3/18/2026 at 6:12:22 AM
Not learning from new input may be a feature. Back in 2016 Microsoft launched one that did, and after one day of talking on Twitter it sounded like 4chan.[1] If all input is believed equally, there's a problem.Today's locked-down pre-trained models at least have some consistency.
by Animats
3/18/2026 at 6:26:17 AM
Incredible to accomplish that in a day - it took the rest of the world another decade to make Twitter sound like 4chan, but thanks to Elon we got there in the end.by Earw0rm
3/18/2026 at 10:33:11 AM
This has little to do with the bot, and everything with this being the heyday of Twitter shitstorms; we didn't have any social immunity to people getting offended about random things on-line, and others getting recursively offended, and then "adults" in news publishing treating that seriously and converting random Twitter pileups into stock movements.In a decade since then, things got marginally better, and such events wouldn't play out so fast and so intensely in 2026.
by TeMPOraL
3/18/2026 at 2:11:48 PM
> In a decade since then, things got marginally better, and such events wouldn't play out so fast and so intensely in 2026.Are you saying the internet would not do it again, or Microsoft would not do the same approach? Because I think the internet would absolutely do it again.
by giancarlostoro
3/18/2026 at 3:08:09 PM
I'm saying that the Internet would try, but it would be less of a deal, because idiots feigning offense on the Internet are not new anymore, people got a bit bored of it over the past decade, so it doesn't command as much attention anymore.by TeMPOraL
3/18/2026 at 5:19:52 PM
Ah I understand now. Thanks for the clarification! I agree.by giancarlostoro
3/18/2026 at 8:02:09 AM
[flagged]by Culonavirus
3/18/2026 at 10:54:14 AM
> c) goes against the concept of true democracy (which I likeYou mean one person, one vote. Or in the case of Twitter/X - one person one voice/account.
Don't spaces like these become dominated by fanatics or money, or fanatics with money? All trying to manufacture consent?
Unregulated != democratic
Just like unregulated != free market [1]
Sure it's difficult to get the balance right - but a balance is required.
[1] As the first step of anybody competing in an unregulated market is to fix the market so they don't have to compete - create a cartel, monopoly, confusopoly ( deny information required for the market to work ) etc etc.
by DrScientist
3/18/2026 at 11:25:44 AM
> You mean one person, one vote.That's not direct democracy though. Here you refer to voting a representative, who may do anything.
Direct democracy means people decide on things directly. It is probably not possible since not everyone has enough time to read every law, so representatives may have to be used but it could be that the people can decide on individual laws and wordings directly. We don't seem to have that form anywhere right now.
by shevy-java
3/18/2026 at 12:06:29 PM
Sure direct and representative democracy are different, but this is a bit of a tangent.What I was trying to say above is that having an unregulated space doesn't mean it's therefore naturally representative of the underlying population.
The key differentiator between a democracy and other systems is the idea that you have one person one vote, and power isn't distributed on the basis of money or some other feature.
All I'm saying is, in a totally unregulated online space you'll get dominance by fanatics with money ( if it's important ) .
ie unregulated != democratic.
And it's a mistake to think the opposite.
by DrScientist
3/18/2026 at 11:33:11 AM
See, for a comedic treatment, Peter Cook's The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), co-written by Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Billington.~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Rise_of_Michael_R...
Relying on a combination of charisma and deception—and murder—he then rapidly works his way up the political ladder to become prime minister (after throwing his predecessor off an oil rig).
Rimmer introduces direct democracy by holding endless referendums on trivial or complex matters via postal voting and televoting, which generates so much voter apathy that the populace protests against the reform.
Having introduced direct democracy in a bid to gain ultimate power, Rimmer holds a last vote to 'streamline government', which would give him dictatorial powers; with the populace exhausted, the proposal passes.by defrost
3/18/2026 at 12:38:05 PM
I quite like current Twitter (x). It's not really like 4chan which was all idiots - you get some quite thoughtful thinkers on it, including pg who built this thing. Also the 'ask Grok' thing for fact checking actually works surprisingly well - it you reply something like "is that true @grok?" to a comment the LLM replies with usually quite an accurate answer.If you want to understand something like US politics which is mostly a battle between the left and the right it lessens your understanding to filter out one sides viewpoints and then be surprised by reality.
