“The right wing ideology is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Swiss, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it.
…
As a Swiss, I have every reason to treat this history with seriousness and respect. Precisely because of that, I reject any suggestion that this promotion carried an extremist message. It did not.”
I’ll never forget this shit, such ass response from GOG
Imo it’s even odds between some marketing child-left-behind googling “Slavic runes” to add to their email, and some 4channer on the team thinking they’re making a funny joke. The fact that they recognized the issue enough to know that couldn’t send the email in Germany, but sent it everywhere else anyway, makes me lean a little bit more toward the latter
Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Jun 23:12
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I’m confused. I have Scandinavian ancestry and understand that some of the cultural identity was appropriated by Nazis and now some extremist fuck wits. e.g. how the Hindu swastika (also often confused with sauvastika) was appropriated. But I don’t understand why that means appropriated symbols automatically = bad if they’re used in their original context?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Jun 23:34
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The main issue is that ϟϟ was both totally irrelevant to the topic besides being vaguely Slavic, and also literally the logo for the SS. In the modern day, that is its only connotation. It’s not in its original context, it’s just random runes thrown together
Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Jun 23:42
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I’m asking both specifically about the GOG thing but also more generally. Yes, I know the SS appropriated runes for tgwit logo but I still don’t see how that automatically makes runes themselves bad. I can understand how it would be triggering for some folks and so a level of sensitivity is required (which GOG clearly failed on) but I still don’t get how appropriated symbols automatically = bad (because I’ve seen the same reactions to other ancient symbols over and over again and I’m still trying to understand it)
ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml
on 09 Jun 23:48
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Because they used the ϟ rune twice. When used like that, it only has one meaning.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 00:35
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It’s bad because the SS appropriated it and stripped all other meaning from it. It’s like using the number 1488 in a username. It only means one thing, and while it’s possible to stumble into it by accident, it remains a white supremacist dogwhistle
So if someone made an account 20 years ago ending with 88, like say if you were born in 1988, should they now delete their account just because someone might misconstrue it as a completely unrelated “dogwhistle”?
you’re lucky not to know what 88 signified before the internet because it mean that you were never affected by the people it attracted.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 14:20
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There’s no misconstruing, 1488 is a nazi dogwhistle whether someone intends it to be or not. If your username includes that number, you should delete that account and make a different one, because people are gonna treat you like a nazi.
Just using 88 is slightly less unacceptable, but the same thing applies; if your username includes that number, people are going to treat you like you’re a nazi.
ϟϟ has exactly one meaning in the modern day. You can use those runes without knowing that meaning, but that meaning is still there. It is nazi symbolism whether you intend your use of it to be or not.
Yeah, I’ll go tell all my friends and relatives who were born in 1988 and wanted a specific username which were already taken and used (or even if they have a name and surname that’s already taken) and added 88 as an affix since it’s the year they were born in (as people have been doing for decades on the internet) that they are now all Nazis.
Seems pretty obtuse.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 16:27
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they are now all Nazis
Well that’s not what I said, is it? My favorite thing about Lemmings is that none of you can read. Do you maybe want to try this one again? I’ll give you a free redo
Just using 88 is slightly less unacceptable, but the same thing applies; if your username includes that number, people are going to treat you like you’re a nazi.
Your words.
I’ll tell them to expect to be treated like Nazis then. Which is absolutely wild, because in their 38 year existence this has never happened. Once.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 17:04
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“[…] that they are all now nazis.”
“[…] people are going to treat you like you’re a nazi.”
Spot the difference. I’ll give you a hint: one of them involves being a nazi, and one of them involves being mistaken for a nazi. You managed to misread my comment so badly that you thought I was saying that everyone who has 88 in their username is a nazi, and that’s because you can’t read.
But even that’s totally irrelevant. I specified 1488 in my comment. You know anyone with 1488 in their username who isn’t a nazi? Because if you do, I have bad news about your nazi friend.
Even moreso with ϟϟ. Much like 1488, it only means one thing. The people who use it virtually always use it to mean that one thing. It is very hard to stumble into accidentally using it, and if you do, you should be embarrassed for having stumbled into using nazi symbolism.
As you’ve pointed out, there is an innocent explanation for someone using 88. It could be an honest mistake, there are people (usually whites who aren’t endangered by Nazi ideology) that aren’t tuned-in enough to know about common Nazi dogwhistles.
There’s no honest mistake in using the double sowilo runes. No innocent explanation.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 16:54
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There is one innocent explanation, with a big caveat: some child-left-behind in marketing googled “Slavic emojis” and found this page, and clicked on a few random ones, not knowing about the connotations some of them have.
Caveat: they didn’t send the email in Germany, so someone knew it was nazi shit and sent it anyway
In hindsight, an idiot accidentally copying a different cryptofascist’s work actually is another innocent explanation. “Oops, I didn’t know the “cool rune guide” I was copying from was actually made by neonazis.”
Sort of like how Graham Platner might have gotten his Nazi tattoo because one of his buddies in the Marines, who actually is a neonazi, told him it was a good idea and that it was just a cool looking skull tattoo.
I didn’t see news covering this shit but almost everyone subscribed in their newsletter receive an advertising for a game and the the e-mail subject contained nazi symbols. GOG response was the most idiotic thing possible.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Jun 18:36
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At least they removed all the em dashes
ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml
on 09 Jun 23:58
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Why does everyone seem to regard the em dash as an instant LLM-indicator? Many real people—me included—use them regularly. Yes, LLMs use them—perhaps too much—but many so-called “AI-tells” come from training data—real text written by real people.
You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
Summzashi@lemmy.world
on 09 Jun 19:17
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You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
Have you ever yelled at Claude or chatgpt and had it apologize to you? It’s literally word for word this format. Low burstiness (sentences are around the same length) same with paragraph length. Absolutely perfect grammar and it reads like LLM vomited it out. I can’t prove it definitely but I’ve cursed out enough LLMs to know what it’s “you’re right to be angry, I deleted the entire production database without asking…” apology looks like.
Have you run it through an AI checker?
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 01:46
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So your proof is that the post has good grammar? Idk man
“you’re right to raise this” is an LLMism on the same level as “You’re exactly right!”
Edit:
You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 02:57
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“you’re right to raise this” is an LLMism on the same level as “You’re exactly right!”
It’s also a standard PRism. Given that this is a PR post, that’s not really proof.
That’s… exactly my point though? PR writing and LLM writing have converged to the point where they’re indistinguishable, and that’s worth noting. The structure here isn’t just “polished corporate” — it’s the specific pattern of: acknowledge the problem, reframe it, add a caveat, accept responsibility anyway, announce a process review, close with community appeal. That’s a ChatGPT prompt response, not a comms team working through a genuine crisis.
