One the one hand, it seems "obvious" that Grok should somehow be legally required to have guardrails stopping it from producing kiddie porn.

On the other hand, it also seems "obvious" that laws forcing 3D printers to detect and block attempts to print firearms are patently bullshit.

The thing is, I'm not sure how I can reconcile those two seemingly-obvious statements in a principled manner.

Do you have any evidence for that? As far as I can tell, this is false. The only thing I saw was Grok changing photos of adults into them wearing bikinis, which is far less bad.

In a further comment you are using a US-focused organization to define an English-language acronym. How does this relate to a French investigation?

For a net company in 2026? Fat chance.

Interesting point. There's a top gangster who can buy anything in the prison commissary; and then there's the warden.

I remember something (probably linked from here), where the essayist was comparing Jack Ma, one of the richest men on earth, and Xi Jinping, a much lower-paid individual.

They indicated that Xi got Ma into a chokehold. I think he "disappeared" Ma for some time. Don't remember exactly how long, but it may have been over a year.

Elon has ICBMs, but France has warheads.

Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.

> Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.

Though things like that can happen, which are very serious.

This is pretty messed up btw.

Social work for children systems in the USA are very messed up. It is not uncommon for minority families to lose rights to parent their children for very innocuous things that would not happen to a non-oppressed class.

It is just another way for the justice/legal system to pressure families that have not been convicted / penalized under the supervision of a court.

And this isn't the only lever they use.

Every time I read crap like this I just think of Aaron Swartz.

>That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.

lawfare is... good now? Between Trump being hit with felony charges for falsifying business records (lawfare is good?) and Lisa Cook getting prosecuted for mortgage fraud (lawfare is bad?), I honestly lost track at this point.

>The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.

What's even the implication here? That they're going to shoot his plane down? If there's no threat of violence, what does the French government even hope to achieve with this?

What happened to due process? Every major firm should have a "dawn raid" policy to comply while preserving rights.

Specific to the Uber case(s), if it were illegal, then why didn't Uber get criminal charges or fines?

At best there's an argument that it was "obstructing justice," but logging people off, encrypting, and deleting local copies isn't necessarily illegal.

They will explain that it was done remotely and whatnot but then the company will be closed in the country. Whether this matters for the mothership is another story.

Obviously, the government can just threaten to fine you any amount, close operations or whatever, but your company can just decide to stop operating there, like Google after Russia imposed an absurd fine.

What, thinking HQ wouldn't cancel them?

When they’re both private, fine, whatever.

Given his recent "far right" bromance that's probably not a good idea ;)

...but then other commenters reminded me there is another thing on the same date, which might have been more the actual troll at Elmo to get him all worked up

I suppose the answer, if we're serious about it, is somewhat more nuanced.

To begin, public administrations should not get to unilaterally define "the public interest" in their communication, nor should private platforms for that matter. Assuming we're still talking about a democracy, the decision-making should be democratically via a combination of law + rights + accountable institutions + public scrutiny, with implementation constraints that maximise reach, accessibility, auditability, and independence from private gatekeepers. The last bit is rather relevant, because the private sector's interests and the citizen's interests are nearly always at odds in any modern society, hence the state's roles as rule-setter (via democratic processes) and arbiter. Happy to get into further detail regarding the actual processes involved, if you're genuinely interested.

That aside - there are two separate problems that often get conflated when we talk about these platforms:

- one is reach: people are on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, so publishing there increases distribution; public institutions should be interested in reaching as many citizens as possible with their comms;

- the other one is dependency: if those become the primary or exclusive channels, the state's relationship with citizens becomes contingent on private moderation, ranking algorithms, account lockouts, paywalls, data extraction, and opaque rule changes. That is entirely and dangerously misaligned with democratic accountability.

