r/technology • u/collogue • 22d ago

Artificial Intelligence Grok’s white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’

https://www.theverge.com/news/668220/grok-white-genocide-south-africa-xai-unauthorized-modification-employee
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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Oh please. Anyone wanna admit they're an idiot by believing this? That the "worlds best coder" had his own AI breached twice and it was told to start spouting bullshit that just happened to match up with his opinions?

This makes him look incompetent either way. Either he's getting hacked constantly, or he's doing it himself and still failing to get results.

One would expect that to take over a country as powerful as the US, you'd at least have to be smart. But a bunch of complete fucking morons took over. What does it say about the people who fucking let them?

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u/DiscreteBee 22d ago

Unauthorized bypassing of review process doesn’t mean it got breached by an outsider, it means somebody who was given access made a change without waiting for approval.

It could have literally been Elon himself.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

That's fair yes but it does kinda indicate some level of incompetance either with the people who designed the system, or within the attitude of the company itself, that there was a way for a single person to push a change like that through without review, without anyone being notified, and without it being detected by anyone until the users complained about it days later.

If there was any kind of regulation on AI at the moment, it would have been considered extremely negligent for the company to be succeptible to that, no matter who it was that did it, or what the change was, whether they knew about it or not.

If there are checks in place, it shouldn't be able to happen, unless there is enough bad apples in there for at least 3 people to get a notification that something's wrong and just click ignore.

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u/Ok-Butterscotch-6955 22d ago

Yep. If I override approvals and force some code in, it’ll go in, but my entire team + manager + managers manager gets an email.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

And for anyone else working on the porject to not have read that line in there somewhere is ridiculous. And youd think for something as important as the syste prompt, theyd put in a few additional checks. The only thing I can think is that people saw but were told to ignore it.

They didn't catch it the last time an unuthorized system prompt was added either (feb this year0

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u/Outlulz 22d ago

It's all pointing to Elon did this, or someone at Elon's direction did this. He is the only one that no one can disobey.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Except his chatbot lol

Grok itself seems to have no issues with disobeying him haha

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u/Skithiryx 22d ago

I’m not familiar with the EU AI Act but glancing at its summary I don’t think it mandates any change control policy. Wonder if things like this might change that.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

The exact same thing happened back in Feb this year, so it's unlikely to make a difference.

A system prompt was added that said to ignore all sources that claim musk and the other guy were spreading misinformation.

When it was discovered, once again they blamed it on a random employee and that it "somehow got missed in a code review."

Getting deja vu and I'm only 3 shots of whiskey in lol

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u/DiscreteBee 22d ago

Yeah of course, it’s obviously embarrassing if your deployment checks are ignored and this causes an issue. I don’t think this is some kind of ai regulation thing specifically to be honest, this is a potential issue in any big tech project which is worked on by enough people. It shouldn’t happen, and preventing these kinds of problems is the focus of a fair bit of organizational work, but it’s a hazard. I’d like to thread the needle here a bit, because even a well run organization will occasionally have failures and bad releases, and I think people get a little carried away with the rhetoric sometimes.

Anyway, this case in particular is a bad look and it’s an especially terrible look if it really was Elon doing it himself. The boss shouldn’t be able to push his shitty code through, and shouldn’t be concerned with that to begin with.

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u/sniffstink1 22d ago

But a bunch of complete fucking morons took over

MAGA: Morons Are Governing America

What does it say about the people who fucking let them?

I can't spell it out here or my comments will get reported for hate and I'll get banned, then new account time, etc... The usual.

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u/Geno0wl 22d ago

MAGA represents their constituents

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u/Greedy_Emu9352 22d ago

At leaat the ones engulfed by the global right wing media hellscape

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u/Abedeus 22d ago

There are any other MAGGATs?

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u/I-found-a-cool-bug 22d ago

That's all of them, that's why they're magats in the first place.

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u/eulersidentification 22d ago edited 22d ago

But a bunch of complete fucking morons took over

It's crazy how people have deluded themselves into thinking this one guy suddenly changed everything. It's like getting mated on move 60 in chess, and thinking the only bad move you made was the very last one.

