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Tim Bray on Grokipedia

(www.tbray.org)
175 points Bogdanp | 9 comments | 31 Oct 25 21:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source | bottom
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tptacek ◴[31 Oct 25 21:53 UTC] No.45777117[source]▶
Why give it oxygen?
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meowface ◴[31 Oct 25 21:59 UTC] No.45777160[source]▶
To play devil's advocate: Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter, contrary to popular conception. Elon keeps trying to tweak its system prompt to make it less effective at that, but Grokipedia was worth an initial look from me out of curiosity. It took me 10 seconds to realize it was ideologically-motivated garbage and significantly more right-biased than Wikipedia is left-biased.

(Unfortunately, Reply-Grok may have been successfully partially lobotomized for the long term, now. At the time of writing, if you ask grok.com about the 2020 election it says Biden won and Trump's fraud claims are not substantiated and have no merit. If you @grok in a tweet it now says Trump's claims of fraud have significant merit, when previously it did not. Over the past few days I've seen it place way too much charity in right-wing framings in other instances, as well.)

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pstuart ◴[31 Oct 25 22:08 UTC] No.45777225[source]▶
The problem of debunking right-wing misinformation is that it doesn't seem to matter. The consumers of that misinformation want it and those of us who think it's bad for society already know that its garbage.

It feels like we've reached Peak Stupidity but it's clear it can (and likely will) get much worse with AI videos.

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billy99k[dead post] ◴[31 Oct 25 22:11 UTC] No.45777259[source]▶
[flagged]
1. J_McQuade ◴[31 Oct 25 22:20 UTC] No.45777315[source]▶
Name one.
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2. pstuart ◴[31 Oct 25 22:32 UTC] No.45777423[source]▶
I think their goto is "Russiagate" but that's because the refuse to acknowledge the facts that Mueller did have evidence but assumed that Congress would act upon it.
replies(1): >>45777750 #
3. netsharc ◴[31 Oct 25 22:35 UTC] No.45777447[source]▶
I'm not the grandfather commenter, I'm very much a leftist, but left, right, there's too many whose emotions or tribalism override their logic and make them deny what they see/come up with dumbass theories.

For a left example, there are people who theorize that the guy who missed putting a bullet in Trump's brain must've been a false flag operator. Although it must be mentioned that "leftie" conspiracy theories are mostly just on social media, while "right" ones end up being broadcast by congresspeople and senators, probably because they know their side will take them at face value..

4. virissimo ◴[31 Oct 25 22:39 UTC] No.45777483[source]▶
Some left-coded popular conspiracies:

1. The Iraq war was a plot to steal oil reserves

2. World Economic Forum / IMF intentionally impoverish nations

3. Police across America are systematically hunting and executing Black men (thousands per year), but are protected by racist institutions

4. Trump assassination attempts were false flag operations

5. Big Pharma deliberately hides natural cures for cancer to protect corporate profits

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5. ◴[31 Oct 25 22:44 UTC] No.45777522[source]▶
6. meowface ◴[31 Oct 25 23:13 UTC] No.45777750[source]▶
There is some (though in my opinion not much) merit to how right-wingers portray the "Russiagate" thing. The Russian government absolutely did try to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election to help Trump and hurt Clinton, via hacking and releasing emails and via social media influence campaigns, but there was a chunk of the left that from the start seemed to firmly believe Trump was some kind of literal espionage agent of Putin.

While it's difficult to deny Trump was a de facto asset of Putin in many ways, a surprising number of people were almost entering right-wing conspiracy theory territory with their epistemological practices regarding Trump's personal involvement with Putin.

Right-wing conspiracism is orders of magnitude worse and more frequent than left-wing conspiracism, but some people were way too willing to believe some of the more radical Russian collusion speculation despite no evidence.

7. onetimeusename ◴[01 Nov 25 05:16 UTC] No.45779423[source]▶
White supremacists were responsible for the 2020 riots.
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8. pstuart ◴[01 Nov 25 06:30 UTC] No.45779649[source]▶
You mean Umbrella Man? https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-rio...

Yes, agents provocateur are a persistent threat for delegitimizing protests.

An in-depth look at the problem: https://acleddata.com/report/demonstrations-and-political-vi...

9. habinero ◴[02 Nov 25 04:46 UTC] No.45787896[source]▶
I've heard right wing people claim 2 and 5, and I wouldn't call 1 or 4 "popular" by any stretch of the imagination.

3 is just a weirdly-phrased version of a real problem.