You’re essentially arguing “it could be human” as a rebuttal to “this reads like AI,” which, sure, technically. But the tell isn’t any single phrase — it’s the whole skeleton. PR people write defensively. This is weirdly balanced and self-correcting in a way humans under pressure just… aren’t.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 06:49
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Sometimes PR people don’t write defensively, at least not entirely. Sometimes there’s an error, and the correct PR response is to acknowledge the error and communicate intent to rectify it for the future. Being totally defensive in the light of an actual error can do more damage than gracefully acknowledging it.
LLMs are trained on data. They learn from actual human content. They’re usually pre-prompted to be agreeable, professional, and diplomatic. PR writing is probably a good chunk of the training data used to inform LLM word and phrasing choice.
You’re essentially arguing that an impressionist painting “reads like AI” because you’ve seen a lot of AI images generated by models trained on impressionist paintings.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 06:39
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to be honest it’s hard to describe this overexplained apology that LLMs give. I regularly use claude through duck.ai, and I have to agree with him, the writing style and words used is way too familiar.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 03:21
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Man, it’s so obvious. Wether it’s bots in the replies, or genuine people who can’t tell, we’re fucking cooked.
I think it’s smart as a privacy focused initiative to be more neutral than not. Especially as they cater to the masses that may not have as defined an opinion.
Oh i agree. Neutrality doesn’t mean embracing nor endorsing fascism, nor any other extreme.
But humans being humans will always selectively interpret any public facing message to fit their narrative as many have already done here: “Because they aren’t outright condemning or fighting the enemy, they must be working with them! Therefore, they are not friends.”
Case in point: their CEO saying that Trump’s appointment of a famously anti-trust prosecutor into a high ant-trust position was a good thing caused so many people to lose their shit because “Proton is now MAGA” somehow.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world
on 09 Jun 21:09
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Moving the goalposts. You said they need to drop the fascist from their sponsorship and they did. They also committed to not doing it in the future. They did exactly what you said.
On top of that, companies are not your friends and they don’t need political positions. Not supporting fascists is perfectly adequate.
I understand that they would have removed also the sponsorship of a feminist, vegan or antiracist that created discontent in their use base (by being feminist, vegan or antiracist).
Exactly. I’m a bit grumpy about that response because they’re just saying that if his opinion would be more main stream, they wouldn’t back down on the sponsorship.
“many companies are doing it” is not an excuse. if they are taking my money and giving it to nazis for the spread of society-destabilizing propaganda, that’s very much something they owe an explanation to society for.
and might not be something an upstanding person would want to keep paying for either.
I think you’re extremely confused as to what Proton is and the service they offer.
I also think it’s because you’re falling (or have fallen) into the tribalist view of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us, and if you’re against them, you’re with us”.
Proton is a-political, pro-agenda. Their agenda is “net neutrality, privacy, security”. They don’t care who makes that happen, and will support anyone who fights for these things.
They won’t take an antifascist position because that would put them on the political spectrum.
I also understand that - to you - not making that statement already puts them on the political spectrum, in the opposing camp, but that’s, again, due to the tribalist views.
They’ve praised left-wingers and right-wingers, they’ve criticised Democrats and Republicans - as long as anyone pushes for their agenda, they will praise them, as long as someone threatens their agenda, they will criticise them. That’s all there is to it.
As I mentioned more in detail in other post, Proton is not the pro-MAGA many had misinterpreted. It is just sloppy at the marketing campaign and its leader makes statements that can easily misunderstood too.
That said, Proton has decided to aim for the masses, which has proven to be a winning business formula here. However, in that quest, it’s natural that concerns from top-tier privacy users (Linux users, those wanting non-Google push notifications, too-many-eggs-in-a-basket, etc.) get relegated in favor of the bulk of their primary target customers, the regular Joe who simply wants to move away from email and web traffic scraping. We should all applaud that decision, but we also recognize the limitations and big risks of having a single company holding some 80% of this privacy market, both for us and even for Proton. It would be better to foster a healthy, diverse, and more equitable privacy ecosystem.
SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
on 10 Jun 00:55
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The fact you think being pro-MAGA is the only evil we should be concerned about is telling.
Maybe because it’s a bit like if someone said “I got the test results, I don’t have cancer”, and that dude replied with “the fact that you think cancer is the only danger you should be concerned about is telling”.
Sure, it’s technically correct, but it’s obnoxious and, without any further context, just seems to be off-topic.
I love that the comment explaining it already existed when you wrote this. No, it couldn’t be that you were out of line! It had to just be the liberals!
As a leftist, maybe shut the fuck up sometimes. Maybe you aren’t always the smartest person in the room, and complaining about stuff that isn’t even relevant is, at best, annoying, if not actively harmful because people will ignore it when it is relevant.
SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml
on 10 Jun 21:13
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As a leftist,
This expression is so liberal. Your identity, or mine, doesn’t mean much. And liberals and the true left have different views on leftism. The imperialist Bernie Sanders is from the phony left.
As for the post, “They hate Jesus because he told them the truth”. As an atheist.
Written by Claude … “You are right to raise this”… Like chatgpt dashing
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
on 09 Jun 13:41
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Ah, yes, reaffirming that someone raising an issue is correct to have done so is the telltale sign of an LLM. Couldn’t just be basic professional writing etiquette that LLMs were trained forwards and backwards on; it has to have been written by an LLM.
You don’t actually write formally very much, do you?
This is terrible because they didn’t hold 3 hrs of management and PR meetings to craft a response onto a message board that has no say in their operations?
DupaCycki@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 01:31
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I feel like this is a good statement. The one that should have been written immediately after outrage began, and ideally before removing dozens if not hundreds of posts and comments covering this topic.
Some people say it stinks of AI. I don’t know. Maybe? PR messages have always been like this, and they seem to be one of the types that chatbots got most of their writing patterns from.
Some people definitely overreacted. Others completely missed the point. Proton is far from a perfect company, and a case in favour of boycotting them could be made. But not because they accidentally sponsored one video of a far-right youtuber.
They’re just not as private and secure as they pretend to be or to want to be. Pretty much all alternatives are leagues above. There appears to be no apparent reason why they’re lagging behind. I suppose that’s where the CIA honeypot allegations may come from.
In any case, if you really care about privacy and security - you probably aren’t a Proton user, let alone customer. And if you are - I highly recommend trying alternatives that don’t have a long history of working with law enforcement.
The one that should have been written immediately after outrage began, and ideally before removing dozens if not hundreds of posts and comments covering this topic.
For what it’s worth - apparently they said they’re crafting a response fairly early, kept one of the original threads and removed the rest as duplicates.
Just fyi, every company is legally obliged to work with law enforcement. It’s strange that people think that a company can just refuse court orders. The point and benefit of companies like proton or tuta is that there is very little information they can actually give and they are fully transparent with public when and what they were obliged to give. It’s funny that when company hides this, like telegram, who worked with law enforcement thousands of times and handed over stuf like non encrypted chat messages, they are seen as private and not disputed by their users. But when company like Proton writes blog posts about the cases to be transparent and what (little meta) data they gave, people are out of their mind calling them out for it.
every company is legally obliged to work with law enforcement
Of course. Proton doesn’t really have a choice whether or not to fulfill law enforcement’s requests.
