One day, you won't be able to delete your social network account anymore. There will be a delete button, but the account will stay, and it will keep posting after you're gone, it won't care whether you are doing something else entirely or whether you're dead, the show will go on.
The shareholders will be content, because they see value in that. The users might not, but not many of them are actual humans, nowadays they're mostly AI, who has time to read and/or post on social media? Just ask your favorite AI what's the hottest trends on social networks, it should suffice to scratch the itch.
I made a tiktok account to write a comment on a video I hated. Now when i sign in again I am presented with lots of awful videos from the guy I dislike. I cannot delete my viewing history using the website, and following other accounts doesn't remove the obsession tiktok has with always showing me his videos as the default.
I'm not installing the app, so the only way around this is to delete my account completely.
It might be painful short term, but excellent long-term. Many people already realized they gave away control over many aspects of their lives, especially the most important one, attention, to big corporations who are exploiting whatever they can ruthlessly. Many people already quit Facebook and the like; the one who remain are bound to experience quite a few surprises.
Individual actions like this will never do anything, because the average person is not going to spend hours upon hours investigating platforms. They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family, follow artists, etc.
Which is why I think the only solution has to come at the governmental regulatory level. In “freedom” terms it could be framed as freedom from, as in freedom from exploitation, unlawful use of data, etc. but unfortunately freedom to seems to be the most corporate friendly interpretation of freedom.
The platforms and their convenience that one "only" has to write the post yet the internet needs so much metadata, so it tried to autogenerate it, instead of asking for it. People are put off by need to write a bloody subject for an email already, imagine if they were shown what's actually the "content" is.
About convincing: get the few that matters on deltachat, so they don't need anything new or extra - it's just email on steroids.
As for Mastodon: it's still someone else's system, there's nothing stopping them from adding AI metadata either on those nodes.
Delta.Chat is really underappreciated, open-source and distributed. I recommend you at least look into it.
Signal, on the other hand, is a closed "opensource" ecosystem (you cannot run your own server or client), requires a phone number (still -_-) and the opensource part of it does not have great track record (I remember some periods where the server for example was not updated in the public repo).
But yeah, if you want the more popular option, Signal is the one.
Not even knowing what deltachat is, however Signal was suspected from the start of being developed by the NSA (read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA) and later received tens of million USD each year from the US government to keep running. So it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.
Most people write to be read. Surely I can write on my own blog, but no one would read them (not that my social media is much more worth reading though.)
Plus, what about videos? How is a non-tech savvy creator going to host their content if it's best in video format?
That’s a pretty horrifying story, and Meta’s crassness is kind of stunning. It sort of reminds me of the old “Clippy Helps with A Suicide Note” meme.
> My story is absolutely layered through with trauma, humiliation, and sudden financial insecurity and I truly resent that this AI-generated garbage erases the deliberately uncomfortable and provocative words I chose to include in my original framing.
I truly feel for her, and wish her luck. Also, I feel that, of any of the large megacorps, Meta is the one I would peg to do this. I’m not even sure they feel any shame over it. They may actually appreciate the publicity this generates.
I’m thinking that Facebook could do something like slightly alter the text in your posts, to incite rage in others. They already arrange your feed to induce “engagement” (their term for rage).
For example, if you write a post about how you failed to get a job, some “extra spice” could be added, inferring that you lost to an immigrant, or that you are angry at the company that turned you down, as opposed to just disappointed.
I haven't posted on IG for years, but read it sometime and see that a slop-description is added below some (not all) posts. I assumed that it was something creators have added manually, but now you are telling me that Facebook does it automatically?
Meta added it in "<meta>" tag(no pun intended) intended for search engine. And some other app crawled it and displayed it in main text. Not defending Meta but the text is not visible in instagram or any other Meta app.
og:description is exactly the meta tag to use for link descriptions in embeds. Not all meta tags are only for search engines. The app acted correctly here.
> Because what this AI-generated SEO slop formed from an extremely vulnerable and honest place shows is that women’s pain is still not taken seriously.
