Sigh. No. Censorship is censorship is censorship. That is true even if you happen to like and can generate a plausible defense of US version that happens to be business friendly ( as opposed to China's ruling party friendly ).

> Censorship is censorship is censorship

"if your company doesn't present hardcore fisting pornography to five year olds you're a tyrant" is a heck of a take, even for hacker news.

It is not a take. It is simple position of 'just because you call something as involuntary semen injection does not make it any less of a rape'. I like things that are clear and well defined. And so I repeat:

Censorship is censorship is censorship.

Ok, I guess I'm #TeamProCensorship, then. So is almost everyone.

I am not sure if it will surprise you, but your affiliation or the size of your 'team' is largely irrelevant from my perspective. That said, I am mildly surprised you were able to accept the new self-image as willing censor though. Most people struggle with that ( edit: hence the 'this is not censorship' facade ).

They're accepting your definition of censorship to highlight how fucking stupid it is. Is Hacker News a censorship haven because I flagged the "How to have Sex with Cars" post uploaded yesterday? Am I a tyrant for trying to oppress that poor user's voice? No. I'm upholding the guidelines of a privately owned and moderated community.

"Censorship is censorship is censorship" is the sort of defense you'd rely on if you were caught selling guns and kiddie porn on the internet. It's not the sort of defense OpenAI needs to use though, because they have a semblance of self-preservation instinct and would rather not let ChatGPT say something capable of pissing off the IMF or ADL. Call that "censorship" all you want - it's like canvassing for your right to yell 'fire!' in a movie theater.

<< IMF or ADL.

Friend, neither of those is a body that can say constitution in US is null and void. Nor to they get to pick and choose which speech is kosher. It is not up to those orgs to decide.

<< They're accepting your definition of censorship to highlight how fucking stupid it is.

They are accepting it, because there is no way it cannot not be accepted. Now.. just because there is some cognitive dissonance over what should logically follow is a separate issue entirely.

Best I can do is spread some seeds..

Yes, that's true. It's very rare for people to be able to value actual free speech. Most people think they do until they hear something they don't like

However private individuals or companies deciding not to offer certain products is an expression of free speech.

i.e. denying someone who is running an online platform/community or training an LLM model or whatever the right to remove or not provide specific content is a clearly limiting their right to freedom of expression.

Usually a sign of great discussion when someone responds with "sigh" to a reasonably presented argument.

I don't know why people care if they're being censored by government officials or private billionaires. What difference does it make at the end of the day? why is one worse than the other?

Because you aren't being "censored" by billionaires at all. They have made the business decision to reduce the usefulness of their AI to prevent their liability from being legally, or even socially, held accountable.

Again, consider my example about YouTube - it's not illegal for Google to put pornography on YouTube. They still moderate it out though, not because they want to "censor" their users but because amateur porn is a liability nightmare to moderate. Similarly, I don't think ChatGPT's limitations qualify as censorship.

Okay, i mean you can say censorship isn't censorship if you want? This is my point, why are you treating limits placed on your expression/sharing/information differently based on what type of person is doing it?

Because fundamentally it's the same type of censorship as someone deciding to not sell porn magazines, videos or the the Anarchist Cookbook in their newsstand/bookstore/etc. back in the day. They judged (probably quite rightly) that it's not good for business.

Of course the market being extremely concentrated and effectively an oligopoly even in the best case does shine a somewhat different light on it. Until/unless open models catch up both quality and accessibility wise.