5 ms·

Russia already does that - poisons the net for future LLM pretraining data. it's called "LLM grooming" https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/russian-networks-flood-

by hurturue 10mo ago

Russia already does that - poisons the net for future LLM pretraining data. it's called "LLM grooming" https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/russian-networks-flood-the-internet-with-propaganda-aiming-to-corrupt-ai-chatbots/ https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/russian-networks-flood-the-i...

brabel 10mo ago
This article shows no evidence for anything it claims. None. All of that while claiming we can’t believe almost anything we read online… well you’re god damn right. > undermining democracy around the globe is arguably Russia’s foremost foreign policy objective. Right, because Russia is such a cartoonish villain it has no interest in pursuing its own development and good relations with any other country, all it cares about is annoying the democratic countries with propaganda about their own messed up politics. When did it become acceptable for journalists to make bold, generalizing claims against whole nations without a single direct, falsifiable evidence of what they claim and worse, making claims like this that can be easily dismissed as obviously false by quickly looking at the policies and their diplomatic interactions with other countries?!
- nutjob2 10mo ago
  > Right, because Russia is such a cartoonish villain it has no interest in pursuing its own development and good relations with any other country, all it cares about is annoying the democratic countries with propaganda about their own messed up politics. That's actually pretty much spot on.
  - brabel 10mo ago
    When you start believing that there are only good and bad, black and white, them vs us, you know for sure you’ve been brainwashed. Goes to both sides.
    - hurturue 10mo ago
      so between 0 (good) and 100 (bad), what would be your gray score "badness/evilness" value for the following: Russia, US, China, EU yes, i know, it's not a linear axis, it's multi-dimensional perspective thing. so do a PCA/projection and spit one number, according to your values/beliefs
      - tkfoss 10mo ago
        95,95,95,{depends on the country, from 30 to 100}
    - nutjob2 10mo ago
      For someone who complains about unsupported claims, you seem to make a lot of them. The fact that you think this is something to do with "both sides" instead of a simple question of facts really gives you away.
      - brabel 10mo ago
        What?? I am just saying that if you think the world is made of black and white villains vs heroes, you are buying into the propaganda from one side or another. This is not a bold claim, this is basic logic from anyone mature enough to know that no country, and no person, is just simply either good or bad. They do bad things in order to accomplish what they believe to be good things. The US drop two atomic bombs on Japan, a horrifically evil act, but it did so in order to defeat what it believed to be an even bigger evil. Russia invaded Ukraine, a violent, barbaric act that caused the deaths of at least a million on both sides, but it did so because it, like the US, believed to be doing what's right to ensure their country's independence in the longer term since, as they'd been saying for decades, Ukraine must never be allowed to join a hostile military alliance as that would compromise forever Russia's own ability to defend itself from invasion from western powers, when Operation Barbarossa is still very, very alive in their minds to this very day. It doesn't matter if you agree with either the US or Russia on whether they were actually right, what matters is that they themselves thought they were right, given their own circumstances, and people love to ignore that and judge them by their own perceptions of what they should think. This is a sign of immaturity: you probably judge people around you in your life like that as well, by what you see from the outside without any idea what's going on inside their heads.
- frogperson 10mo ago
  Can you point me to any examples of russia doing something good or helping anyone except billionaires? No? Then their reputation is well deserved.
- nightpool 10mo ago
  They link multiple sources, including a Sunshine Foundation report summarizing other research into the area, and a NewsGuard report where they tested claims from the Pravda network directly against leading LLM chatbots: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931004/t/67fd396818196f3d1666bc23/1744648558879/PK+Report.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931... https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-models-mimic-russian-disinformation-cite-fake-news/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-...
  - brabel 10mo ago
    I think this research seems a little bit suspicious. First of all, it focuses almost entirely on the brawl the NewsGuard is having with one guy[1]. Notice how that's where most of the "fake news" they mention come from. Secondly, asking the LLM a "leading question" is a very well known way to get biased answers and they did that to an extreme extent in this piece. Read this article to understand how you can get LLMs to say almost anything that supports whatever you want it to support[2]. That unfortunately weakens what may have been good points they had: that LLMs seem to just trust any news websites equally regardless of their "accuracy". I would like to point out that American news websites are not known for their accuracy either and the proliferation of fact-checking websites that routinely debunk their half lies proves that. I do agree with you that there are many news sites spreading misinformation, but I think that most of it is not coming from governments... and while governments are also doing this, most, I would think, do it with good intentions (they do believe the information is true and barely verify that when it favours their preconceived points of view). When propaganda spreads information you like, you tend to call it just news. The way current Western media is currently dismissing anything at all that comes from Russian sources as lies and propaganda, however, is way overblown in my opinion. That's causing a huge blind spot in the public discourse which just makes the fake news sources seem even more attractive, since they seem to be whistleblowers fighting against a campaign of silence from the mainstream media, which is not completely incorrect. [1] https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/john-mark-dougan-russian-disinformation-network/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/john-mark-doug... [2] https://medium.com/@amithnmbr/why-its-important-to-know-how-an-llm-was-prompted-fe57a6954b32 https://medium.com/@amithnmbr/why-its-important-to-know-how-...
- ekropotin 10mo ago
  As a Russian, I have to say that Putin is indeed way too focused on geopolitics instead of internal state of affairs.

