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To play devil's advocate: Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter, cont

• pstuart 1y ago
  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.
  • billy99k 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • J_McQuade 1y ago
      Name one.
      • pstuart 1y ago
        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.
        • meowface 1y ago
          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.
      • netsharc 1y ago
        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..
      • virissimo 1y ago
        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
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • habinero 1y ago
          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.
      • onetimeusename 1y ago
        White supremacists were responsible for the 2020 riots.
        • pstuart 1y ago
          You mean Umbrella Man? https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-riots-identified-white/story?id=72051536 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-violence-america-new-data-summer-2020 https://acleddata.com/report/demonstrations-and-political-vi...
    • the_gastropod 1y ago
      Please. What common conspiracy theories that have actual political impact have water carried by left-wing politicians? Here's a short list of RW conspiracy theories with real life political consequences: - Antivax conspiracies - Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States ("birther" conspiracy) - Biden / Ukraine conspiracy theory - The litany of Covid-19 conspiracy theories - The "deep state" conspiracy theory - Sarah Palin's "death panels" conspiracy theory - Sandy Hook was fake - 2020 Election Fraud - Trump / Ukraine conspiracy theory - QAnon
      • johncolanduoni 1y ago
        I won’t go to bat for anything near a full equivocation in contemporary politics, but it’s worth remembering antivax was heavily left-coded prior to Covid. I don’t think approximately anyone has actually good epistemology - just biases that fluctuate in how much they affect the real world. Left wing academics and outlets carrying water for people like Pol Pot in the late 20th century because they liked the idea of communism was a particularly bad one.
        • meowface 1y ago
          Even before COVID things were shifting - the antivax part of the left at that time were mostly only sort of aesthetically on the left. I think this Twitter exchange sums up my feelings about that counterargument: https://i.imgur.com/gNXJ6Wl.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/gNXJ6Wl.jpeg Also, I think it's important to separate "left of center" and "leftist". Liberals and leftists are very different. "Progressive left-liberals" are fans of democracy and freedom and don't like bigotry and authoritarianism and Trump. "Leftists" are often fans of Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot and killing groups of people who aren't ideologically aligned and instating one-party dictatorships and violently suppressing dissent. In leftist parlance, "leftist" = "Marxist" while "liberal" = "capitalist belonging to the moderate wing of fascism". In the US, politics is best described as not two but four factions: leftists, liberals, rightists, and neo-Nazis. Often neo-Nazis will form coalitions with the rightists to help achieve major goals; historically leftists would form coalitions with the liberals, but this seems to be occurring less and less. Although leftists will insist the notion is absurd and anti-intellectual, horseshoe theory contains a lot of truth in it.
  • bawolff 1y ago
    I think there is a problem sometimes that "debunkers" are often more interested in scoring points with secondary audiences (i.e. people who already agree with them) than actually convincing the people who believe the misinformation. Most people who believe bullshit were convinced by something. It might not have been fully rational but there is usually a kernel of something there that triggered that belief. They also probably have heard at least the surface level version of the oppising argument at some point before. Too many debunkers just reiterate the surface argument without engaging with whatever is convincing their opponent. Then when it doesn't land they complain their opponent is brainwashed. Which sometimes might even be true, but sometimes their argument just misses the point of why their opponent believes what they do.
    • pstuart 1y ago
      "You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place." Fox (and others like it) offer 24/7 propaganda based on fear and anger, repeating lies ad nauseam. It's highly effective -- I've seen the results first-had. Making ad hominem attacks against "debunkers" doesn't make your case. And again, trying to change people's minds by telling them what they believe is wrong is a fools errand (99.99% of the time). But it still needs to happen as that misinformation should not go unchallenged.
      • meowface 1y ago
        >And again, trying to change people's minds by telling them what they believe is wrong is a fools errand (99.99% of the time). But it still needs to happen as that misinformation should not go unchallenged. It's a trite point and I ended up repeating it before seeing your post but this really is very true even if it may not seem like it. On one hand the practice is basically futile. But someone absolutely needs to do it. People need to do it. The ecosystem can't only ever contain the false narratives, because that leads to an even worse situation. "Here's why Holocaust denialism is incorrect and why the 271k number is wrong" is essentially pointless, per Sartre, but it's better for neo-Nazis to be exposed to that rather than "one should never even humor Holocaust denialists".
    • deleted 1y ago
  • Freedom2 1y ago
    One of the rallying cries of the right is "facts don't care about your feelings", but it's interesting how the facts either get distorted or ignored.
    • netsharc 1y ago
      "Charlie Kirk..." "Waaahhh! How fucking dare you!" Kimmel made fun of Trump talking about his ballroom when being asked about Kirk, and the right got offended and mad. Although it's not about feelings, it's more about exploiting a tragedy to advance their goals (in this case getting a critic like Kimmel off the air).
  • meowface 1y ago
    On one hand, yes, you're completely right.* On the other hand, there is an obligation for something or someone to do the job of pointing out the info is wrong, and how and why. Even if it makes most of them believe it even more strongly afterwards, it's still worse for it to go constantly unchallenged and for believers to never even come across the opposition. *(The same is true of left-wing conspiracy theories. It's silly to pretend that right-wing conspiracy theorists aren't far more common and don't believe in, on average, far more delusional and obviously false conspiracy theories than left-wingers do, but it's important not to forget they exist. I have dealt with some. They're arguably worse in some ways since they tend to be more intelligent, and so are more able to come up with more plausible rationalizations to contort their minds into pretzels.)