However, Proton absolutely does have a choice when it comes down to the scale of their cooperation with law enforcement, as well as the enthusiasm behind it.
In my opinion, in these two metrics Proton very noticeably falls behind most of their competition. That’s why I wouldn’t use it for security or privacy.
Plus - Lumo AI? Seriously? What sort of privacy-focused company invests into an AI chatbot?
It’s definitely better than GMail. Everything is. But if you want serious privacy and security… Yeah, no.
What? The scale of cooperation is defined by the law, I doubt they give happily more than they have to (even if they had more). They always write about what exactly they had to do and why, they literally can’t be more transparent. Plus the swiss law, unless it changes (which can sadly happen) does limit significantly who can compell them for cooperarion.
Oh and when it comes to Lumo, I despise all the AI shait yo be clear, but I am glad someone made something more private for those rare occasion I needed to use Llms or for my relatives who can’t simply understand that thing they talk to is just a fancy language model and they ask it very personal stuff…
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 06:07
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In my opinion, in these two metrics Proton very noticeably falls behind most of their competition. That’s why I wouldn’t use it for security or privacy.
In any case, if you really care about privacy and security - you probably aren’t a Proton user, let alone customer. And if you are - I highly recommend trying alternatives that don’t have a long history of working with law enforcement.
what else has a full complement of services besides tuta?
I loved proton years ago… even did a paid account for a while. This isn’t their first wtf moment and won’t be their last. The problem for me, its that I expect more carefulness and thoughtfulness from a company that promotes encryption and privacy.
Showing me how easily you make mistakes is a quick way for me to question how well you’re safeguarding the platform.
I’ve moved away. Will take some time for them to earn back the trust, but honestly… I don’t see a huge need for them anymore. I simply don’t consider email secure. If you want real secure communication (that you can host on a server yourself) Matrix and XMPP are a much better choice.
Anyway… the response is nice. Just doesn’t fix anything.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Jun 02:37
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I mean I’m sure they pay more attention to safeguarding data than some random french YouTube channel, that’s why they didn’t think too much about the sponsorship.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 14:35
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They care about privacy and security, not marketing. They probably hate that they have to do marketing in the first place. It’s honestly relatable.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 06:13
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their marketing practices have been questionable for years, though. the promotional emails (everyone subscribed by default) and even the pricing pages are filled with dark patterns. by the charity fundraisers they do, these dark patterns don’t seem to be necessary for their sustainability.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Jun 13:44
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Imo almost all of marketing can be considered dark patterns. And when your competition uses dark patterns, if you don’t use it you simply don’t gain users.
I’m reminded of a Veritasium video on clickbait (too lazy to link it right now but should be easy to find). They talk about how there’s a balance between marketing (and furthermore, manipulative marketing) and reach. If you believe the user will benefit from your service, then maybe it’s worth a bit of manipulative marketing, just to get them to enter the door. It’s a tricky balance.
They screwed up, admitted it, apologized, don’t see why people are calling for blood anymore. People are allowed to make mistakes, they owned it and they cut ties with the guy.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 03:07
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*ChatGPT apologized
jrs100000@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 04:28
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They didnt even have a human do an editing pass, just a straight copy paste out of the dialog box.
Sure it looks like AI speech patterns, but they are trained on corporate speech, so hard to differentiate an LLM from a corporate spokesperson.
username123@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 14:17
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Ai slop, human slop, but give them money, don’t stop.
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 10 Jun 20:25
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How tf did I get downvoted for saying it sounds like AI bullshit? Who are these people who actually object to my assessment? I feel like I’m living in the upside down
Do you actually think it’s okay that they had a bot make a press release this hamfisted?
You are not “saying it sounds like it is written by AI”, you are affirming it is written by an AI. Big difference.
You affirmation being formated as a question doesn’t change anything, it is a Loaded Question, which tends to be frowned upon.
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 10 Jun 20:58
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Babe I have two eyes, two ears, and a heart that yearns for honesty and knowledge. I know people can sound robotic too, and there are corporate scripts, and autism is a factor, but good lord. If there was an alien wearing human-esque skin suit standing in front of you I don’t think you’d be able to tell it from an actual person and that’s just sad.
Depending on the definition of “a person”, an alien could be one. What would be your definition of a person ?
I was just pointing out your earlier answer is a loaded question, by definition.
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 10 Jun 21:37
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Sure they could be a person. I think dolphins and elephants are people too. You are arguing in bad faith. You can’t tell if a human or AI wrote a press statement and that makes me sad.
To be arguing in bad faith would require me to have made an argument, which I did not.
Other than pointing out the lack of proof of your (badly) hidden argument, I never pretended it to be either LLM speech or human corpo speech. Because there are no proof of either being objectively more likely than the other.
But you did, using a loaded question, which is written in such way to deny the possibility for it to be human corpo speech, which existed way earlier than LLMs.
You asked why you were getting downvoted, I anwered with the definition of why. With a link to the definition for you to read so you may improve your “question”.
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 11 Jun 22:23
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You did make an argument. Idk how that isn’t evident to you. You’re being well ackshually rn.
I reread the thread, my apologizes, you are right on that, I just forgot my first comment 😅.
The “alien being a person” argument is more an ironic one, you can ignore that. Any intelligent being, alien or not, is a person.
On the other hand, I could give you a corpus of 10 texts, part of them written by hand by your truly, only using a non-ai writing help to avoid obvious gramatical mistakes (English is not my native language), imitating corpo speech, and the anothers generated by my local AI (Mistral:7B).
Would you accept to try ?
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 12 Jun 17:23
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May take a little while because I got some deadlines coming up soon, but I’ll make sure to reply here whenever it is ready. It’ll also be a good way for me to improve my English 😆.
YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
on 13 Jun 07:57
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No rush but feel free to practice your English with me whenever! Good luck with your studies
Because people will call anything AI slop now, without any evidence. This doesn’t look AI generated to me. This is the same as something we’d have seen a decade ago. There’s even a weird space at the start of a paragraph, which makes me think human, not AI.
Why do you think this is AI? What indications are there for that, other than the corpo-speak, which has been normal for a long time before AI even, hence the name.
Lots of other companies seem to easily avoid voicing support for fascists both directly with their own words or via sponsorship money. Weird how Proton can’t seem to figure it out. If they can’t even get the little stuff right why would I trust them with my data?
“you’re right to raise this” really triggers my AI detection Spidey senses. Sounds like Claude, specifically.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip
on 10 Jun 04:22
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“You’re right to push back.”
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
on 10 Jun 09:34
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Just add a “here’s why it works” chapter at the end, sprinkle in a few em dashes and some unnecessary intense phrases, and you’ll tick all the boxes for me.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
on 10 Jun 20:29
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In the titles, obviously.
