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

(arstechnica.com)
131 points kozika | 1 comments | 02 Jul 25 22:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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drdaeman ◴[02 Jul 25 23:30 UTC] No.44449942[source]▶
> 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.

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jazzyjackson ◴[03 Jul 25 00:48 UTC] No.44450437[source]▶
> 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.

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1. drdaeman ◴[03 Jul 25 18:57 UTC] No.44458133[source]▶
> 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.