Companies putting words in people's mouth on social media using "AI" is horrible and shouldn't be allowed.
But I completely fail to see what this has to do with misogyny. Did Instagram have their LLM analyze the post and then only post generated slob when it concluded the post came from a woman? Certainly not.
> Did Instagram have their LLM analyze the post and then only post generated slob when it concluded the post came from a woman? Certainly not.
I actually am sympathetic to your confusion—perhaps this is semantics, but I agree with the trivialization of the human experience assessment from the author and your post, but don't read it as an attack on women's pain as such. I think the algorithm sensed that the essay would touch people and engender a response.
--
However, I am certain that Instagram knows the author is a woman, and that the LLM they deployed can do sentiment analysis (or just call the Instagram API and ask whether the post is by a woman). So I don't think we can somehow absolve them of cultural awareness. I wonder how this sort of thing influences its output (and wish we didn't have to puzzle over such things).
Surely, if the slop is generated by looking at the image and the text, then it seems someone could manipulate it into hallucinating all manner of wonderful things.
It's not uncommon. My cousin sent out a Christmas card announcing her divorce - I think it stops a lot of 1-1 conversations with people which can be quite draining when you're already pretty raw.
What is the alternative to announcing a divorce? Keeping it secret? Not using social media to communicate?
In this case she explicitly did NOT make any mention of the divorce on social media when her husband first sprung it on her, nor during the process. She wrote this piece after it had been finalized.
what was supposed to be the important part, "AI bad"? the author is not some clueless pedestrian, they are clearly online enough to be fully aware that all social media companies treat their users like cattle. so why the pikachu face when Instagram (of all things!) does something it is designed to do - squeezing every last bit of value from its digital serfs?
The misleading aspect is that the AI generated content was in first person, so any reasonable reader would falsely attribute the statement to the person involved, when in fact it was concocted entirely by Meta's AI.
”I posted content to a proprietary social network, then got upset when it generated a page description with AI”
Sure, the description is garbage, it may not be obvious it’s not written by the user, but people need to understand what partaking in closed and proprietary social media actually means. You are not paying anything, you do not control the content, you are the product.
If you don’t enjoy using a service that does this to the content you post then don’t use that service.
I’ll stick to this point only even if I feel that there are other things in the post that are terribly annoying.
When the behavior is not only something something you "don't like" but is also (as this woman perceives it) a professional threat (she makes a living out of carefully choosing her words; she felt this attributed to her words she would never have said) and furthermore is unexpected, to simply quietly leave the platform seems insufficient. One ought to warn other users about the unexpected dangerous practice -- which is precisely what this article accomplishes!
One day, you won't be able to delete your social network account anymore. There will be a delete button, but the account will stay, and it will keep posting after you're gone, it won't care whether you are doing something else entirely or whether you're dead, the show will go on.
The shareholders will be content, because they see value in that. The users might not, but not many of them are actual humans, nowadays they're mostly AI, who has time to read and/or post on social media? Just ask your favorite AI what's the hottest trends on social networks, it should suffice to scratch the itch.
I made a tiktok account to write a comment on a video I hated. Now when i sign in again I am presented with lots of awful videos from the guy I dislike. I cannot delete my viewing history using the website, and following other accounts doesn't remove the obsession tiktok has with always showing me his videos as the default. I'm not installing the app, so the only way around this is to delete my account completely.
Classic "any interaction is positive interaction". That's modern platforms to you.
Do not try LinkedIn. Not even once.
There's a short story with a similar plot from "Valuable Humans in Transit" by qntm.
It’s still up on his website as well: https://qntm.org/perso
It might be painful short term, but excellent long-term. Many people already realized they gave away control over many aspects of their lives, especially the most important one, attention, to big corporations who are exploiting whatever they can ruthlessly. Many people already quit Facebook and the like; the one who remain are bound to experience quite a few surprises.
If we write content for closed platforms known to do terrible things, I guess we should not be surprised when said platforms do terrible things.
I keep trying to convince people not to use Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X, but I'm not getting anywhere.