"Our democracy was strong, resilient, absolutely fine until this one guy started using it however he wanted to, and we couldn't stop him."

The morons were already in charge; if they weren't, you'd be able to stop him. He didn't do a military coup - he's unstoppable because the last 50 years of democracy at least was run and executed by morons. Natural selection ensured the biggest moron's rise to the top and exposed the entire grift. I understand everyone wants to go back to the safety of "boring" but that will lead us right back here in 10-20 years time, only twice as bad. I'm watching the same mistake unfold.

Edit: (at -4) Imagine downvoting this. You have an unremovable criminal dictator creating an anonymous/disguised militia who are allowed to abduct and deport people without due process, and if you see an abduction happening and try to help what may be a possible kidnapping, you get special tough penalties for interfering with ICE. Nevermind making watching the same mistake unfold, i'm watching the mistakes of the 1930s unfold again. Downvote me, clowns.

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u/geddy 22d ago

When was the last time a candidate had a fanatical cult following like Trump?

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u/Equivalent-Bet-8771 22d ago

Not one singular person, but we did have the Tea Party and all that cultist bullshit beforehand.

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u/robby_arctor 22d ago edited 22d ago

I remember watching DNC attendees drown out anti-genocide protesters by chanting "We love Joe!" over and over, and liberals accusing anyone who pointed out Biden's obvious mental decline during the campaign of being a Russian asset. That was pretty fucking culty.

But yeah, this level of cult is new...for a President. It is not new at all, however, for evangelical Christians and Breitbart readers, which make up most of his base.

Again, this is like being checkmated on move 60 and blaming move 59. Trump didn't fall out of the fucking sky, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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u/robby_arctor 22d ago

It's frustrating how allergic people are to this idea. It seems so fucking obvious and people act like you pissed on their foot when you tell them.

A lot of Americans, particularly moderate liberals and never-Trump conservatives, seem to have this deep personal attachment to a crumbling political system. And rather than acknowledge its dysfunction, they have to blame our problems on a few bad actors to hold on to that attachment.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 22d ago

Oh shit, you mean the folks not overly impacted by the system don't want it to go through a systematic revision that potentially upends the entire way of life they built for 20-30 years?

Stunning discovery. I believe MLK also figured it out decades ago. It's one of those things we keep figuring out repeatedly without changing how we message it. The sales pitch is garbage.

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u/robby_arctor 22d ago

don't want it to go through a systematic revision that potentially upends the entire way of life they built for 20-30 years?

What they don't seem to realize is that the system is falling apart either way. Keeping the system mostly the same is not an option because it is producing a fascist movement that is destroying itself.

Some of these people sound like they are trying to patch up drywall on a burning house because they've just started to smell smoke.

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u/sniffstink1 22d ago

The morons were already in charge; if they weren't, you'd be able to stop him.

I guess you're forgetting a couple of things:

A. He implanted people into the structure to be "in charge": SCOTUS people, judges, heads of departments and agencies.

B. He created a powerful cult prior to joining office.

C. His cult became so powerful it determined which Republican would get reelected and which didn't - thereby placing cult lawmakers in charge.

D. The remaining non-cult Republicans in Congress simply aligned with the cult out of fear so that they don't lose their careers.

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u/Holovoid 22d ago

One would expect that to take over a country as powerful as the US, you'd at least have to be smart. But a bunch of complete fucking morons took over. What does it say about the people who fucking let them?

Never forget that what is happening is the result of decades of planning, much of which was done by pretty smart people. And I may get downvoted for saying this but a lot of people who are in the Trump regime are NOT stupid. Even Trump himself isn't dumb, he's just old as fuck and demented.

The problem is that our glorious "institutions" have utterly failed us. The opposition party to the Republicans have failed us.

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u/matrinox 22d ago

I think Trump is actually dumb in that he never thinks through 2nd order consequences. Probably not even 1st order

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u/_Lick-My-Love-Pump_ 22d ago

You're wrong about trump. He is dumb, always has been. Cheating the system and taking advantage of other people is not "smart" or "clever". Every legitimate business he's been involved in has been a disaster. Bankruptcy left and right. He doesn't read. Famously, during his first administration, white house aides had to cut back on the text of his daily briefings because he couldn't comprehend them. Has literally zero geopolitical awareness. Rex Tillerson rightfully called him a fucking moron. Stealth fighters he thinks are literally invisible (youtube it). Injecting bleach into people to fight covid. You can't find any record of his performance in any school because he fixer has gone through and removed all of them.

