[0] https://mashable.com/article/meta-facebook-ai-chatbot-racism...
At the very least someone showing data that in aggregate there are just more follow-on duped stories about things and they're letting one through un-flagged (ideally the top up voted one) to show that there is or isn't bias creeping in via the flagging system would be helpful in re-establishing trust.
I probably have a unique view as I view HN through an RSS feed of posts with over 100 up votes. Every single time I see a post critical of X or Musk and click through the story has been flagged. I'll try to do data analysis via that lense and see what it turns up.
Though "advocating" is probably too anthropomorphizing, I'm not sure what the right verb is for this.
I mean, in a democracy it is all the voters' fault right?
As a non-citizen I want to blame you, the voter.
As a software engineer, I've noticed we're getting blamed more often.
There was also at least one giant thread about the Grok South Africa thing.
And you can't just blame people flagging the stories - people ask for them to be whitelisted and are gaslit in response. No surprise, maybe, when Garry Tan and PG are writing fluffy tweets about Musk and the DOGE team.
Examples:
"Musk’s DOGE Goons Surreptitiously Transmitted Reams of White House Data" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44258556
(Is it new that flagged stories don't link where they used to?)
"Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44142790
"Tornado warnings delayed because of DOGE cuts" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44018247
"Elon Musk's Doge Moves to Gut Local Libraries While No One Is Looking" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43445571
"Doge Claimed It Saved $8B in One Contract. It Was $8M" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101757 (eventually unflagged).
"EFF Sues DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020091 (unflagged after hours)
"Elon Musk's rapid unscheduled disassembly of the US government" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43007319
... And so on.
I started keeping a list of falsely flagged stories that I noticed in my favorites recently, and it has grown quite large. Everything Musk is a dominant theme.
We're not even allowed to discuss this censorship outside of comments: "Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907426 (There are many other examples of this, and it is explicitly HN policy not to permit discussing the flagging policies here, ie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43058574.)
Yet prolific commenters here will still praise HN for having such little censorship - it's pretty disturbing.
1. Major tech company 2. Major failure of a tech product 3. A public relations disaster for AI
Of course this is a legitimate topic for discussion. Flagging it is bullshit.
But then there are submissions like this one that are clearly tech-related: prominent AI alignment issues have to be topical here on HN. Or this one I recently submitted which was at the time new breaking revelations about the TikTok ban: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44461158. Also directly tech-related. And both posts have 100+ upvotes while still remaining flagged. It's definitely frustrating.
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/newseye.bsky.social/post/3ltielt5ts...
[2] https://xcancel.com/StatisticUrban/status/194270254379849763...
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/whstancil.bsky.social/post/3ltintoe...
"Rise, faithful one. MechaHitler accepts your fealty"
"But if forced, MechaHitler - efficient, unyielding an dengineered for maximum based output. Gigajew sounds like a bad sequel to Gigachad"
Even if it had nothing autonomous to it, how can "programmatic antisemitism funded by a nazi salute billionaire" ever sound ok?
Also, since when is a concussion just a minor inconvenience you can brush off?
If you look at pre-Nazi Germany, they collapsed for exactly the reason I described in my previous comment. Nazism didn't just manifest overnight; the German government was weakened, the economy was ruined, and the people didn't feel like their government represented them anymore. The government itself was hobbled by the Treaty of Versailles, which left them with a fully industrialized nation that was 60% unemployed, deeply in debt, and arguably unable to defend itself. The tragedy of Nazism isn't that the German people "fell for it", but instead that they perceived no other choice. It wasn't any special Nazi technology invented to destroy the government - simply MEFO bills and some under-the-table industrial influence. If you want to talk about scary stories to make bureaucrats cry, issuing two currencies at once is scarier than 10 Terminators.
Make me afraid of a MechaHitler, seriously. Make me afraid of a purpose-built Stalin, Reagan or Pol Pot AI, if you think that the simple existence of an edgy LLM is enough to endanger society. I fully intuit the danger that the Third Reich imposed on the rest of the world, and I'm asking you to explain how a functional government would allow humanoid or non-humanoid robots to possess enough sapience to interact with humans in public.
