TikTok is being flooded with racist AI videos generated by Google's Veo 3

> nothing drives engagement on social media like anger and drama

There. It isn’t even a “real” racism, it’s more of a flamebait, where the more outrageous and deranged a take is, the more likely it would captivate attention and possibly even provoke a reaction. Most likely they primarily wanted to earn some buck from viewer engagement, and didn’t care about the ethics of it. Maybe they also had the racist agendas, maybe not - but that’s just not the core of it.

And in the same spirit, the issue is not really racism or AI videos, but perversely incentivized attention economics. It just happened to manifest this way, but it could’ve been anything else - this is merely what happened to hit some journalist mental filters (suggesting that “racism” headlines attract attention those days, and so does “AI”).

And the only low-harm way - that I can think of - how to put this genie back in the bottle is to make sure everyone is well aware about how their attention is the new currency in the modern age, and spend it wisely, being aware about the addictive and self-reinforcing nature of some systems.

> It isn’t even a “real” racism…

Generating and distributing racist materials is racist regardless of the intent, even if the person "doesn't mean it".

Simple thought experiment: If the content was CSAM, would you still excuse the perpetrators as victims of perversely incentivized attention economics?

I don't follow your CSAM bit but I have no outrage about Blazing Saddles existing, for example.

I agree, but I believe the intent matters if we’re trying to identify why this happens.

Racism is just less legally dangerous. There would be people posting snuff or CSAM videos, would that “sell”. Make social networks tough on racism and it’ll be sexism next day. Or extremist politics. Or animal abuse. Or, really, anything, as long as people strongly react to it.

But, yeah, to avoid any misunderstanding - I didn’t mean to say racism isn’t an issue. It is racist, it’s bad, I don’t argue any otherwise. All I want to stress is that it’s not the real issue here, merely a particular manifestation.

It would indeed be an impressive feat to produce a film satirizing child porn

> make sure everyone is well aware about how their attention is the new currency in the modern age, and spend it wisely, being aware about the addictive and self-reinforcing nature of some systems.

i.e. delete your facebook, your tiktok, your youtube and return to calling people on your flip phone and writing letters (or at least emails). I say this without irony (The Sonim XP3+ is a decent device). all the social networking on smart phones has not been a net positive in most people's lives, I don't really know why we sleep walked into it. I'm open to ideas how to make living "IRL" more palatable than cyberspace. It's like telling people to stop smoking cigarettes. I guess we just have to reach a critical mass of people who can do without it and lobby public spaces to ban it. Concert venues and schools are already playing with it by forcing everyone to put their phones in those faraday baggies so maybe it's not outlandish.

I don't even think it's flamebait, people just like being edgy on the internet so they enjoy these memes, reading the comments under these posts would probably confirm what I'm saying.

I think maybe the nuance they’re trying to capture is that yes the content is absolutely freaking racist but the reason it’s being spread isn’t racists laughing at it and liking it, it’s people being angry about it

Off the cuff the closest example to mind is the Paedogeddon!! special episode of the Brass Eye series created by Chris Morris.

Admittedly that didn't satirize CSAM material, rather it cut hard into the reflexive reaction people have at the very thought of CSAM and peodophiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedogeddon

Moreover, that took a human to thread that needle, it'll be a while before AI generation can pass through that strange valley.

This is the one thing we didn't want to happen

Have you thought about what we're currently sleep walking into?

>And the only low-harm way - that I can think of - how to put this genie back in the bottle is to make sure everyone is well aware about how their attention is the new currency in the modern age, and spend it wisely, being aware about the addictive and self-reinforcing nature of some systems.

Gonna be hard to admit, but mandatory identity verification like in Korea, i.e attaching real consequences to what happens in the internet is more realistic way this is going to be solved. We've have "critical thinking" programs for decades, it's completely pointless on a aggregate scale, primairly because the majority aren't interested in the truth. Save for their specific expertise, it's quite common for even academics to easily fall into misinformation bubbles.

What have you thought about it?

>it’s not the real issue here

I like this reasoning. “Trolling” is when people post things to irritate or offend people, so if you see something that’s both racist and offensive then it’s not really racist. If you see somebody posting intentionally offensive racist stuff, and you have no other information about them, you should assume that the offensiveness of their post is an indicator of how not racist they are.

Really if you think about it, it’s like a graph where as offensiveness goes up the racism goes down becau

AI creating satire about media spreading hysteria? I don't think it's at that point.

The creation of CSAM is a crime because an underage person must be harmed in its creation by definition. Making an AI video of an offensive stereotype does not harm anyone in its creation. It is textbook free speech.

Clutch your pearls as much as you want about the videos, but forcibly censoring them is going to cause you to continue to lose elections.

That’s not what I meant, though. When I wrote “not really racist” I meant “the primary cause for posting this is not racism[, but engagement solicitation]”, rather than “not racist”. And it’s not an implication, but only an observation paired with my (and article authors’) guess about the actual intent. I’m sorry for the confusion, I guess I worded that poorly.