Write your own content and post it on your own terms using services that you either own or that can't be overtaken by corporate greed (like Mastodon).
Individual actions like this will never do anything, because the average person is not going to spend hours upon hours investigating platforms. They just want an easy way to connect with their friends and family, follow artists, etc.
Which is why I think the only solution has to come at the governmental regulatory level. In “freedom” terms it could be framed as freedom from, as in freedom from exploitation, unlawful use of data, etc. but unfortunately freedom to seems to be the most corporate friendly interpretation of freedom.
So many thoughts on this...
The platforms and their convenience that one "only" has to write the post yet the internet needs so much metadata, so it tried to autogenerate it, instead of asking for it. People are put off by need to write a bloody subject for an email already, imagine if they were shown what's actually the "content" is.
About convincing: get the few that matters on deltachat, so they don't need anything new or extra - it's just email on steroids.
As for Mastodon: it's still someone else's system, there's nothing stopping them from adding AI metadata either on those nodes.
Use them as the public toilet they are. Never put in any effort in anything you upload.
Why deltachat, an app I've never heard of before instead of Signal, which is also open source and at least has a bit of traction?
Delta.Chat is really underappreciated, open-source and distributed. I recommend you at least look into it.
Signal, on the other hand, is a closed "opensource" ecosystem (you cannot run your own server or client), requires a phone number (still -_-) and the opensource part of it does not have great track record (I remember some periods where the server for example was not updated in the public repo).
But yeah, if you want the more popular option, Signal is the one.
Not even knowing what deltachat is, however Signal was suspected from the start of being developed by the NSA (read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA) and later received tens of million USD each year from the US government to keep running. So it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.
"read the story about the founder and the funding from the CIA"
And where can I find such a story from a trusworthy source? Quick google search rather turned up this:
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/us-intelligences-services-cont...
(Debunking it as russian information warfare)
> it is never advisable option when the goal is to acquire some sense of privacy.
Would this depend on threat model?
Most people write to be read. Surely I can write on my own blog, but no one would read them (not that my social media is much more worth reading though.)
Plus, what about videos? How is a non-tech savvy creator going to host their content if it's best in video format?
> I keep trying to convince people not to use Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter/X,
I'm with you, but WhatsApp is tough. How do you keep in touch?
The OP is also on Mastodon already, but social networks are ruled by their gravity well, unfortunately.
That’s a pretty horrifying story, and Meta’s crassness is kind of stunning. It sort of reminds me of the old “Clippy Helps with A Suicide Note” meme.
> My story is absolutely layered through with trauma, humiliation, and sudden financial insecurity and I truly resent that this AI-generated garbage erases the deliberately uncomfortable and provocative words I chose to include in my original framing.
I truly feel for her, and wish her luck. Also, I feel that, of any of the large megacorps, Meta is the one I would peg to do this. I’m not even sure they feel any shame over it. They may actually appreciate the publicity this generates.
I’m thinking that Facebook could do something like slightly alter the text in your posts, to incite rage in others. They already arrange your feed to induce “engagement” (their term for rage).
For example, if you write a post about how you failed to get a job, some “extra spice” could be added, inferring that you lost to an immigrant, or that you are angry at the company that turned you down, as opposed to just disappointed.
Can someone smarter than me explain if/how Section 230 is relevant to this type of content that the platforms are, in fact, authoring and publishing?
I haven't posted on IG for years, but read it sometime and see that a slop-description is added below some (not all) posts. I assumed that it was something creators have added manually, but now you are telling me that Facebook does it automatically?
Meta added it in "<meta>" tag(no pun intended) intended for search engine. And some other app crawled it and displayed it in main text. Not defending Meta but the text is not visible in instagram or any other Meta app.
It’s the OpenGraph description metadata (“og:description”, see https://ogp.me/ )
Many apps, like Slack and LinkedIn, use it to display a link card with a description.
og:description is exactly the meta tag to use for link descriptions in embeds. Not all meta tags are only for search engines. The app acted correctly here.