by tim333
3/18/2026 at 1:25:13 PM
> it you reply something like "is that true @grok?" to a comment the LLM replies with usually quite an accurate answer.Depends on timing really and whether or not Elon recently adjusted the prompt to force Grok to adopt his position or talk about his pet issue of the day
by estearum
3/18/2026 at 12:51:41 PM
[dead]by nbnmbnmbnbm
3/18/2026 at 9:09:11 AM
People say BlueSky is like pre-Musk Twitter, i.e. leftist opinions in today’s Twitter style.Which is a bit strange because BlueSky is supposed to be decentralized (no central moderation); and although in practice it’s not, the BlueSky team seems pro-freedom (see: Jesse Signal controversy). I know there are some rightists (including the White House), but are they a decent presence? Are they censored? Are there other groups (e.g. “sophisticated” politics, fringe politics, art, science)?
Mastodon is interesting. Its format is like Twitter, but most posts seem less political and less LCD-CW (e.g. types.pl, Mathstodon). I suspect because it’s actually decentralized (IIRC Truth Social is a fork; I didn’t write all posts are less CW). I’m curious to find other interesting instances here too.
Pre-Musk, I remember seeing screenshots of the stupidest, most echo-chamber-y Tweets imaginable. e.g. “why do the cows all have female names, that’s misogynistic” (that one was deliberate satire but I’m sure most were). I’ll brag, I left around 2013 because I felt it was rotting my brain. I enjoyed a few more years off social media, with a healthy dopamine system. Unfortunately, now I’m here.
by armchairhacker
3/18/2026 at 1:40:50 PM
I think it would be more accurate to say that Bluesky is like pre-Musk Twitter because the moderation teams at both Bluesky and Original Twitter are primarily trying to remove/suppress posts that they consider to be illegal, violent, overt harassment, etc.; they weren't politically motivated. I am sure some conservatives will read this and be like BUT BUT BUT BUT -- but sorry, there have been a lot of studies done on this topic over the last fifteen years and change, and they've consistently found that conservative posts tend to outperform liberal posts on most social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and that the anecdotes suggesting the opposite tend to focus on posts that were moderated for being violent and/or overt harassment. Conservatives don't want to hear that "their side" gets moderated more often because they have proportionately more assholes that invite moderation, but as well-known Person In Need Of Moderation Ben Shapiro so aptly put it, facts don't care about your feelings.So why did Bluesky end up proportionately more leftist (which is absolutely true)? Because while the moderation team at X may still remove/suppress posts that are illegal, X has, at a corporate level, very explicitly chosen a political side in a way that no other major social media company has. Bluesky's CEO has not, to the best of my knowledge, been promoting liberal conspiracy theories, hyping posts attacking conservatives, or joining the government to radically reshape it in ways that anyone even moderately right-of-center would find horrifying. When I read HN, it seems like those who still love Twitter/X seriously downplay how much of an effect Elon Musk's transformation into a loud, forceful reactionary -- and his insistence on making sure that Twitter/X reflects that transformation in the posts that it actively promotes to its users -- has had on its audience composition. Yes, I know there are still lots of people on Twitter who aren't Musk fans, aren't particularly political, might even be left-of-center, but his behavior has actively driven a lot of people off it.
tl;dr: Bluesky didn't actively choose to become left-of-center; Twitter actively chose to become far right, and those who were bothered by that but still wanted to be on social media largely ended up on Bluesky.
by chipotle_coyote
3/18/2026 at 12:40:06 PM
It's more that the "far left wing cluster" had something like a "we should all get up and leave Twitter for BlueSky" activist campaign. And "far right wing cluster" didn't.The closest thing "far right" had to that was Gab and Truth Social, and that's both more specific and less impactful overall.
Thus, BlueSky's userbase is biased towards extreme left wing - it's basically the go-to place for far left wing nutjobs go when they get too nutty for Twitter moderation, or feel like Twitter is not left wing enough for them.
by ACCount37
3/18/2026 at 9:19:44 AM
You make it seem like it's not predominantly skewed right wing, just a "healthy" mix of right wingers and left wingers due to not banning anyone. Which might be an unpopular take, but in this scenario I think it's unpopular simply because it is demonstrably wrong.> A study published by science journal Nature has examined the impact of Elon Musk’s changes to X/Twitter, and outlines how X’s algorithm shapes political attitudes, and leans towards conservative perspectives. They found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-amp...
> Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts. Right-wing accounts got almost exclusively right-wing material, all accounts got more of it than left-wing or neutral stuff. (Notably, the three “politically neutral” accounts got about twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...
> New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/x-twitter-political-c...
> A Washington Post analysis found that Republicans are posting more, getting followed more and going viral more now that the world’s richest Trump supporter is running the show. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...
by i_cannot_hack
3/18/2026 at 11:24:24 AM
I don't think there are tons of "leftists".Ever since Twitter changed into the tilted X insignia, led by a guy who keeps on raising his right arm, a gazillion of folks left. And I think more "leftists" left than "rights". It is an echo-chamber now.
by shevy-java
3/18/2026 at 10:03:48 AM
Weak minded folks are at least 40-50% of the population and there is a reasonable risk of them killing the human race or at least immiserating it.Unhinged leftists want what public ownership of the means of production whilst unhinged right wingers want concentration camps and may get them. I don't think it's reasonable to equate these things.
by michaelmrose
3/18/2026 at 11:12:00 AM
In practice it used to turn out, that "public ownership of the means of production" also implies some amount of "concentration camps" and shooting at the border. The difference is one side shoots to the inside, the other one to the outside.by 1718627440
3/19/2026 at 6:45:20 AM
No no it doesn't because it mostly in practice in America means attempting to convince enough people to vote for the desired configuration and trying harder if this doesn't work.by michaelmrose
3/18/2026 at 11:44:33 AM
The one is also universally recognized as bad. The other is regularly brushed under "the implementation was bad" as a rug. both of these rugs are bloody red. Demanding socialism should be considered a hate-crime, even though its mostly starving the poor through baked into the ideology economic miss-management that killed the masses.by 21asdffdsa12
3/18/2026 at 11:06:48 AM
Gulags?by swingboy
3/18/2026 at 8:51:52 AM
Not an unpopular take, just one not tied to reality.by tokai
3/18/2026 at 9:27:55 AM
>realityWhich you seem to have exclusive access to, I suppose..
by qsera
3/20/2026 at 2:34:39 PM
No not at all. I just know that you definitely are wrong.by tokai
3/18/2026 at 11:26:38 AM
How many realities exist?When it comes to facts, there should always be one true fact. Anything aside from this is interpretation.
by shevy-java
3/18/2026 at 12:29:13 PM
>How many realities exist?I don't know, how many news channels do you watch?
by qsera
3/18/2026 at 8:22:06 AM
Twitter is not like it always was. The presence of oranges doesn’t speak to the volume or rot-level of the apples.Twitter has lost advertisers, credibility, and legitimacy. That’s objectively demonstrable in the calibre, quantity, and aims of their advertisers, and their loss of revenue.
Twitter is hurting humanity, and has swaths of the population trapped in misinformation clouds. Arguably Elon bought the last election by purchasing it, and current administration issues are the result. But for the slow acclimatization and general brain fog of the “etch a sketch voters” we’d see Twitters direct reprogramming of opinion and behaviour as a psychic virus. You can tell which app people are hooked on by the lies they believe (with great emotional resonance).
Social Media is becoming increasingly restricted from children based on objective developmental and cognitive impacts, I dare speculate we and our parents are the asbestos eating unfiltered cigarette smoking pre-modern victims who misused something terribly until we figured out how bad that shizz is for us.
by bonesss
3/18/2026 at 7:18:26 AM
[flagged]by bheadmaster
3/18/2026 at 9:46:24 AM
I think models should be “forked”, and learn from subsets of input and themselves. Furthermore, individuals (or at least small groups) should have their own LLMs.Sameness is bad for an LLM like it’s bad for a culture or species. Susceptible to the same tricks / memetic viruses / physical viruses, slow degradation (model collapse) and no improvement. I think we should experiment with different models, then take output from the best to train new ones, then repeat, like natural selection.
And sameness is mediocre. LLMs are boring, and in most tasks only almost as good as humans. Giving them the ability to learn may enable them to be “creative” and perform more tasks beyond humans.
by armchairhacker
3/18/2026 at 7:48:50 AM
That one 4chan troll delayed the launch of LLM like stuff by Google for about 6 years. At least that's what I attribute it to.by vasco
3/18/2026 at 12:59:41 PM
I was always curious about how Tay worked technically, since it was build before the Transformers era.Was it based on a specific scientific paper or research?
