Ben-L 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (56)

• On the post: ExTwitter Accused Of Secretly Boosting Mr. Beast Video With Undisclosed Ad Placements

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2024 @ 11:20am

  Non-views

  Now, I’d argue that the views on the video are not the most accurate.

  The linked Mashable article does mention that those "views" are just impressions on the tweet itself and that Musk personally removed video views last year. Most video sites do have some shady way to boost view counts, though non-disclosed ads might be the worst because that's also illegal.

• On the post: YouTube Still Blocking Access To Steamboat Willie On Behalf Of Disney In Some Countries

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2024 @ 12:05am

  as a side note, Bluesky content is now public, so you can see the posts on Bluesky without an account

  The link is giving me a notice saying "Sign-in Required" and "This user has requested that their content only be shown to signed-in users." It's possible they changed this setting post-publication but just so you're aware.

• On the post: ExTwitter Unfortunately Loses Round One In Challenging Problematic Content Moderation Law

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2024 @ 02:30pm

  Controversial

  The mere fact that the reports may be “tied in some way to a controversial issue” does not make the reports themselves controversial.

  What? Do words have meaning? If a company defines 'harassment' as making fun of Elon Musk (which they very well could under this law) then would that not be controversial?

• On the post: The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2023 @ 11:47am

  Trademark dilution

  The complaint says that ChatGPT/Bing Chat making stuff up about the Times ("hallucinating") amounts to trademark dilution. I'm not super familiar with this trademark law but would they have a case here?

• On the post: Sports Illustrated The Latest To Bare Its Entire Ass Thanks To Laziness, Greed, And Half-Cooked ‘AI’

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2023 @ 01:49pm

  Trying to get an LLM to write real product reviews is what's known in the industry as a 'bad idea'.

• On the post: Sure, There’s Disinfo On ExTwitter, But The EU Should Not Be Demanding Censorship

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2023 @ 03:19pm

  Here's a good takedown of the EU Commission's response, signed by various digital rights organizations: https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/precise-interpretation-of-dsa-matters-in-gaza-and-israel/

• On the post: NY Times Tried To Block The Internet Archive

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2023 @ 01:03pm

  A more charitable interpretation is that they wanted people to use their own paywalled archive instead of the free one the Internet Archive provides. However, without a full list of article revisions their archives are likely incomplete.

• On the post: The AI Journalism ‘Revolution’ Continues To Go Poorly As Gannett Accused Of Making Up Fake Humans To Obscure Lazy AI Use

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2023 @ 12:36pm

  "AI"

  Even when used for the kind of basic writing LLMs are supposed to excel at, like basic box score journalism.

  Probably because the "AI" in question wasn't an LLM. Instead, they had a bunch of templates and the "AI" in question picked which one to use. This was explained in On The Media.

• On the post: Publishing A Book Means No Longer Having Control Over How Others Feel About It, Or How They’re Inspired By It. And That Includes AI.

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2023 @ 05:52pm

  It reminds me of the whole Prosecraft debacle. I believe Books3 was in the background of that outrage, even though the creator didn't use that database afaik.

• On the post: G/O Media Gives Another Crash Course On Perils Of Replacing Human Journalists With Half-Baked ‘AI’

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2023 @ 03:02am

  From the sounds of it, you could probably get better translations using a Google Translate browser extension. At least the whole thing would be translated instead of some of the ones mentioned here.

• On the post: Canadian Media Orgs Said That Meta Linking To News Was Anticompetitive; Now They Say NOT Linking To News Is Anticompetitive

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2023 @ 05:46am

  Well, this has happened elsewhere with similar results. Canadian news execs and lawmakers most likely knew this would happen but banked on Facebook/Google being easy political punching bags so the government would get a pass for making these dumb laws.

• On the post: NY Times Considering A Potentially Very Dumb Lawsuit Against OpenAI Because It Learned From NY Times Content

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2023 @ 05:06am

  NYT even ran a piece a couple months ago showing that the bot could "hallucinate" answers about the paper's archives (apparently only GPT-4 would admit it didn't really know). At least it would be funny if NYT went ahead with the lawsuit and OpenAI used that article as proof it isn't somehow "replacing" the newspaper.

• On the post: WOW Fans Trick ‘AI’ ‘News’ Scraper Into Covering Fake New Game Feature

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2023 @ 12:21am

  Haha, seems like now they've stopped pulling content from Reddit altogether, which was always a bad idea.

• On the post: Senators Rubio, Hawley, Loeffler And Cramer Ask The FCC To Reinterpret Section 230 In A Totally Ridiculous Manner

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2020 @ 02:48pm

  I'm surprised Devin Nunes didn't join this clown car, but he's probably busy filing more frivolous lawsuits against the Twitter account of his mom's cow.

• On the post: Arizona AG Sues Google For Location Data Failures, After Telecom Got A Wrist Slap For Far Worse Behavior

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2020 @ 07:39pm

  Google's lawyers are probably already preparing to argue that the precedent set by these wrist slaps is an even weaker slap on the wrist :p

• On the post: Mark Zuckerberg's Ridiculously Wrong, Misleading, And Self-Serving Statements Regarding Twitter Fact-Checking The President

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 28 May, 2020 @ 12:51pm

  I wouldn't put it past Zuck to suck up to Fox News viewers, but it's also possible Perino is mis-communicating exactly what he said. Can we get a link to the actual interview so we can check for ourselves?

• On the post: French Government Passes Hate Speech Law, Will Allow Law Enforcement To Run The Internet

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 19 May, 2020 @ 07:32pm

  No surprise

  Guess it's no surprise that France is so quick to surrender their rights and due process.

• On the post: Senate May Try To Sneak A Clean Reauth Of Surveillance Powers Into A Must-Pass Coronovirus Bill

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2020 @ 10:26pm

  Typo in headline

  It's "coronavirus", not "coronovirus".

• On the post: Joe Biden Can't Tell The Difference Between The 1st Amendment & Section 230; Still Thinks Video Games Cause Violence

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2020 @ 05:37pm

  Re:

  I wouldn't take Biden's threats too seriously, at least not right now. It's primary season and whatever candidate takes the most extreme positions on divisive issues gets the most attention. If he does get the nomination he'll probably moderate his position to join the "reform Section 230" camp and support whatever "think of the children" legislation is down the pipeline. Perhaps that isn't ideal, but it'd be the same thing under the current status quo.

• On the post: Joe Biden Can't Tell The Difference Between The 1st Amendment & Section 230; Still Thinks Video Games Cause Violence

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2020 @ 11:30am

  Ironic

  This is ironic because Biden actually voted for the CDA. However, he was probably more a fan because it originally tried to compel sites to remove their smut, a provision which was found unconstitutional by Reno v. ACLU. As with how he has gone after "violent video games", it should be no surprise that Biden isn't a fan of our Constitutional rights and the First Amendment.

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