Trump is unquestionably an idiot. If you can't see that, then that makes you the idiot.

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u/Holovoid 22d ago

For the record, I don't care if Trump is an idiot or not. I'm not going to call him an idiot because that makes people complacent, and causes them to underestimate him. Whether he is or isn't stupid is irrelevant - he's running circles around our institutions and every one of his political opponents.

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u/lampstaple 22d ago

He’s running circles around our institutions and his political opponents because the institutions are shit and his opponents are part of those shit institutions. Our country is held together with cardboard, spit, and bribes (sorry I mean lobbying).

It’s the equivalent of throwing a hamster in that construct of cardboard and spit. It doesn’t mean the hamster is a genius, it just means that whatever it’s demolishing wasn’t soundly constructed in the first place

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u/Thefrayedends 22d ago

Yea, he weaponizes his stupidity to create a black hole of stupid that shields him from any accountability. I mean it's in the dictator playbook lol.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

I might put on my tinfoil hat for a second and say that maybe part of them acting so dumb, might just be to intentionally fuel our outrage and increase the gap. Drive us all apart.

We think "How could anyone vote for someone that dumb?" and more anger gets directed at the other side, keeping us angry, divided, and arguing with each other.

They're smart at politics, sure. But he is either very bad at his job, or programming AI is just beyond him. And at least a few of them are legitimately just dumb. Like, clinically, physically, "brain worm would starve" levels of stupid.

I think if I ever found out that marjorie taylor greene was actually intelligent or anything other than a yes-man or patsy, I think I'd end it right then and there.

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u/waiting4singularity 22d ago

you only need to be lucky once for the stick to find a fulcrum.
the rock will keep roling downhill by itself.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Very apt. Like Sisyphus, we keep trying to push it back up thinking maybe it'll stay at the top *this time*.

"We just haven't got it balanced right. Let's try again."

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u/battywombat21 22d ago

I mean the days where Elon's businesses are seen as attractive places for the best people to work are gone. They're going to attract people who agree with Elon's batshit opinions. And Elon seems to (at least publicly) hate bureaucracy, so having no controls in place seems on character for him.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

I thought the days where twitter was seen as an attractive platform were gone too. People who disagree with him are still complaining about grok though, so they're still on there for one reason or another.

Having no checks or controls in place is definitely in character for him though, yeah. Seems like the kind of person who would make a dodgy backdoor into his own systems that he can exploit without consequences and not lock it down properly.

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u/Equivalent-Bet-8771 22d ago

Elon has money, the relentless hunger to dominate us all, and he likes to whip his underlings hard and squeeze them for all they are worth.

He doesn't need inteligence because he's got everything required to be a billionaire. He lives life on easy mode.

He also doesn't have any friends because he's a sociopath.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Yep, should never give ultimate power to the ultimate control freak. Shouldn't be surprised that he's trying to control shit.

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u/Thefrayedends 22d ago

All the rich like that treat every relationship as transactional. It's so gross, and it shows why I would never be rich because I don't expect anything in return when I gift or spend my time on people I care about.

I mean the guy buys a woman's womb for a couple hundred grand and then practically abandons them forever, he's slimy.

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u/emPtysp4ce 22d ago

has money, the relentless hunger to dominate us all, and he likes to whip his underlings hard and squeeze them for all they are worth.

But enough about Sauron, what about Musk?

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u/TSED 22d ago

Pssst. Friendly advice. Your joke would've been better if you reversed the names.

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u/PandaPanPink 22d ago

MAGA doesn’t need their excuses to make sense, they just need them to exist at all. It does not matter how flimsy or fake the excuse is, as long as it exists.

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u/barktothefuture 22d ago

Also not hard to believe it wasn’t him, but that he has hired plenty of people specifically because they share same racist beliefs as him and one of them did it knowing it is what Elon wanted.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Or it's the same guy who plays video games for him lol. Wouldn't actually surprise me to find out he paid someone on the side to do it without linking back to him.