The controversy surrounding it seemed to have polluted any search for a technical breakdown or a discussion, or the insights gained from it.
by InfiniteLoup
3/18/2026 at 3:56:44 PM
People have tried to suss this out on the ML subreddit, and it is confusing. Most of the worst messages from Tay were just people discovering a "repeat after me: __" function, so it's hard just to figure out which Tay messages to consider as responses of the model.There seems to have been interest in a model which would pick up language and style of its conversations (not actually learning information or looking up facts). If you haven't trained an LSTM model before - you could train on Shakespeare's plays and get out ye olde English in a screenplay format, but from line to line there was no consistency in plot, characters, entrances and exits, etc. in a way which you'd expect after GPT-2. Twitter would be good for keeping a short-form conversation. So I believe Tay and the Watson that appeared on Jeopardy are more from this 'classical NLP' thinking and not proto-LLMs, if that makes sense.
by mapmeld
3/18/2026 at 1:10:20 PM
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/25/learning-tays-in...by Kye
3/18/2026 at 1:06:28 PM
Exactly. The notion of online learning is not new, but that approach cedes a lot of control to unknown forces. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper is interesting, there are definitely interesting questions to explore about how we could make an AI that learns autonomously. But in most production contexts, it's not desirable.Imagine deploying a software product that changes over time in unknown ways -- could be good changes, could be bad, who knows? This goes beyond even making changes to a live system, it's letting the system react to the stream of data coming in and make changes to itself.
It's much preferable to lock down a model that is working well, release that, and then continue efforts to develop something better behind the scenes. It lets you treat it more like a software product with defined versions, release dates, etc., rather than some evolving organism.
by armoredkitten
3/18/2026 at 11:23:22 AM
> Back in 2016 Microsoft launched one that did, and after one day of talking on Twitter it sounded like 4chan.[1] If all input is believed equally, there's a problem.Well it shows that most humans degrades into 4chan eventually. AI just learned from that. :)
If aliens ever arrive here, send an AI to greet them. They will think we are totally deranged.
by shevy-java
3/18/2026 at 11:22:10 PM
> Not learning from new input may be a feature.Ugh HN is so tedious with these remarks. These people are trying to get computers to learn, not just train on data, and HN goes nOt LeArNiNg Is A fEaTuRe. Where's the wonder and the curiosity?
by fdghrtbrt
3/19/2026 at 1:02:01 AM
This is an astonishing claim and if true, will make AI a lot less useful in real life scenario.In real life, take programming as an example, we want Claude to be strong in capability at first, but what is more important is for it to learn our code base, be proficient in it, as it gains experience around it. In other words, become a domain expert.
Because our code base is proprietary I don't expect ( not do I want) the AI to be familiar with it on the first day. So learning on the job is the only way to go.
Only in that way it will resemble a human programmer, and only then we can truly talk about replacing human programmer.
by nsoonhui
3/19/2026 at 2:38:25 AM
> Not learning from new input may be a feature.Learning is OpenClaw's distinguishing feature. It has an array of plugins that let it talk to various services - but lots of LLM applications have that.
What makes it unique is it's memory architecture. It saves everything it sees and does. Unlike an LLM context its memory never overflows. It can search for relevant bits on request. It's recall is nowhere near as well as the attention heads of an LLM, but apparently good enough to make a difference. Save + Recall == memory.
by rstuart4133
3/18/2026 at 9:44:02 AM
Yes I like that /clear starts me at zero again and that feels nice but I am scared that'll go away.Like when Google wasn't personalized so rank 3 for me is rank 3 for you. I like that predictability.
Obviously ignoring temperature but that is kinda ok with me.
by bsjshshsb
3/19/2026 at 10:56:09 AM
I just had to reply because this is one of the most important things to me and I didn't put it in words before but you said it perfectly. Down to the Google example which is the one always on my mind. Humans really are all the same.by vasco
3/18/2026 at 9:48:14 AM
Yeah deep learning treats any training data as the absolute god given ground truth and will completely restructure the model to fit the dumbest shit you feed it.The first LLMs were utter crap because of that, but once you have just one that's good enough it can be used for dataset filtering and everything gets exponentially better once the data is self consistent enough for there to be non-contradictory patterns to learn that don't ruin the gradient.
by moffkalast