✅ here’s why it works
Emojis aren’t just pictures, they are a revolution. They bring joy, excitement and curiosity. Without them, text becomes dry — almost lifeless.
Seems like normal Corp-speak in response to a question. I don’t know what they’re responding to though, because this post only has their reply. Maybe it’s AI, but it’s also perfectly standard corpo language, which is why the AI uses it.
There’s an extra space at the start of a paragraph, which an LLM wouldn’t do. That makes me think human.
I know that. This is a reply to a specific statement or post or something that someone made. It says it’s a stickies comment in the picture.
Edit: Your comment is wrong though. They didn’t platform a fascist. That means the fascist used Proton’s platform. Instead Proton purchased space in the Fascist’s platform. The fascist platformed Proton, but Proton paid them. Still bad. Just a correction.
you’re working from a different definition of “platform.” I’m using the modern sense: giving someone a stage or amplifying their voice, not just hosting them on your own service.
Yeah, that’s the same way I’m using it. I have no idea how paying for an ad in one of their videos is amplifying their voice. It’s amplifying Proton’s, but not this Fascist’s… well, until the controversy at least
Again, still bad. No one should be giving Fascists money. It’s using their platform to spread Proton though, not the other way around.
goes to prove how much they bother with not being mango mussolini friendly.
0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Jun 13:45
nextcollapse
They seem to know that the market for privacy is more than people who want just want their private data safe. There are also people that use these services for controversial and or illegal shit. So they use these chuds and reach those spaces.
It’s the swiss business model. A lot of controversial and corrupted people, politicians hide their money in privacy oriented banks offshore. They make profits no matter where the money comes from.
A little bad press after the stuff is out doesn’t really matter all that much if that drives more profits. The backlash might even get them more exposure.
They apologize and say they’ll never do it again and everyone moves on.
NGC2346@sh.itjust.works
on 10 Jun 18:50
nextcollapse
Proton sponsored afar-right fascist influencer, then issued apologies and ended the sponsorship after they got found out.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml
on 10 Jun 19:17
nextcollapse
I can TASTE the prompt from this image
The Proton founder is Pro MAGA that should be the end of it for most of you. I’m never going to leave Njalla for my VPN needs
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 Jun 20:17
nextcollapse
He was not pro maga just because he could gain an audience with GOP members but not dems on a lobbying trip. There has never been a single shred of evidence showing he is pro maga, and at this point I’m just going to assume it’s a smear campaign against a Google competitor.
How does that make sense? Google is also maga. Hell, YouTube is one of the biggest rabbit holes for extremism in general. They could tune their algorithms for anything they wanted - it’s pretty clear.
For Proton we’ll it’s easy to say there is no evidence after dismissing all of it. How maga of you.
I also have yet to see any evidences of Andy Yen being a Maga supporter.
Would you care ro point us to the evidence you claim is being dismissed?
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Jun 09:53
collapse
How does that make sense? Google is also maga.
that’s not how most people think about google, and so it could be used (even by google) to smear competitors with being pro-maga. it matters more for the users of the competitor than it does for the users of google.
Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca
on 10 Jun 21:52
nextcollapse
While I agree that the response is heavily AI generated, I have to disagree that he’s pro-Maga. He reached out to both democrats and republicans to talk about the importance of privacy and the democrats turned him down (or entirely ignored him) while the republicans met with him.
He then went on Xitter to shame the Dems and said that the Republicans seemed to be the party caring about privacy.
He’s definitely a dumbass for trying to play it that way, but he did not come out in support of Maga.
That’s why I’m leaving proton and it’s community. Lots of drama and political shit that I don’t want to know, not to mention the whole thing where proton from just an email provider, now sells VPN and other services l.
threaded - newest
Take notes, GOG.
GOG in this situation: Block the video for everyone speaking French.
But let’s see if Proton actually stop this shit with other right wing weirdos or will just stop the sponsorship with this one dude.
For sure. I’m suspicious of Proton, though they clearly have a better PR staff. Low bar compared to GOG’s recent self-own.
Nah this is what peak PR looks like:
“The right wing ideology is part of my cultural and historical heritage. As a Swiss, I am fully aware of both its history and the sensitivities surrounding it.
…
As a Swiss, I have every reason to treat this history with seriousness and respect. Precisely because of that, I reject any suggestion that this promotion carried an extremist message. It did not.”
I’ll never forget this shit, such ass response from GOG
Fill me in, what have GOG done? Please link to trustworthy source(s).
Sent a newsletter to half their customers containing “Slavic runes” (literally the logo for the SS) to promote some Slavic fantasy game
Blue text
Imo it’s even odds between some marketing child-left-behind googling “Slavic runes” to add to their email, and some 4channer on the team thinking they’re making a funny joke. The fact that they recognized the issue enough to know that couldn’t send the email in Germany, but sent it everywhere else anyway, makes me lean a little bit more toward the latter
Aha. That news. Thanks for the reminder.
I’m confused. I have Scandinavian ancestry and understand that some of the cultural identity was appropriated by Nazis and now some extremist fuck wits. e.g. how the Hindu swastika (also often confused with sauvastika) was appropriated. But I don’t understand why that means appropriated symbols automatically = bad if they’re used in their original context?
The main issue is that
ϟϟwas both totally irrelevant to the topic besides being vaguely Slavic, and also literally the logo for the SS. In the modern day, that is its only connotation. It’s not in its original context, it’s just random runes thrown togetherI’m asking both specifically about the GOG thing but also more generally. Yes, I know the SS appropriated runes for tgwit logo but I still don’t see how that automatically makes runes themselves bad. I can understand how it would be triggering for some folks and so a level of sensitivity is required (which GOG clearly failed on) but I still don’t get how appropriated symbols automatically = bad (because I’ve seen the same reactions to other ancient symbols over and over again and I’m still trying to understand it)
Because they used the ϟ rune twice. When used like that, it only has one meaning.
It’s bad because the SS appropriated it and stripped all other meaning from it. It’s like using the number 1488 in a username. It only means one thing, and while it’s possible to stumble into it by accident, it remains a white supremacist dogwhistle
So if someone made an account 20 years ago ending with 88, like say if you were born in 1988, should they now delete their account just because someone might misconstrue it as a completely unrelated “dogwhistle”?
20 years ago 88 was as much of a nazi dogwhistle as it is today
Must depend on where you live and whether you’re terminally online.
I only found out this year that 88 is now Nazi related.
you’re lucky not to know what 88 signified before the internet because it mean that you were never affected by the people it attracted.
There’s no misconstruing, 1488 is a nazi dogwhistle whether someone intends it to be or not. If your username includes that number, you should delete that account and make a different one, because people are gonna treat you like a nazi.
Just using 88 is slightly less unacceptable, but the same thing applies; if your username includes that number, people are going to treat you like you’re a nazi.