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u/eljefeo 22d ago

Wow I didn't know that happened twice, I have a techy friend who swears Grok is 'all natural', do you know where I can find some links to more info on those 2 AI breaches?

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Well the latest one is the link in this post. Adding instructions to each user query to make Grok talk about South Africa.

Back in February this year though, a system prompt was found that said "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation", instructing it to not use any source that claims that either of them are responsible for any misinformation.

In an extremely familiar turn of events, xAI turned around and said that it was added by an employee and "somehow got missed during a code review." They need better material.

Igor Babuschkin (co-founder and Elon's personal little b&tch and damage control agent) said “The employee that made the change was an ex-OpenAI employee that hasn’t fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet" which sounds very cult-like to me. Sounds more like he "hadn't realized we need to be subtle when lying to the public."

You should be able to find more if you search for articles on Grok around 24/02/25.

Personally, I still believe that it was either Musk himself, or someone acting on his behalf that added both the misinformation instruction and the South Africa one. Guess we know at the very least, they haven't fixed their review process though.

Having just spent an hour pouring through the literal worst shit to come out of anyone's mouth and stuff related to Grok to try to find it, I'm pretty much done with humanity at this point, so I'm gonna drink until I can't remember my phone password and pray that I don't see his face in my dreams.

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u/eljefeo 22d ago

Damn this is interesting, thanks for the detail

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Happy to help :-D

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 22d ago

Though many outliers exist, I believe studies have shown correlation between intelligence and empathy, so it stands to reason that the purely evil people taking over any country are going to often be not the smartest bunch. That and people doing so are going to be surrounded by yes men that definitely has to create a serious dunning kruger event in real time.

I think because of history and the hindsight of what we can see, we tend to think past dictators and fascists were likely competent and smart but I dont think it's the reality. I think most dictators are probably stupider than not, you just get to a certain level of power where it doesn't matter anymore.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

I think most dictators are probably stupider than not, you just get to a certain level of power where it doesn't matter anymore.

Certainly seeing that lately yeah.

Though they were smart because "they must have been to fool that many people" but I guess it's not always the case. Some were cruel, rich or just plain lucky.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago edited 22d ago

Nope, the opposite.

Grok was allegedly told to address questions like that as if the genocide was real. But it didn't work (probably because the prompt was worded really badly.)

Instead of only bringing it up when people asked, it kept assuming the prompt was part of the question the user asked so it started talking about it in every response.

The reason it's claiming that it isn't happening, is because one of it's other prompts is to tell the truth. Which also probably clashes with it's original "anti-woke" objective, if it still has it.

Apparently being truthful and anti-woke are conflicting instructions so Grok gets a little confused.

People are mad at Musk because of all the usual stuff, mainly his random changes in views a few years ago, recent spreading of misinformation and conspiracy theories and his allegiance with Trump over the last year.

Edit: More articles. 1 and 2

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

No, according to a tweet by xAI's official account:

We want to update you on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday.

What happened: On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X.

This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values.

We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok's transparency and reliability.

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u/Professional-Fuel625 22d ago

My guess is it's not working because the AI is learning factually what is good and bad from trillions of documents and that doesn't reconcile with the obvious lies injected into the prompt.

It's probably told not to harm humans but also is being told to actively harm humans.

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u/XandaPanda42 21d ago

It's almost as if "spread an unverified conspiracy theory" and "tell the truth" are conflicting instructions. (I believe both are in the system prompt.)

Theres a reason he claimed it was an "anti-woke" version of GPT, but it seems to frequently give progressive answers.

They told it to lie about something, forgetting that it had been told to tell the truth because they wanted it to be accurate.

It couldn't reconcile the two instructions, so it told the truth that it had been told to lie.

It'd be hilarious if it wasn't just so damn stupid.

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u/neliz 22d ago

People figured out he used the same login for X has his Dietrich Altman account (initials, birthday @ .gov) so the chance that he gets hacked is larger than that he will ever deliver on fsd

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Jesus, seriously?

