Policy Soup stir the pot ALPHA

This is something I'm increasingly evangelical about. Especially since it's easier than ever to stay inside and not engage with the outside world, so you need more residents than ever just to reach the critical mass of community-minded individuals needed to make clubs and public events viable.

Unknown

@unknown

Alex Hern@hern.bsky.socialJan 11(source)

Bleakly funny that they’re continuing the whataboutery even when it makes no sense

Acyn

@acyn.bsky.social

FOX: Where’s the protest against the regime that's killing people in the street right now? Trent: They are doing those today. It’s called the ICE protests FOX: Are they talking about Iran at the ICE protests? Trent: No, I think they are talking about the regime that is shooting people in the face

Reposted byAlex Hern

Will@will-rich.bsky.socialJan 11(source)

The number of one-off structural changes that disadvantage young people vs their parents at the same age is pretty staggering

Reposted byAlex Hern

Thom@thwphipps.bsky.socialJan 10(source)

When I'm at the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter asks me whether I used my time on earth wisely, I will likely not apprise him of the day I spent upwards of four and a half hours solving this enormous Connections Grid

Alex Hern

@hern.bsky.social

thomaswc.com/2025.html a 45x45 connections grid

I probably should have posted it with a warning

The latter.

bsky.app/profile/hern... flagging a more detailed response here. “Hallucinatory answer” is simply untrue Sunder

Alex Hern

@hern.bsky.social

Meme going around here that the Grok policy change (around only generating images when @ed by a paid user) was a “hallucination”. It wasn’t, it’s a real policy change; the misreporting is that this does NOT limit free users from generating images using other interfaces for Grok, such as its app.

Lots of big accounts have been asserting this hallucination line, yes

The policy change is “if you @ grok on Twitter, it won’t generate images for you unless you’re paying”. This was wrongly reported as “grok is only generating for paying users”, when there are other avenues to use grok to generate than simply @-ing it on Twitter.

No, Grok hasn’t paywalled its deepfake image feature

Here’s mine. www.theverge.com/news/859309/... Where’s yours?

X’s sexual deepfake machine is still running, despite Grok saying otherwise.

It wasn’t a hallucination, it was a real product change that was misreported as over broad

No, that’s not true!

Posted 2013!

@zombiewretch.bsky.social

The Verge has made this point too bsky.app/profile/zomb...

Jess Weatherbed

You may have seen reports swimming around claiming that X finally restricted the Grok deepfake/undressing features behind a paid subscription. That simply isn't true. Not even close. www.theverge.com/news/859309/...

@peterwalker99.bsky.social

Worth noting that X hasn't even made the Grok nudification feature available to paying users only. Any user, free or paid, can still use the tool on Grok's dedicated site; the bit that's behind the paywall is specifically being able to tweet @-grok to generate pics

Peter Walker

Scathing words from No 10 on X making the Grok image tool available only to paying users: “That simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service. It's not a solution. In fact, it's insulting to victims of misogyny and sexual violence."

@hkesvani.bsky.social i enjoy that you can really _see_ the intrusive thoughts