ϟϟhas exactly one meaning in the modern day. You can use those runes without knowing that meaning, but that meaning is still there. It is nazi symbolism whether you intend your use of it to be or not.Yeah, I’ll go tell all my friends and relatives who were born in 1988 and wanted a specific username which were already taken and used (or even if they have a name and surname that’s already taken) and added 88 as an affix since it’s the year they were born in (as people have been doing for decades on the internet) that they are now all Nazis.
Seems pretty obtuse.
Well that’s not what I said, is it? My favorite thing about Lemmings is that none of you can read. Do you maybe want to try this one again? I’ll give you a free redo
Your words.
I’ll tell them to expect to be treated like Nazis then. Which is absolutely wild, because in their 38 year existence this has never happened. Once.
“[…] that they are all now nazis.”
“[…] people are going to treat you like you’re a nazi.”
Spot the difference. I’ll give you a hint: one of them involves being a nazi, and one of them involves being mistaken for a nazi. You managed to misread my comment so badly that you thought I was saying that everyone who has 88 in their username is a nazi, and that’s because you can’t read.
But even that’s totally irrelevant. I specified 1488 in my comment. You know anyone with 1488 in their username who isn’t a nazi? Because if you do, I have bad news about your nazi friend.
Even moreso with
ϟϟ. Much like 1488, it only means one thing. The people who use it virtually always use it to mean that one thing. It is very hard to stumble into accidentally using it, and if you do, you should be embarrassed for having stumbled into using nazi symbolism.Okay, but lets compare this to using runes.
As you’ve pointed out, there is an innocent explanation for someone using 88. It could be an honest mistake, there are people (usually whites who aren’t endangered by Nazi ideology) that aren’t tuned-in enough to know about common Nazi dogwhistles.
There’s no honest mistake in using the double sowilo runes. No innocent explanation.
There is one innocent explanation, with a big caveat: some child-left-behind in marketing googled “Slavic emojis” and found this page, and clicked on a few random ones, not knowing about the connotations some of them have.
Caveat: they didn’t send the email in Germany, so someone knew it was nazi shit and sent it anyway
Not even, because they used two, side-by-side.
The comedy of errors that would be required to explain it innocently would be an Adult Swim sketch.
Yeah, the two together is one of the options on there. For the same reason that some search queries return those runes with a 1488 appended
Wait shit I didn’t see it
In hindsight, an idiot accidentally copying a different cryptofascist’s work actually is another innocent explanation. “Oops, I didn’t know the “cool rune guide” I was copying from was actually made by neonazis.”
Sort of like how Graham Platner might have gotten his Nazi tattoo because one of his buddies in the Marines, who actually is a neonazi, told him it was a good idea and that it was just a cool looking skull tattoo.
I didn’t see news covering this shit but almost everyone subscribed in their newsletter receive an advertising for a game and the the e-mail subject contained nazi symbols. GOG response was the most idiotic thing possible.
redlib.nadeko.net/r/gog/comments/…/opxsir6
gog.com/…/weird_subject_line_choice_for_a_newslet…
.
“You were right to raise this” and “we want to be straight about this” smacks of AI
“And thats on us”
At least they removed all the em dashes
Why does everyone seem to regard the em dash as an instant LLM-indicator? Many real people—me included—use them regularly. Yes, LLMs use them—perhaps too much—but many so-called “AI-tells” come from training data—real text written by real people.
Why the hell would you type a em dash.
Why the hell would you use punctuation?
You can just use a dash - a human “mistake” that basically doesn’t matter.
90% of users don’t even know how to make an em dash — hence, llm indicator.
It didnt work—hence, you are not an LLM bot
You answered yourself, LLMs use them too much.
This response is unfeeling and reactive Claude slop. Proton doesn’t care. They’re working to avoid being in trouble.
What would have been the right response in your opinion?
Have a real human type out the apology
Edit:
You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
You can call everything AI if you want to.
🎶You can call me AI🎶
You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
You’re not making a point.
In fact I did, because I wrote that with AI 😂
Literally everyone understood that.
Not everyone. So far I’m a couple comments deep and the AI blind people can’t tell.
I’m just so sick of blatantly obvious AI being an argument with people who somehow are tricked into thinking it’s real…
PR team writing excuses and AI is the same fucking picture.
I don’t see any compelling indications that this was AI generated.
Have you ever yelled at Claude or chatgpt and had it apologize to you? It’s literally word for word this format. Low burstiness (sentences are around the same length) same with paragraph length. Absolutely perfect grammar and it reads like LLM vomited it out. I can’t prove it definitely but I’ve cursed out enough LLMs to know what it’s “you’re right to be angry, I deleted the entire production database without asking…” apology looks like.
Have you run it through an AI checker?
So your proof is that the post has good grammar? Idk man
“you’re right to raise this” is an LLMism on the same level as “You’re exactly right!”
Edit: You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.
My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.
I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.
I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.
It’s also a standard PRism. Given that this is a PR post, that’s not really proof.
That’s… exactly my point though? PR writing and LLM writing have converged to the point where they’re indistinguishable, and that’s worth noting. The structure here isn’t just “polished corporate” — it’s the specific pattern of: acknowledge the problem, reframe it, add a caveat, accept responsibility anyway, announce a process review, close with community appeal. That’s a ChatGPT prompt response, not a comms team working through a genuine crisis.
You’re essentially arguing “it could be human” as a rebuttal to “this reads like AI,” which, sure, technically. But the tell isn’t any single phrase — it’s the whole skeleton. PR people write defensively. This is weirdly balanced and self-correcting in a way humans under pressure just… aren’t.
Sometimes PR people don’t write defensively, at least not entirely. Sometimes there’s an error, and the correct PR response is to acknowledge the error and communicate intent to rectify it for the future. Being totally defensive in the light of an actual error can do more damage than gracefully acknowledging it.
LLMs are trained on data. They learn from actual human content. They’re usually pre-prompted to be agreeable, professional, and diplomatic. PR writing is probably a good chunk of the training data used to inform LLM word and phrasing choice.
You’re essentially arguing that an impressionist painting “reads like AI” because you’ve seen a lot of AI images generated by models trained on impressionist paintings.
to be honest it’s hard to describe this overexplained apology that LLMs give. I regularly use claude through duck.ai, and I have to agree with him, the writing style and words used is way too familiar.
Man, it’s so obvious. Wether it’s bots in the replies, or genuine people who can’t tell, we’re fucking cooked.
Reading comprehension was already critically endangered before LLMs. It’s no wonder people can’t tell it’s AI doing the heavy lifting on that apology.
.
Brilliant
for once, directly fucking saying they will drop the fascists they are paying for and never doing it again.
shouldn’t be that hard, but with these it always has to be.