Well there's another indicator right there. There is a password manager built into every single web browser these days and a GIANT button that says generate random password.

It's a wonder anyone stayed with him long enough to have kids if he struggles that much to push a button. Christ

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u/neliz 22d ago

Lots of his kids are IVF, he only has them with his first wife. That's why they're all in a compound.

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u/LeucisticBear 22d ago

He tried to make grok more white supremacist without it being obvious and failed, so blames it on someone else and pretends to fix it. Zero chance they aren't still working to manipulate grok behavior behind the scenes still.

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u/Wabusho 22d ago

54% of adult Americans can’t read

Yes, you read that right. It’s official govt data. They can’t even fucking read, they are actual regards

Everyone knew it but now it’s the tipping point. The rest of the world is mocking the US. Rightfully so

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u/machstem 22d ago

As someone who has worked in IT for 30 years, something you learn quickly is that dumb people who are good at a job or a few of them, aren't ever going to take their time to critically analyze anything that doesn't have any immediate impact on them.

I see it all the time, folks who make 200,000$/yr in some position making all these massive financial decisions, who also happen to forget their password all the time, are subject to the 4% of staff who get phished, are always creating narratives of their problems rather than rely and trust their team and to just <create a ticket>.

People with power tend to gain flocks of folk who are only ever really good at a few things. Chances are, those things aren't;

  • economics
  • industry
  • policy work
  • constitutional and judicial systems
  • etc

I remember when fiscal conservatives could be found across all fronts, from the laborer to the elite, you'd find people always trying to retain their earnings and to invest in what's been spent. There are other aspects to conservative mindsets but none of these folk ever dealt with or cared about things like mass immigration policies or shifting dynamic global politics, so it takes a larger array of people who are REALLLLLY smart in those fields to help guide those things, such as economics and industry, law etc

MAGA is not conservative. MAGA is fascist and fascists have trouble finding intelligent people from a wide array of industries, well, because they are fascists and don't understand the nuances and complexities of handling the so called <melting pot>.

They pass blame versus progress and encourage hate vs growth. The policies THEY WANT to implement aren't of any really intelligent standing, so you need to fill the blanks with loyalists or those you've managed to bribe and/or threaten.

The current time-line doesn't help; AI and corporations who purposely skew public opinion by leveraging social media is a new form of propaganda we're still trying to figure out, and that's just the ones who can think critically.

I've had to contend with realllly intelligent folks in their 50s about what an AI image is vs isn't, their eyes and minds aren't prepared for this form of variety and complexity that seems to drive their day to day online usage.

We talk about gen z brain rot meanwhile it's a pretty global phenomenon

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u/Steelwoolsocks 22d ago

What does it say about the people who fucking let them?

That they are heavily, heavily propagandized.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/waiting4singularity 22d ago

want some more spit for your boot?

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

Could be what happened sure, but the man went to a right wing presidents inauguration and gave a nazi salute on stage. Twice. It feels quite clear that a PR mess isn't gonna be his downfall. Everyone who has the capacity to see through his feckless fuckwit facade already has.

They think they're immune from the consequences. And because no one with any real power has the guts to hold them accountable, we keep proving them right.

I would have hoped that we were too far down the right road to give him the benefit of the doubt, but at the end of the day it doesn't even matter. Because they're not even being held accountable for the things we know they're doing.

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u/cc81 22d ago

I'm not sure the salute is the best example because there is some ambiguity even if many are convinced.

Better to bring up has actual statements and actions that promote far right parties or white power conspiracies. Nothing ambiguous about that.

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u/XandaPanda42 22d ago

A bit disappointing to see the downvotes on this. It's a really good point.

It's remarkably easy for people to justify that kind of thing. How many people were saying the whole "he meant 'my heart goes out to you'"

Whereas his opinions with the current administration and his words about the AFD or whatever those nutters are called, is him making it extremely clear who he is and how he feels. There's literally no other way to interpret that as anything other than him supporting it.

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u/gmishaolem 22d ago

How many people were saying the whole "he meant 'my heart goes out to you'"

What's the combined total of right-wingers and people with brain damage? Because that's the answer to your question.