But, yeah, as weird as it may sound, you don’t have to be racist (as in believing in racist ideas) to be a racist troll (propagate racist ideas). Publishing and agreeing with are different things, and they don’t always overlap (even if they frequently do). He who had not ever said or wrote some BS without believing a single iota of it but because they wanted to make some effect, throw the stone.

And not sure how sarcastic you were, but nothing I’ve said could possibly mean if something is offensive it’s what somehow makes it less racist.

> you don’t have to be racist (as in believing in racist ideas) to be a racist troll (propagate racist ideas)

Exactly. Racism has nothing to do with what people say or do, it’s a sort of vibe, so really there is no way of telling if anything or anyone is Real Racist versus fake racist. It is important to point this out b

I’m a bit confused, is that possible you think racism is binary? I recognize you jest, but not sure I get the idea, and I sincerely hope you don’t do it pointlessly.

If you refuse to distinguish between someone who genuinely believes in concept of a race, or postulates an inherent supremacy of some particular set of biological and/or sociocultural traits, and someone who merely talks edgy shit they heard somewhere and haven’t given it much thought - then I’m not entirely sure how can I persuade you to see the distinction I do.

But I believe this difference exists and is important because different causes require different approaches. Online trolls, engagement farmers, and bonehead racists are (somewhat overlapping but generally) different kind of people. And any of those can post racist content.

Nobody said anything about governments banning it. We're pointing it out as something harfmul. I'll also happily exercise my free speech (I'm not from the US so it's free, as in - you can't stop me)

I didn't need to buy a flip phone to delete all my social media accounts.

> It isn’t even a “real” racism, it’s more of a flamebait

I think the harm done by circulating racist media is "real" racism regardless of whether someone is doing it because they have hateful ideology, are profiting for it, or just having a good time.

> it's completely pointless on a aggregate scale, primairly because the majority aren't interested in the truth

No offense meant, but unless you know of an experiment that indicated an absence of statistically significant effect of education programs on collective behaviors; especially one that established a causality like you stated, I would dare to suspect that it's not an accurate portrayal of things, but more of an emotionally driven but not entirely factual response.

> mandatory identity verification like in Korea, i.e attaching real consequences to what happens in the internet

I'm not sure I understand the idea. Is it about making it easier for law enforcement to identify authors of online posts, or about real-name policies and peer pressure, or, possibly, something else?

> i.e. delete your facebook, your tiktok, your youtube and return to calling people on your flip phone and writing letters

That sounds like an abstinence-type approach. Not saying that it's not a valid option (and it can be the only effective option in case of a severe addiction), but it's certainly not the only way that could work. Put simply, you don't have to give up on modern technology just because they pose some dangers (but you totally can, if you want to, of course).

I can personally vouch for just remembering to ask myself "what I'm currently doing, how I'm feeling right now, and what do I want?" when I notice I'm mindlessly scrolling some online feeds. Just realizing that I'm bored so much I'm willing to figuratively dumpster-dive in hope of stumbling upon something interesting (and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, but I must be aware that this interesting thing will be very brief by design, so unless I'm just looking for inspiration and then moving somewhere else, I'm not really doing anything to alleviate my boredom) can be quite empowering. ;-)

> all the social networking on smart phones has not been a net positive in most people's lives

Why do you think so? I'm not disagreeing, but asking because I know plenty of individual examples, but I'm personally not feeling comfortable enough to make it generalization (because it's hard) and wonder what makes you do.

I don't think child porn and tired racist stereotypes are the same. Even content showing murder would be ignored by most and none of us, I assume, are pro murder. I dont assume everyone that uses a sexy female thumbnail is a gooner, just farming goons. I think the original poster has a fair point, having seen the videos, they lack the usual cherrypicked accuracy of content made by genuinely racist creators and instead go for.. Watermelon. My friends are about as bothered by watermelon as an irishman is about cartoon leprechauns, but I'm not in the USA so perhaps its a cultural thing.

I showed the videos to my friend and he keeps saying stuff like “Seems like it’s racists making and sharing the racist videos” and “So if a person posts a bunch of racist garbage and then post ‘I’m not racist in my heart’ then the second post is obviously true?”

I keep trying to explain that no, it’s not real racism because if you can imagine that it’s not real, it must not be real but then he says “Who made you the arbiter of racism?” and “What purpose on God’s Green Earth does it serve anyone, in any context, to chime in unprompted that you choose to sort racism into real and fake piles? Like what do you get out of that?”

Anyway I explained that it’s fake racism because it’s just somebody that wants attention and he said “racists can want attention too” and “seems like you’re just doing gymnastics to invent excuses for people online that you don’t even know why are you doing that” so I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye on this because he incorrectly defines racism as a “real phenomenon” that “affects real people” and is “perpetuated by people’s actions”, whereas I know that what he’s describing is fake racism, because real racism is a little thing people feel in their hearts.

Seems like anybody could plainly see that fake racism is when people say or do real racist things in the world and real racism is intangible, not really strictly “real”, but the guy’s a kook so ¯_(ツ)_/¯