I’m pretty sure that’s what they said no? Are you upset that they didn’t use more emotional language?
they’ve directly addressed democrats before and directly condemning fascism would have been reassuring, if that’s what you mean by ‘emotional’.
none of that “dividing our community” bullshit. this text just makes them sound disappointed they got caught.
I completely disagree. I think you’re massively overreacting.
i see bad signs shaped like writing on the wall. i think you’re massively underreacting to the normalization of fascism.
why else would we even need all that privacy?
That’s exactly what they said in this response
No, there is not an antifascist position on their statement. Only a ultracentrist position based on the reaction of their user base/market.
I think it’s smart as a privacy focused initiative to be more neutral than not. Especially as they cater to the masses that may not have as defined an opinion.
I strongly dissagree. Cannot be neutrality with fascism.
Oh i agree. Neutrality doesn’t mean embracing nor endorsing fascism, nor any other extreme.
But humans being humans will always selectively interpret any public facing message to fit their narrative as many have already done here: “Because they aren’t outright condemning or fighting the enemy, they must be working with them! Therefore, they are not friends.”
/U/encryptkeeper has said it better.
Case in point: their CEO saying that Trump’s appointment of a famously anti-trust prosecutor into a high ant-trust position was a good thing caused so many people to lose their shit because “Proton is now MAGA” somehow.
Moving the goalposts. You said they need to drop the fascist from their sponsorship and they did. They also committed to not doing it in the future. They did exactly what you said.
On top of that, companies are not your friends and they don’t need political positions. Not supporting fascists is perfectly adequate.
No, I didnt’t say that. I’ve said:
See the original paragraph:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/95a69799-ab93-41cf-9a7e-2d73b13e64e5.png">
I understand that they would have removed also the sponsorship of a feminist, vegan or antiracist that created discontent in their use base (by being feminist, vegan or antiracist).
Exactly. I’m a bit grumpy about that response because they’re just saying that if his opinion would be more main stream, they wouldn’t back down on the sponsorship.
They have also said that if the user base finds their sponsorship or seeming alignment with any other divisive agenda, they welcome feedback.
I’m not following their PR engagement, but if anyone feels strongly about them aligning with furbys, they are welcome to feedback.
that’s PR talk for “we didn’t mind until you did”
Sure. That’s more than many other companies do.
Proton or any other company doesn’t owe anyone anything more than what they’re paid for. Everything else is CSR if you like.
“many companies are doing it” is not an excuse. if they are taking my money and giving it to nazis for the spread of society-destabilizing propaganda, that’s very much something they owe an explanation to society for.
and might not be something an upstanding person would want to keep paying for either.
I applaud you for holding all the companies you engage with to the highest of your ethical standards.
I’ll be here content with the middle ground.
there is no “middle ground”. we are literally talking about fascism.
what else would one be trying to hide from with all that encryption?
I don’t see myself as ‘hiding’ from facism. We need to stamp it out.
Now I’m not even sure what we’re arguing about.
we don’t stamp stuff out by financing it.
Well then, the answer is clear - vote with your wallet.
no such thing as voting fascism out.
I’m not following your train of thought. What is the appropriate response? How do we remove facism?
collectively deciding not to tolerate it at all is step 0. we seem to be missing it so far.
Let’s be specific - in what way should the intolerance of fascists manifest?
maybe not lining up to justify, normalize and even pay for it.
I think you’re extremely confused as to what Proton is and the service they offer.
I also think it’s because you’re falling (or have fallen) into the tribalist view of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us, and if you’re against them, you’re with us”.
Proton is a-political, pro-agenda. Their agenda is “net neutrality, privacy, security”. They don’t care who makes that happen, and will support anyone who fights for these things.
They won’t take an antifascist position because that would put them on the political spectrum.
I also understand that - to you - not making that statement already puts them on the political spectrum, in the opposing camp, but that’s, again, due to the tribalist views.
They’ve praised left-wingers and right-wingers, they’ve criticised Democrats and Republicans - as long as anyone pushes for their agenda, they will praise them, as long as someone threatens their agenda, they will criticise them. That’s all there is to it.
The goalposts when it comes to fascists has been the same since the 1940s. Nobody moved shit.
You stopped reading after the first paragraph, didn’t you?
i stopped believing after “divisive for our community”
Probably not starting the statement with “you’re right to raise this. Here’s why”
So if that sentence wasn’t there the response was perfectly acceptable?
As I mentioned more in detail in other post, Proton is not the pro-MAGA many had misinterpreted. It is just sloppy at the marketing campaign and its leader makes statements that can easily misunderstood too.
That said, Proton has decided to aim for the masses, which has proven to be a winning business formula here. However, in that quest, it’s natural that concerns from top-tier privacy users (Linux users, those wanting non-Google push notifications, too-many-eggs-in-a-basket, etc.) get relegated in favor of the bulk of their primary target customers, the regular Joe who simply wants to move away from email and web traffic scraping. We should all applaud that decision, but we also recognize the limitations and big risks of having a single company holding some 80% of this privacy market, both for us and even for Proton. It would be better to foster a healthy, diverse, and more equitable privacy ecosystem.
The fact you think being pro-MAGA is the only evil we should be concerned about is telling.
No idea why the downvotes are hitting this so hard.
Maybe because it’s a bit like if someone said “I got the test results, I don’t have cancer”, and that dude replied with “the fact that you think cancer is the only danger you should be concerned about is telling”.
Sure, it’s technically correct, but it’s obnoxious and, without any further context, just seems to be off-topic.
Lefty lemmy
Non ml lemures. Liberals and reactionaries.
I love that the comment explaining it already existed when you wrote this. No, it couldn’t be that you were out of line! It had to just be the liberals!
As a leftist, maybe shut the fuck up sometimes. Maybe you aren’t always the smartest person in the room, and complaining about stuff that isn’t even relevant is, at best, annoying, if not actively harmful because people will ignore it when it is relevant.
This expression is so liberal. Your identity, or mine, doesn’t mean much. And liberals and the true left have different views on leftism. The imperialist Bernie Sanders is from the phony left.
As for the post, “They hate Jesus because he told them the truth”. As an atheist.
Lol.
So I have had other problems with Proton, but they are handling this a hell of a lot better than GOG did.
Other folks say the same thing and get upvotes but for some reason you get downvotes.
The guy who said the same thing got the same amount of downvotes. Exactly one, wtf are you saying?
On my end no downvotes are showing at all. Probably something to do with federation or piefed’s spaghetti code
Written by Claude … “You are right to raise this”… Like chatgpt dashing
Ah, yes, reaffirming that someone raising an issue is correct to have done so is the telltale sign of an LLM. Couldn’t just be basic professional writing etiquette that LLMs were trained forwards and backwards on; it has to have been written by an LLM.
You don’t actually write formally very much, do you?
Formally on reddit? This is 100% AI assisted writing
This is terrible because they didn’t hold 3 hrs of management and PR meetings to craft a response onto a message board that has no say in their operations?