brabel 10mo ago

This article shows no evidence for anything it claims. None. All of that while claiming we can’t believe almost anything we read online… well you’re god damn right. > undermining democracy around the globe is arguably Russia’s foremost foreign policy objective. Right, because Russia is such a cartoonish villain it has no interest in pursuing its own development and good relations with any other country, all it cares about is annoying the democratic countries with propaganda about their own messed up politics. When did it become acceptable for journalists to make bold, generalizing claims against whole nations without a single direct, falsifiable evidence of what they claim and worse, making claims like this that can be easily dismissed as obviously false by quickly looking at the policies and their diplomatic interactions with other countries?!

nutjob2 10mo ago
> Right, because Russia is such a cartoonish villain it has no interest in pursuing its own development and good relations with any other country, all it cares about is annoying the democratic countries with propaganda about their own messed up politics. That's actually pretty much spot on.
- brabel 10mo ago
  When you start believing that there are only good and bad, black and white, them vs us, you know for sure you’ve been brainwashed. Goes to both sides.
  - hurturue 10mo ago
    so between 0 (good) and 100 (bad), what would be your gray score "badness/evilness" value for the following: Russia, US, China, EU yes, i know, it's not a linear axis, it's multi-dimensional perspective thing. so do a PCA/projection and spit one number, according to your values/beliefs
    - tkfoss 10mo ago
      95,95,95,{depends on the country, from 30 to 100}
  - nutjob2 10mo ago
    For someone who complains about unsupported claims, you seem to make a lot of them. The fact that you think this is something to do with "both sides" instead of a simple question of facts really gives you away.
    - brabel 10mo ago
      What?? I am just saying that if you think the world is made of black and white villains vs heroes, you are buying into the propaganda from one side or another. This is not a bold claim, this is basic logic from anyone mature enough to know that no country, and no person, is just simply either good or bad. They do bad things in order to accomplish what they believe to be good things. The US drop two atomic bombs on Japan, a horrifically evil act, but it did so in order to defeat what it believed to be an even bigger evil. Russia invaded Ukraine, a violent, barbaric act that caused the deaths of at least a million on both sides, but it did so because it, like the US, believed to be doing what's right to ensure their country's independence in the longer term since, as they'd been saying for decades, Ukraine must never be allowed to join a hostile military alliance as that would compromise forever Russia's own ability to defend itself from invasion from western powers, when Operation Barbarossa is still very, very alive in their minds to this very day. It doesn't matter if you agree with either the US or Russia on whether they were actually right, what matters is that they themselves thought they were right, given their own circumstances, and people love to ignore that and judge them by their own perceptions of what they should think. This is a sign of immaturity: you probably judge people around you in your life like that as well, by what you see from the outside without any idea what's going on inside their heads.
frogperson 10mo ago
Can you point me to any examples of russia doing something good or helping anyone except billionaires? No? Then their reputation is well deserved.
nightpool 10mo ago
They link multiple sources, including a Sunshine Foundation report summarizing other research into the area, and a NewsGuard report where they tested claims from the Pravda network directly against leading LLM chatbots: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931004/t/67fd396818196f3d1666bc23/1744648558879/PK+Report.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6612cbdfd9a9ce56ef931... https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-models-mimic-russian-disinformation-cite-fake-news/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/generative-ai-...
- brabel 10mo ago
  I think this research seems a little bit suspicious. First of all, it focuses almost entirely on the brawl the NewsGuard is having with one guy[1]. Notice how that's where most of the "fake news" they mention come from. Secondly, asking the LLM a "leading question" is a very well known way to get biased answers and they did that to an extreme extent in this piece. Read this article to understand how you can get LLMs to say almost anything that supports whatever you want it to support[2]. That unfortunately weakens what may have been good points they had: that LLMs seem to just trust any news websites equally regardless of their "accuracy". I would like to point out that American news websites are not known for their accuracy either and the proliferation of fact-checking websites that routinely debunk their half lies proves that. I do agree with you that there are many news sites spreading misinformation, but I think that most of it is not coming from governments... and while governments are also doing this, most, I would think, do it with good intentions (they do believe the information is true and barely verify that when it favours their preconceived points of view). When propaganda spreads information you like, you tend to call it just news. The way current Western media is currently dismissing anything at all that comes from Russian sources as lies and propaganda, however, is way overblown in my opinion. That's causing a huge blind spot in the public discourse which just makes the fake news sources seem even more attractive, since they seem to be whistleblowers fighting against a campaign of silence from the mainstream media, which is not completely incorrect. [1] https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/john-mark-dougan-russian-disinformation-network/ https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/john-mark-doug... [2] https://medium.com/@amithnmbr/why-its-important-to-know-how-an-llm-was-prompted-fe57a6954b32 https://medium.com/@amithnmbr/why-its-important-to-know-how-...
ekropotin 10mo ago
As a Russian, I have to say that Putin is indeed way too focused on geopolitics instead of internal state of affairs.