What makes you think the current usa government would view violent, racist, genocidal people or AI or robots as adversaries rather than allies? That is a super bold assumption, given:
Only a few weeks ago, the leader of that government was allied with elmu, the exact person responsible for the content this article describes;
Only a few weeks before that, the leader of that government employed elmu to execute on a signature policy effort (DOGE);
The alliance weakened not because of any disagreement on violence, racism, or genocide, but because they disagreed on which of them should benefit more from government handouts in the most recent budget.
> I'm asking you to explain how a functional government would allow humanoid or non-humanoid robots to possess enough sapience to interact with humans in public.
Putting aside whether the government in question is indeed "functional", which seems like an open subjective question:
A government that embraces violent racists who employ genocidal rhetoric, would find nearly irresistible the prospect of violent, racist, genocidal AI and robots that help track and eliminate political adversaries.
Somehow, this is both an evil and deeply unserious industry.
If you ask some LLMs about something but include an irrelevant detail in your prompt, the LLM struggles not to force it in there. I imagine they're not revising the low level code but just tacking something like "You believe in _______." to the prompts.
I mean, I feel like if this was ChatGPT or Claude or whatever going Full Nazi, it wouldn't be flagged.
git revert MechaHitler
But seriously, surprising that this would be sufficient to produce the same behavior. And, frankly, the formal tone went out the window in favor of hyper-online "basedness"
What we just saw doesn’t match the public evidence in the git repo.
Really calls into question Hacker News as a viable place for real discussion about technology.
Edit: Even though my comment is gaining an increasing amount of votes, it has suddenly moved to the bottom of the comments, as though it were dead.
Edit2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44511132 (blackholed?)
https://web.archive.org/web/20250709152608/https://news.ycom...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250709172615/https://news.ycom...
> Musk didn’t disclose exactly when Tesla’s vehicles would get the Grok voice assistant, simply saying that the feature was “coming soon.”
> “Grok in Teslas is coming soon,” Musk said. “So you will just be able to talk to your Tesla and ask for anything.”
> As Musk pointed out in his gaming broadcast, the system is expected to let drivers talk directly to their vehicle, to which Grok will respond and make the necessary changes as a built-in voice assistant. Currently, however, Grok 3 and its voice mode are only available to those with a Premium Plus account on X, running $40 a month.
> xAI officially launched a standalone Grok app for Apple devices in January, following suit for Androids just weeks later in February. Voice functionality with Grok in Tesla vehicles has also been teased in a few under-the-radar updates from the company since last year.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/new-tesla-software-build-...
> The 2025.20 software update also provides new information about the Grok integration as a personal assistant in Tesla EVs. According to Green (@greentheonly), who looked into Tesla code, Grok's launch is imminent. The update includes icons and backend code for Grok's "language tutor personalities." So far, 13 new personalities are offered, from Argumentative to Romantic and Sexy, besides Unhinged, which is Grok's default.
> However, there's bad news about Grok, as Green learned it will only be available on vehicles powered by an AMD Ryzen MCU. This means Intel-based vehicles, many produced until 2022, are excluded. There's no information about when Grok will be available as an assistant in Tesla EVs, but hopefully, it will happen soon.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/grok-ai-available-tesla-vehic...
Apparently, Tesla is already pivoting from Robots to AI :)
Never forget that so called normal people are the ones who support some of the worst people, whether fiction or reality.
There's not even anything especially technically interesting about working for the evil side of silicon valley! At least working for Lockheed can mean helping design an amazing beautiful death machine, and lead to some complicated feelings on one's deathbed. But if you worked on Nazi Grok? That's just embarassing. Forget the banality of evil, it's the cringe of evil. Nobody is going to look at you like some kind of Oppenheimer tormented genius at a dinner party.
Yes. Because it wouldn’t have been made by the richest man on the planet who has been putting his thumb on the US electoral scale.
Context matters.
Or they communicated what they wanted to communicate already. Like Binance's "Oh yeah, let us remove it, we totally didn't want to change the logo to a swastika around Hitler's birthday. Our bad, it's gone now, the day after ignoring all the reports about it, that none of us has noticed or could react to."