Claud, reject this comment.
I am forced to use claude daily at work, it smells like claude
I write formally all the time; smells like a PR team writing formally.
Nice try bot.
Why you trying to carry water for an AI written reply? I mean I understand bootlicking, but this is next level beyond that.
Overuse of AI accusations only helps AI.
Bootlicking only helps corporations and government abuse their power.
“You’re right to raise this”
“…and that’s on us”
Did AI write the whole thing?
You’re right to raise this is so weird. It’s a response to one comment, not for broad communication.
Always hold companies responsible! Call them out and make them publicly respond. Shop local, fuck corporations!
.
I feel like this is a good statement. The one that should have been written immediately after outrage began, and ideally before removing dozens if not hundreds of posts and comments covering this topic.
Some people say it stinks of AI. I don’t know. Maybe? PR messages have always been like this, and they seem to be one of the types that chatbots got most of their writing patterns from.
Some people definitely overreacted. Others completely missed the point. Proton is far from a perfect company, and a case in favour of boycotting them could be made. But not because they accidentally sponsored one video of a far-right youtuber.
They’re just not as private and secure as they pretend to be or to want to be. Pretty much all alternatives are leagues above. There appears to be no apparent reason why they’re lagging behind. I suppose that’s where the CIA honeypot allegations may come from.
In any case, if you really care about privacy and security - you probably aren’t a Proton user, let alone customer. And if you are - I highly recommend trying alternatives that don’t have a long history of working with law enforcement.
For what it’s worth - apparently they said they’re crafting a response fairly early, kept one of the original threads and removed the rest as duplicates.
But I don’t know if that’s really the case.
Just fyi, every company is legally obliged to work with law enforcement. It’s strange that people think that a company can just refuse court orders. The point and benefit of companies like proton or tuta is that there is very little information they can actually give and they are fully transparent with public when and what they were obliged to give. It’s funny that when company hides this, like telegram, who worked with law enforcement thousands of times and handed over stuf like non encrypted chat messages, they are seen as private and not disputed by their users. But when company like Proton writes blog posts about the cases to be transparent and what (little meta) data they gave, people are out of their mind calling them out for it.
Of course. Proton doesn’t really have a choice whether or not to fulfill law enforcement’s requests.
However, Proton absolutely does have a choice when it comes down to the scale of their cooperation with law enforcement, as well as the enthusiasm behind it.
In my opinion, in these two metrics Proton very noticeably falls behind most of their competition. That’s why I wouldn’t use it for security or privacy.
Plus - Lumo AI? Seriously? What sort of privacy-focused company invests into an AI chatbot?
It’s definitely better than GMail. Everything is. But if you want serious privacy and security… Yeah, no.
What? The scale of cooperation is defined by the law, I doubt they give happily more than they have to (even if they had more). They always write about what exactly they had to do and why, they literally can’t be more transparent. Plus the swiss law, unless it changes (which can sadly happen) does limit significantly who can compell them for cooperarion. Oh and when it comes to Lumo, I despise all the AI shait yo be clear, but I am glad someone made something more private for those rare occasion I needed to use Llms or for my relatives who can’t simply understand that thing they talk to is just a fancy language model and they ask it very personal stuff…
what facts do you base your opinion on?
what else has a full complement of services besides tuta?
I loved proton years ago… even did a paid account for a while. This isn’t their first wtf moment and won’t be their last. The problem for me, its that I expect more carefulness and thoughtfulness from a company that promotes encryption and privacy.
Showing me how easily you make mistakes is a quick way for me to question how well you’re safeguarding the platform.
I’ve moved away. Will take some time for them to earn back the trust, but honestly… I don’t see a huge need for them anymore. I simply don’t consider email secure. If you want real secure communication (that you can host on a server yourself) Matrix and XMPP are a much better choice.
Anyway… the response is nice. Just doesn’t fix anything.
I mean I’m sure they pay more attention to safeguarding data than some random french YouTube channel, that’s why they didn’t think too much about the sponsorship.
They care about privacy and security, not marketing. They probably hate that they have to do marketing in the first place. It’s honestly relatable.
their marketing practices have been questionable for years, though. the promotional emails (everyone subscribed by default) and even the pricing pages are filled with dark patterns. by the charity fundraisers they do, these dark patterns don’t seem to be necessary for their sustainability.
Imo almost all of marketing can be considered dark patterns. And when your competition uses dark patterns, if you don’t use it you simply don’t gain users.
I’m reminded of a Veritasium video on clickbait (too lazy to link it right now but should be easy to find). They talk about how there’s a balance between marketing (and furthermore, manipulative marketing) and reach. If you believe the user will benefit from your service, then maybe it’s worth a bit of manipulative marketing, just to get them to enter the door. It’s a tricky balance.
They screwed up, admitted it, apologized, don’t see why people are calling for blood anymore. People are allowed to make mistakes, they owned it and they cut ties with the guy.
*ChatGPT apologized
They didnt even have a human do an editing pass, just a straight copy paste out of the dialog box.
At least originality.ai seems to think that this is written by a human.
Those are as reliable as a coin flip. I’ve been in ai since gpt1’s manic, schismed, ramblings. This is ai.
Do you actually think it’s okay that they had a bot make a press release this hamfisted?
Bold claim, corroborated with no proof.
Sure it looks like AI speech patterns, but they are trained on corporate speech, so hard to differentiate an LLM from a corporate spokesperson.
Ai slop, human slop, but give them money, don’t stop.
How tf did I get downvoted for saying it sounds like AI bullshit? Who are these people who actually object to my assessment? I feel like I’m living in the upside down
You are not “saying it sounds like it is written by AI”, you are affirming it is written by an AI. Big difference.
You affirmation being formated as a question doesn’t change anything, it is a Loaded Question, which tends to be frowned upon.
Babe I have two eyes, two ears, and a heart that yearns for honesty and knowledge. I know people can sound robotic too, and there are corporate scripts, and autism is a factor, but good lord. If there was an alien wearing human-esque skin suit standing in front of you I don’t think you’d be able to tell it from an actual person and that’s just sad.
Depending on the definition of “a person”, an alien could be one. What would be your definition of a person ?
I was just pointing out your earlier answer is a loaded question, by definition.
Sure they could be a person. I think dolphins and elephants are people too. You are arguing in bad faith. You can’t tell if a human or AI wrote a press statement and that makes me sad.
To be arguing in bad faith would require me to have made an argument, which I did not.
Other than pointing out the lack of proof of your (badly) hidden argument, I never pretended it to be either LLM speech or human corpo speech. Because there are no proof of either being objectively more likely than the other.
But you did, using a loaded question, which is written in such way to deny the possibility for it to be human corpo speech, which existed way earlier than LLMs.
You asked why you were getting downvoted, I anwered with the definition of why. With a link to the definition for you to read so you may improve your “question”.