  • boxerab 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • mensetmanusman 1y ago
    “ The problem of debunking right-wing misinformation is that it doesn't seem to matter.” The problem with nihilism is that it’s wrong.
• tptacek 1y ago
  Wikipedia is probably in the running for one of the greatest contributions to public knowledge of the past 100 years, and that's a consequence of how it functions, warts and all. I don't care how good Grok is or isn't. I'm a fan of frontier model LLMs. They don't meaningfully replace Wikipedia.
  • meowface 1y ago
    I fully agree. Even assuming no forced ideological bias from Elon, I doubt it would be nearly as good. I still thought it could be an interesting concept, even if I had very low hopes from the start.
  • physarum_salad 1y ago
    "Warts and all" says it all really. What are those warts? Who's responsibility are they? Wikipedia is really not ideal for the LLM age where multiple perspectives can be rapidly generated. There are many topics where clusters of justified true beliefs and reasonable arguments may ALL be valid surrounding a certain topic. And no I am not talking about "flat earth" pages or other similar nonsense.
    • thrance 1y ago
      Do list these "alternative perspectives" that Wikipedia is allegedly unfairly silencing.
      • physarum_salad 1y ago
        The fact you think there are none is really hilarious!
        • thrance 1y ago
          The fact you're still eluding isn't very funny though. Please share just one, that we may discuss it.
          • 1y ago
• jayd16 1y ago
  It's not controlled by a trusted actor so it doesn't matter how it happens to act at the moment. They could pull the rug at any future time and its almost better to gain trust now and cash in that trust later.
  • kvirani 1y ago
    And the idea of it being controlled by any one entity makes it less interesting and less "good" when compared to Wikipedia
  • meowface 1y ago
    My expectations were extremely low, as were, and are, my expectations of Grok in general. Was just making an actual devil's advocate case.
    • lapcat 1y ago
      > Was just making an actual devil's advocate case. Why? We're not nominating a saint or electing a Pope. If someone has a certain opinion, they're free to argue it here. There's no need to invent imaginary opinions and pretend to advocate for them when there are so many actual HN users.
      • meowface 1y ago
        We're discussing the central sources of knowledge on the internet and by extension pretty much the epistemological backbones of present human civilization. It's worth being open to other perspectives. I, a left-leaning person who detests Elon Musk and what he's done to Twitter and who generally trusts and likes Wikipedia, feel no shame or regret in assessing Grokipedia, even if I figured it was just going to be the standard tribalistic garbage (which it indeed turned out to be).
        • lapcat 1y ago
          > It's worth being open to other perspectives. There's a big difference between listening to other perspectives and inventing other perspectives. Why not let the believers of other perspectives argue for those perspectives? Wouldn't they be the best advocates? And if nobody believes the perspective you've invented, then perhaps it wasn't worth discussing after all. Again, we're not really lacking in volume of commenters here.
• LastTrain 1y ago
  “ Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter” Well, no, it hasn’t. It has debunked some things. It has made some incorrect shit up. But it isn’t historically one of the “biggest debunkers” of anything. Do we only speak hyperbole now?
  • meowface 1y ago
    I am not using hyperbole or speculating. I absolutely mean it. "Biggest" is tough to quantify, but "most significant" and "most effective" is what I meant. I use Twitter way too many hours a day basically every day and have a morbid fixation on diving deep into right and far-right rabbit holes there. (Like, on thousands of occasions.) Grok is without a doubt the single most important contributor to convincing believers of right-wing conspiracy theories that maybe the theories aren't as sound as they thought. I have seen this play out hundreds of times. Grok often serves as a kind of referee or tiebreaker in threads between right-wing conspiracy theorists and debunkers, and it typically sides overwhelmingly with the debunkers. (Or at least used to.) And it does it in a way that validates the conspiracy theorist's feelings, so it's less likely to trigger a psychological immune system response. https://www.reddit.com/r/GROKvsMAGA/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GROKvsMAGA/ contains some examples. These may seem cherry-picked, but they generally aren't. (Might need to look at some older posts now that Elon has put increasingly pressure on the Grok and Grokipedia developers to keep it """anti-woke""".) When a right-wing conspiracy theorist sees some liberal or leftist call them out for their falsehoods, they respond with insults or otherwise dismiss or ignore it. When daddy Elon's Grok tells them - politely - that what they believe is complete horseshit, they react differently. They often respond to it 3 - 20 times, poking and prodding. Of course, most still come away from it convinced Grok is just compromised by the wokes/Jews/whatever. But some seem to actually eventually accept that, at the least, maybe they got some details wrong. It's a very fascinating sight. I almost never see that reaction when they argue with human interlocutors. To be clear, it was never perfect. For example, if you word things in just the right way and ask leading questions, then like with any LLM (especially one that needs to respond in under 280 characters) you can often eventually coax it into saying something close to what you want. I have just seen many instances where it cuts through bullshit in a way that a leftist arguing with a Nazi can't really do.