or moderation is deeply concerning. This has imho nothing to do with model censorship, but everything with allowing that kind of content on a platform
It seems people have a rather short memory when it comes to twitter. When it was still run by Jack Dorsey, CP was abundant on twitter and there was little effort to tamp down on it. After Musk bought the platform, he and Dorsey had a public argument in which Dorsey denied the scale of the problem or that old twitter was aware of it and had shown indifference. But Musk actually did take tangible steps to clean it up a…
X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
911–920 of 1001 posts
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#912Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, there is evidence that this company made and distributed CSAM I think one big issue with this statement – "CSAM" lacks a precise legal definition; the precise legal term(s) vary from country to country, with differing definitions. While sexual imagery of real minors is highly illegal everywhere, there's a whole lot of other material – textual stories, drawings, animation, AI-generated images of nonexistent mi…
It wouldn't be called CSAM in France because it would be called a French word. Arguing definitions is arguing semantics. The point is, X did things that are illegal in France, no matter what you call them.
The most common French word is Pédopornographie. But my impression is the definition of that word under French law is possibly narrower than some definitions of the English acronym “CSAM”. Canadian law is much broader, and so what’s legally pédopornographie (English “child pornogaphy”) in Canada may be much closer to broad “CSAM” definitions
> The point is, X did things that are illegal in France, no matter what you call them.
Which French law are you alleging they violated? Article 227-23 du Code pénal, or something else? And how exactly are you claiming they violated it?
Note the French authorities at this time are not accusing them of violating the law. An investigation is simply a concern or suspicion of a legal violation, not a formal accusation; one possible outcome of an investigation is a formal accusation, another is the conclusion that they (at least technically) didn’t violate the law after all. I don’t think the French legal process has reached a conclusion either way yet.
One relevant case is the unpublished Court of Cassation decision 06-86.763 dated 12 septembre 2007 [0] which upheld a conviction of child pornography for importing and distributing the anime film “Twin Angels - le retour des bêtes célestes - Vol. 3". [0] However, the somewhat odd situation is that it appears that film is catalogued by the French national library, [1] although I don’t know if a catalogue entry definitively proves they possess the item. Also, art. 227-23 distinguishes between material depicting under 15s (illegal to even possess) and material depicting under 18s (only illegal to possess if one has intent to distribute); this prosecution appears to be have been brought under the latter category only-even though the individual was depicted as being under 15-suggesting this anime might not be illegal to possess in France if one has no intent to distribute it.
But this is the point - one needs to look at the details of exactly what the law says and how exactly the authorities apply it, rather than vague assertions of criminality which might not actually be true.
[0] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/juri/id/JURITEXT000007640077/
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#913Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, physical investigation is the common procedure. You need a reason _not_ to do it, and since "it's all digital" is not a good reason we go back to doing the usual thing.
It's a show of force. "Look we have big strong men with le guns and the neat jack boots, we can send 12 of them in for every one of you." Whether it is actually needed for evidence is immaterial to that.
If this isn't the entire purpose of law enforcement then what is exactly?
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#914Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, if you don't follow EU laws prepare to not do business in Europe. Likewise, if you don't follow US laws I'd advise against trying to do business in USA.
If X/Twitter was to be banned in the EU, and some of its citizens still wanted to access X/Twitter, let us say for the sake of getting alternative points of view on politics and news, would it be a good or a bad thing if accessing X/Twitter by IP was stopped? As in, a citizen of an EU country types x.com/CNN, because he or she wants to know the other side of some political issue between the EU and the USA, and he or…
There’s an interesting tidbit that he gained quite a few listeners when he started releasing casualty information that the British government withheld to try to keep wartime-morale high.
Lord Haw-Haw then tried to leverage that audience into a force of Nazi sympathy and a general mood of defeatism.
Anyway, fun anecdote. Enemy propaganda during wartime (or increased tensions) is harmless until it isn’t.
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#915Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly it sounds to me like a "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" kind of operation. France and the UK, and judging by yesterday's speech by the PM of Spain maybe the whole EU might be looking to do what China and Russia did earlier on and start cracking down on foreign social media by making it impossible to operate without total alignment with their vision and not just their (new) rules. Together with a…
Yes, if you don't follow EU laws prepare to not do business in Europe. Likewise, if you don't follow US laws I'd advise against trying to do business in USA.
Sure, that's what laws are for. Surely we can still point at those laws and question their motives though.
Spanish PM plainly stated a sort of editor framework of responsibility for platforms. This is the same country that strongly advocates for Chat Control within the EU, also looking for a similar under-16 ban on social media.
So the same government is at once looking to deanonimize social media users, revoke their privacy regarding communications, and to enforce moderation standards never seen before. This is, supposedly, a center-left + left coalition mind you.
Same country that blocks a chunk of the internet when a LALIGA football match is on, too. Lawfully of course. All of this is preposterous, making it the law doesn't make that better it makes it far far worse.
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#916Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems people have a rather short memory when it comes to twitter. When it was still run by Jack Dorsey, CP was abundant on twitter and there was little effort to tamp down on it. After Musk bought the platform, he and Dorsey had a public argument in which Dorsey denied the scale of the problem or that old twitter was aware of it and had shown indifference. But Musk actually did take tangible steps to clean it up a…
Having an issue with users uploading CSAM (a problem for every platform) is very different from giving them a tool to quickly and easily generate CSAM, with apparently little-to-no effort to prevent this from happening.
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#917Good old HN. Users losing their collective minds over rule of law and CSAM being bad.
Agreed. It's why it's difficult to support France who has sheltered Roman Polanski for decades.
It's strange how people like you only think it's bad when it suits your political agenda.
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#918To people claiming a physical raid is pointless from the point of gathering data : - you are thinking about a company doing good things the right way. You are thinking about a company abiding by the law, storing data on its own server, having good practices, etc. The moment a company starts to do dubious stuff then good practices start to go out the window. People write email with cryptic analogies, people start dele…
They don't just take paper when they raid offices. They take the computers too. I've never worked anywhere where desktop machines are encrypted as a matter of routine. Laptops yes (but only recently). Servers maybe, depending on what they do.
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#919This vindicates the pro-AI censorship crowd I guess. It definitely makes it clear what is expected of AI companies. Your users aren't responsible for what they use your model for, you are, so you'd better make sure your model can't ever be used for anything nefarious. If you can't do that without keeping the model closed and verifying everyone's identities... well, that's good for your profits I guess.
Pretty disturbing to me how many people _on here_ are cheering for this. I thought that at least here of all places, there might be some nuanced discussion on "ok, I see why people are emotional about this topic in particular, but it's worth stepping back and putting emotions aside for a minute to see if this is actually reasonable overall..." but besides your comment, I'm not seeing much of that.
I think the HN crowd is more nuanced than you're giving them credit for: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=chat+control
Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok
#920Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what do they hope to find in a raid of the french offices, a folder labeled "Grok's CSAM Plan"? You would be _amazed_ at the things that people commit to email and similar. Here's a Facebook one (leaked, not extracted by authorities): https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-...
I mean, the example you link is probably an engineer doing their job of signalling to hierarchy that something went deeply wrong. Of course, the lack of action of Facebook afterwards is a proof that they did not care, but not as much as a smoking gun. A smoking gun would be, for instance, Facebook observing that most of their ads are scam, that the cost of fixing this exceeds by far "the cost of any regulatory settle…
> “It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” the standards state. The document also notes that it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”
This is not a bug report; this is the _rules_ (or was the rules; Facebook say they have changed them after the media found out about them).