You did make an argument. Idk how that isn’t evident to you. You’re being well ackshually rn.
I reread the thread, my apologizes, you are right on that, I just forgot my first comment 😅.
The “alien being a person” argument is more an ironic one, you can ignore that. Any intelligent being, alien or not, is a person.
On the other hand, I could give you a corpus of 10 texts, part of them written by hand by your truly, only using a non-ai writing help to avoid obvious gramatical mistakes (English is not my native language), imitating corpo speech, and the anothers generated by my local AI (Mistral:7B). Would you accept to try ?
Sure why not
May take a little while because I got some deadlines coming up soon, but I’ll make sure to reply here whenever it is ready. It’ll also be a good way for me to improve my English 😆.
No rush but feel free to practice your English with me whenever! Good luck with your studies
Because people will call anything AI slop now, without any evidence. This doesn’t look AI generated to me. This is the same as something we’d have seen a decade ago. There’s even a weird space at the start of a paragraph, which makes me think human, not AI.
Why do you think this is AI? What indications are there for that, other than the corpo-speak, which has been normal for a long time before AI even, hence the name.
slop is slop
AI learned from the
bestworst of us.They keep making right wing mistakes though. I think that points to something.
what’s a left wing mistake that they might get called out for?
Lots of other companies seem to easily avoid voicing support for fascists both directly with their own words or via sponsorship money. Weird how Proton can’t seem to figure it out. If they can’t even get the little stuff right why would I trust them with my data?
As long as they’re using Lump, that’s not going to improve.
because proton is highly regarded among privacy experts.
and i’m guessing most privacy experts dgaf about politics like most technology experts don’t.
If we just look at browsers:
Plenty of big companies have supported fascists in one way or another
Are you new to the internet?
Personally can’t wait until thundermail has a free tier
Or a paid tier even. With you though.
“you’re right to raise this” really triggers my AI detection Spidey senses. Sounds like Claude, specifically.
“You’re right to push back.”
Just add a “here’s why it works” chapter at the end, sprinkle in a few em dashes and some unnecessary intense phrases, and you’ll tick all the boxes for me.
Any emojis?
In the titles, obviously.
✅ here’s why it works
Emojis aren’t just pictures, they are a revolution. They bring joy, excitement and curiosity. Without them, text becomes dry — almost lifeless.
Let’s break it down:
❌ we fucked up ❌ We didn’t verify who we were sponsoring ✅ We’re really sorry 🥺😭
“and thats on us”
AI slop from top to bottom
Seems like normal Corp-speak in response to a question. I don’t know what they’re responding to though, because this post only has their reply. Maybe it’s AI, but it’s also perfectly standard corpo language, which is why the AI uses it.
There’s an extra space at the start of a paragraph, which an LLM wouldn’t do. That makes me think human.
they platformed a well known french fascist.
I know that. This is a reply to a specific statement or post or something that someone made. It says it’s a stickies comment in the picture.
Edit: Your comment is wrong though. They didn’t platform a fascist. That means the fascist used Proton’s platform. Instead Proton purchased space in the Fascist’s platform. The fascist platformed Proton, but Proton paid them. Still bad. Just a correction.
you’re working from a different definition of “platform.” I’m using the modern sense: giving someone a stage or amplifying their voice, not just hosting them on your own service.
Yeah, that’s the same way I’m using it. I have no idea how paying for an ad in one of their videos is amplifying their voice. It’s amplifying Proton’s, but not this Fascist’s… well, until the controversy at least
Again, still bad. No one should be giving Fascists money. It’s using their platform to spread Proton though, not the other way around.
I don’t know how far we can trust that tool, but originality.ai concludes that this has been written by a human.
I don’t believe that it was written by a human, but regardless, it’s a shitty way to speak
“You are right to raise this and we want to address this directly”
Isnt that how Claude Sonnet or Opus writes?
I think they’ve just been trained on corporate speak
Can’t tell if your talking about the (human) Proton marketer responding on reddit, or the (AI) Claude and Opus 🙃
It could be someone copy pasting the entire reddit thread into Claude and asking it to generate a response
“Yes”
That’s all haiku 🤣
It’s PR language, doesn’t matter if this is written by a human or AI. Message is what it is.
Stop this “I suspect it was made with AI” witch hunt, please, it’s completely fruitless
If your partner cheated on you and apologized with AI would knowing that fact be fruitless also?
It’s not fruitless if you KNOW it was made with AI, but trying to deduce that something is AI is a fruitless endeavor
I suspect they used Lumo.
Jfc pretty sure you’re right
goes to prove how much they bother with not being mango mussolini friendly.
They seem to know that the market for privacy is more than people who want just want their private data safe. There are also people that use these services for controversial and or illegal shit. So they use these chuds and reach those spaces.
It’s the swiss business model. A lot of controversial and corrupted people, politicians hide their money in privacy oriented banks offshore. They make profits no matter where the money comes from.
A little bad press after the stuff is out doesn’t really matter all that much if that drives more profits. The backlash might even get them more exposure.
They apologize and say they’ll never do it again and everyone moves on.
I am out of the loop it seems. What happened ?
.
Be more helpful in the future
Proton sponsored afar-right fascist influencer, then issued apologies and ended the sponsorship after they got found out.
I can TASTE the prompt from this image
The Proton founder is Pro MAGA that should be the end of it for most of you. I’m never going to leave Njalla for my VPN needs
He was not pro maga just because he could gain an audience with GOP members but not dems on a lobbying trip. There has never been a single shred of evidence showing he is pro maga, and at this point I’m just going to assume it’s a smear campaign against a Google competitor.
Change my mind. I dare anyone to show the proof.
How does that make sense? Google is also maga. Hell, YouTube is one of the biggest rabbit holes for extremism in general. They could tune their algorithms for anything they wanted - it’s pretty clear.
For Proton we’ll it’s easy to say there is no evidence after dismissing all of it. How maga of you.
I also have yet to see any evidences of Andy Yen being a Maga supporter.
Would you care ro point us to the evidence you claim is being dismissed?
that’s not how most people think about google, and so it could be used (even by google) to smear competitors with being pro-maga. it matters more for the users of the competitor than it does for the users of google.
While I agree that the response is heavily AI generated, I have to disagree that he’s pro-Maga. He reached out to both democrats and republicans to talk about the importance of privacy and the democrats turned him down (or entirely ignored him) while the republicans met with him.
He then went on Xitter to shame the Dems and said that the Republicans seemed to be the party caring about privacy.
He’s definitely a dumbass for trying to play it that way, but he did not come out in support of Maga.
unfortunately, a lot of us need more than vpn and proton has a full suite.
We shouldnt have sponsored a fascist because we son’t want to work with ANYONE political
lol okayyyyyy, whatever bro
That’s why I’m leaving proton and it’s community. Lots of drama and political shit that I don’t want to know, not to mention the whole thing where proton from just an email provider, now sells VPN and other services l.