A potential middle position could be ti use commercial social platforms as secondary distribution instead of the authoritative channel, which in reality is often the case. However, due to the way societies work and how individuals operate within them, the public won't actually come across the information until it's distributed on the most popular platforms. Which is why some argue that they should be treated as public utilities since dominant communications infrastructure has quasi-public function (rest assured, I won't open that can of worms right now).

Politics is messy in practice, as all balancing acts are - a normal price to pay for any democratic society, I'd say. Mix that with technology, social psychology and philosophies of liberty, rights, and wellbeing, and you have a proper head-scratcher on your hands. We've already done a lot to balance these, for sure, but we're not there yet and it's a dynamic, developing field that presents new challenges.

No abuse of a real minor is needed.

You should realize that children have committed suicide before because AI deepfakes of themselves have been spread around schools. Just because these images are "fake" doesn't mean they're not abuse, and that there aren't real victims.

Well, yes. You can make child pornography with any video-editing software. How is this exoneration?

Grok brought that thought all the way to "... so let's not even try to prevent it."

The point is to show just how aware X were of the issue, and that they chose to repeatedly do nothing against Grok being used to create CSAM and probably other problematic and illegal imagery.

I can't really doubt they'll find plenty of evidence during discovery, it doesn't have to be physical things. The raid stops office activity immediately, and marks the point in time after which they can be accused of destroying evidence if they erase relevant information to hide internal comms.

If every AI system can do this, and every AI system in incapable of preventing it, then I guess every AI system should be banned until they can figure it out.

Every banking app on the planet "is capable" of letting a complete stranger go into your account and transfer all your money to their account. Did we force banks to put restrictions in place to prevent that from happening, or did we throw our arms up and say: oh well the French Government just wants to pick on banks?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98p1r4e6m8o

> Have the other AI companies followed suit? They were also allowing users to undress real people

No they weren’t? There were numerous examples of people feeding the same prompts to different AIs and having their requests refused. Not to mention, X was also publicly distributing that material, something other AI companies were not doing. Which is an entirely different legal liability.

>French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.

It's pretty obvious the French are deliberately conflating the two to justify attacking a political dissident.

By itself this isn't extraordinary in a democracy.

It is well known Musk amplifies his own speech and the words of those he agrees with on the platform, while banning those he doesn’t like.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m...

> could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right?

It’s called far-right because it’s further to the right (starting from the centre) than the right. Wikipedia is your friend, it offers plenty of examples and even helpfully lays out the full spectrum in a way even a five year old with a developmental impairment could understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics

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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj38m11218xo

How true is this really?

We certainly have data points to show Musk has put his thumb on the scale

Near right to me is advocating for things like lower taxes or different regulations or a secure border (but without the deportation of millions who are already in the country and abiding by laws). Operating the government for those things while still respecting the law, upholding the constitution, defending civil rights, and avoiding the deeply unethical grifting and corruption the Trump administration has normalized.

Obviously this is very simplified. What are your definitions out of curiosity?

CSAM was the lead in the 2024 news headlines in the French prosecution of Telegram also. I didn't follow the case enough to know where they went, or what the judge thought was credible.

From a US mindset, I'd say that generation of communication, including images, would fall under speech. But then we classify it very broadly here. Arranging drug deals on a messaging app definitely falls under the concept of speech in the US as well. Heck, I've been told by FBI agents that they believe assassination markets are legal in the US - protected speech.

Obviously, assassinations themselves, not so much.

Humanity itself is trending more toward monoculture socially; I like a lot of things (and hate some) about the cultural trend. But what I like isn't very important, because I might be totally wrong in my likes; if only my likes dominated, the world would be a much less resilient place -- vulnerable to the weaknesses of whatever it is I like.

So, again, I propose for the race as a whole, broad cultural diversity is really critical, and worth protecting. Even if we really hate some of the forms it takes.

They can read all messages, so they don't have an excuse for not helping in a criminal case. Their platform had a reputation of being safe for crime, which is because they just... ignored the police. Until they got arrested for that. They still turn a blind eye but not to the police.