> Because what this AI-generated SEO slop formed from an extremely vulnerable and honest place shows is that women’s pain is still not taken seriously.
Companies putting words in people's mouth on social media using "AI" is horrible and shouldn't be allowed.
But I completely fail to see what this has to do with misogyny. Did Instagram have their LLM analyze the post and then only post generated slob when it concluded the post came from a woman? Certainly not.
> Did Instagram have their LLM analyze the post and then only post generated slob when it concluded the post came from a woman? Certainly not.
I actually am sympathetic to your confusion—perhaps this is semantics, but I agree with the trivialization of the human experience assessment from the author and your post, but don't read it as an attack on women's pain as such. I think the algorithm sensed that the essay would touch people and engender a response.
--
However, I am certain that Instagram knows the author is a woman, and that the LLM they deployed can do sentiment analysis (or just call the Instagram API and ask whether the post is by a woman). So I don't think we can somehow absolve them of cultural awareness. I wonder how this sort of thing influences its output (and wish we didn't have to puzzle over such things).
> While I am sure buried deep in some EULA there is some bullshit allowing Meta to get away with this
All that sweet, sweet innovation!
Facebook/Meta not only has worst programmers but they are the worst humans if they even qualify as human.
Surely, if the slop is generated by looking at the image and the text, then it seems someone could manipulate it into hallucinating all manner of wonderful things.
who announces a divorce?
It's not uncommon. My cousin sent out a Christmas card announcing her divorce - I think it stops a lot of 1-1 conversations with people which can be quite draining when you're already pretty raw.
What is the alternative to announcing a divorce? Keeping it secret? Not using social media to communicate?
In this case she explicitly did NOT make any mention of the divorce on social media when her husband first sprung it on her, nor during the process. She wrote this piece after it had been finalized.
She was unable "see" the divorce coming. That is one of the key sentences, therefore the need to explicitly announce the intention.
People looking for emotional support from friends and family during an emotionally draining event?
On social media?
Unlikely.
Divorcees.
Is it like a gender reveal where they pop a balloon that says "I cheated!"?
did you read the article?
kind of hard to do when the site is unreachable
Did you read the article?
No, the site is unreachable
Attention seekers. Narcissistsz. The whole post has so many red flags. No wonder the husband asked for a divorce.
I can't image everyone posting on the socials has to be such huge attention seekers or narcisssits. Are they all really that?
And now, thanks to "AI", this "hot divorcee" even made it onto HN. I am glad for her this "brutal" event transformed into something positive. /s
just this article alone contains more than enough hints as to why the husband decided to cut his losses.
Maybe, but surely that’s not the important part?
what was supposed to be the important part, "AI bad"? the author is not some clueless pedestrian, they are clearly online enough to be fully aware that all social media companies treat their users like cattle. so why the pikachu face when Instagram (of all things!) does something it is designed to do - squeezing every last bit of value from its digital serfs?
So, good that she tells others I guess?
Could you elaborate? I am serious.
It sounds like a relative benign AI-summary of her post.
I guess it should have been marked clearly as such.
The misleading aspect is that the AI generated content was in first person, so any reasonable reader would falsely attribute the statement to the person involved, when in fact it was concocted entirely by Meta's AI.
”I posted content to a proprietary social network, then got upset when it generated a page description with AI”
Sure, the description is garbage, it may not be obvious it’s not written by the user, but people need to understand what partaking in closed and proprietary social media actually means. You are not paying anything, you do not control the content, you are the product.
If you don’t enjoy using a service that does this to the content you post then don’t use that service.
I’ll stick to this point only even if I feel that there are other things in the post that are terribly annoying.
When the behavior is not only something something you "don't like" but is also (as this woman perceives it) a professional threat (she makes a living out of carefully choosing her words; she felt this attributed to her words she would never have said) and furthermore is unexpected, to simply quietly leave the platform seems insufficient. One ought to warn other users about the unexpected dangerous practice -- which is precisely what this article accomplishes!
That’s one approach. Another is that you can complain about things companies do that you don’t like.