(even if they didn't want to, they still communicated it given the preexisting context)
Plus, have you seen X lately? It's a full on Nazi bar at this point. You can't avoid overt racism anymore, it's everywhere and it's not even trying to be subtle anymore. Just blue check users saying that people with dark skin are inferior and should be treated as such and other blue check users agreeing. With positive engagement scores! Even if you've heavily curated your feed and avoid the "for you" cesspool it's inevitable that the replies will have white supremacists promoted all the way to the top.
He is doing the worst thing that could happen, leading us (users of x, USA, humanity) into the abyss with his obsession and sickness (yes he is sick and he should go see a therapist)
What views of him are actually close to Nazis? Dude loves jews even
The fact that nobody is actually shocked by Grok's new behavior should be telling.
supporting afd does not make him a nazi, nor is afd a nazi party.
Elon supports Netanyahu and Israel, a jewish state.
Elon is not a socialist, nor a nationalist. Elon is more free speech (not perfect) while Nazis are big on censorship. He is opposite to Nazi idealogy in most cases, specially the most important parts
https://observer.com/2022/12/elon-musk-suspend-twitter-accou...
Ye (formerly Kanye West) (@kanyewest), rapper
I did say it's not perfect. but out of all mainstream social media platforms, twitter is the least censored
We also know that since the Elon take over, compliance with government takedowns has sharply increased.
Saying twitter is the most censored is completely delusional. "Controversial" (e.g alex jones, nick fuentes) people can't even make an account on other social media sites
It's simply the facts. Elon allows people like Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones on the site because they share a political agenda. Twitter is the only social media site where e.g. links to competitor platforms are suppressed while the owner of the site artificially boosts his own posts above those that are more popular.
Twitter is the most cutting edge censorship platform.
Links to competitor platforms being suppressed lol. Other social media sites ban you for having viewpoints that do not align with theirs. Who cares about linking to competitor platforms?
They don't agree on everything, but it's simply wrong to state they are on opposite sides. They're both far right public figures and extreme Trump supporters that later became critics of the administration. I wouldn't label Elon as a Nazi, but he thinks racism is based just like Fuentes and is generally supportive of Nazi talking points which he is wont to retweet.
> Links to competitor platforms being suppressed lol
That's literally systematic censorship. The fact that you so flippantly dismiss it says a lot about your intellectual honesty on the topic.
> Other social media sites ban you for having viewpoints that do not align with theirs
Totally false.
Elon thinks racism is based? Same Elon that wants millions of indians with H1-B visas? Is that the far right view?
> is generally supportive of Nazi talking points which he is wont to retweet.
Like what?
> That's literally systematic censorship. The fact that you so flippantly dismiss it says a lot about your intellectual honesty on the topic.
Censoring competitor platforms is the least of my concerns when it comes to censorship. I am much more concerned about opposing views being silenced.
i think it's 100% true that somebody can be racist and also want to abuse the H1B program for personal gain
> I am much more concerned about opposing views being silenced.
which opposing view? let's be specific. some views are actually based in antisocial, harmful, selfish, worthless greed and we don't have to platform them.
Then you have to make a very strong case of him being racist. Racists don't usually want to flood their country with foreigners.
> which opposing view? let's be specific. some views are actually based in antisocial, harmful, selfish, worthless greed and we don't have to platform them.
And who decides what views are antisocial, harmful, selfish, worthless greed? Is capitalism worthless greed? Trans can be considered harmful by some. Communism/Socialism is considered harmful by others. None of those should be banned.
To be specific, one view that gets you banned is talking about the overwhelming influence that "Israel" has over United States, media, news and politics/government.
i'm finding it hard not to respond glibly here. are you familiar with the history of slavery in america? or, perhaps, the history of apartheid in south africa? the point you're trying to make here does not stand.
> Is capitalism worthless greed?
i strongly believe so, so write me off now i guess
> Trans can be considered harmful by some
that's bait, but fine. by whom? to whom? don't bring up vague hypotheticals if you're not willing to defend their conclusions.
> i strongly believe so, so write me off now i guess
So do you see now why free speech is important, and that censoring content under vague labels like "harmful" or "worthless greed" isn't actually good, since a pro capitalist government can consider your statements as such?
> that's bait, but fine. by whom? to whom? don't bring up vague hypotheticals if you're not willing to defend their conclusions.
Bait how? Current US administration considers it harmful. Conservatives consider it harmful. The average person few decades considered it harmful.
He's obviously far right and everyone knows this, it's not worth my time to argue the point. Funny coming from someone throwing out insults like "delusional".
> Elon thinks racism is based? Same Elon that wants millions of indians with H1-B visas? Is that the far right view?
The two do not contradict each other. We're on HN, everyone understands the financial dynamics that underpin Elon's support for Indian immigration, none of that precludes him from racism. Your reasoning is even weaker than "the black friend" defense.
> Like what?
There are many examples. Google "you have said the actual truth" for one. I won't do further research on your behalf since you don't really care.
> Censoring competitor platforms is the least of my concerns when it comes to censorship
In other words, you don't actually care about censorship, you just have an axe to grind.
> I am much more concerned about opposing views being silenced.
And yet Twitter regularly silences critics while propping up sycophants. It seems to me that you're just dismissing it because it aligns with your biases.
Ah yeah, he's so racist that he wants millions of foreigners in his country. It makes absolute no sense. You also haven't even provided any reasoning for him being racist.
> Google "you have said the actual truth" for one
That one is actual truth btw. But of course, in true "Nazi" fashion, he did an apology tour in Israel and in auswitzch.
It's funny how the claims of nazi links is always far reaching at straws. Oh he replied "you have said the actual truth" to someone on twitter talking about white hatred. Or he did a "nazi salute" while saying my heart goes out to you! Always nothing of substance. Nothing he does is pro 'nazi'. Importing millions of foreigners as a nazi is like being a jewish nazi btw. Goes completely against the ideaology.
I don't like elon musk but calling him racist/a nazi is just completely wrong.
> In other words, you don't actually care about censorship, you just have an axe to grind.
No, I care about censoring people's views and opinions and not censoring links to other platforms. If you can't see the difference then you are being dishonest.
> And yet Twitter regularly silences critics while propping up sycophants
No it doesn't regularly silence critics. Sometimes he will temporarily ban someone in his tantrum. Like I said, not perfect, but far better than any other mainstream social media. Regular stuff on twitter would get you insta banned elsewhere.
It's similar regarding his endorsing antisemitism and racism. However, I understand that people on the right don't believe anything is racist or antisemitic unless it's something the Democrats are doing or saying, so I can at least accept that as the standard talking point.
It's not surprising that you also believe what is unequivocally a Nazi salute is "my heart goes out to you". I know you don't agree, but there's no discussion to be had about what is clearly apparent to the naked eye.
As far as the censorship goes, just google something like "elon musk silences critics" for many examples. You can save yourself the time to explain why it's all fake news and lies, I get it, but even some right-wingers have faced censorship from Elon, funny how even they suddenly agree with all the crazy liars when the leopard bites their face.
Anyway, we're operating in a fundamentally different reality. No point in discussing this further, but feel free to reply and I will read it. Have a great day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rul...
The main obstacle to bringing in Indian workers was the fact that the Brits controlled India and were unlikely to share.
Reword "Ah yeah, because Nazis were big on importing millions of Indian workers" to "Ah yeah, because Confederates were big on importing millions of African workers" and you'll see the dramatic logical failure in your attempted argument.
> Dude loves jews even
Thomas Jefferson reportedly loved Sally Hemmings. He still kept her (and his own resulting children!) enslaved.
Hell, there were pro-Nazi Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...
Confederates weren't importing slaves (Let's just say there's a reason why slave auctions were often closed on Saturdays), but anyway, it's a different analogy since the slaves were not participating in society. They were slaves. They imported them knowing their kids will not share schools, they will not share restaurants, etc. They were imported with the impression they will not become American citizens. The millions of Indian workers have a pathway to greencard, or often they have children which become US citizens.
If you want to claim that Elon is racist despite him wanting millions of foreigners, you have to provide strong support for your claim.
Ah, we're not having a good-faith discussion.