Chesterton’s Fence Sitter

So many of these types of posts boil down to: if someone finds me obnoxious, the fascists win and you're friends with conservatives because there are no other lefty people to be in community with.

There are lots of Black people I have no interest in being around because of our political and or personal differences. That doesn't mean we're doomed lol what kind of egotistical nonsense. That's not what solidarity is. Being a Black woman, I'm very suspicious of thinking like this because this type of " stick together no matter what and If you don't you think you're better than me" is how Black women are guilted out of reasonable boundaries with misogynist Black men or centring what the " greater good " is and funny, we're never apart of that.

This is very very childish thinking. People in your community do not have to like you. This is normal. It happens in every group. Conflict and disagreement is normal. Not wanting to be associated with people doesn't boil down to one thing.

You should never be afraid to be yourself just because people will hate you, because what you do will never appease them.

The problem is, a large section of those people who will always hate you are also the ones telling you that you are obligated to be as extravigantly queer as they are.

They want you to protect them from the responses they engineer for themselves, and get mad at you for showing that the reason they get such bad responses is because they are not, in fact, the kind of people a majority of of humanity enjoys to be around.

Not because they are gay, but because they are just plain insufferable.

if you are doing any creative project with someone else in which money will be involved, make a contract. Doesn't need to be super formal. Get something laid out in writing that very clearly indicates what the person you are asking to do something is responsible for, the timeline in which they're expected to complete it, and the compensation they'll get for doing so.

"oh but we've been best friends since eighth grade" make a fucking contract.

"oh but this probably won't make much money anyway" make a fucking contract.

"oh but I don't know all that legalese" there are tons of pretty accessible templates available online if you research, just make sure it's one that suits your needs and you understand what's in it (it can be written in normal language without legalese, as long as it's clear), and make a fucking contract.

First: THIS RECALL IS NOT STATE SPECIFIC. IT IS NATIONWIDE.

here are the specific products and dates:

FDA page on this:

All that would cost more money. What the west needs to do is end asylum all together. Sorry to all the people who are facing actual oppression, but the moochers and invaders ruined it for everyone. We don't need foreigners. Especially poor, abused foreigners who show up with maybe a suitcase of clothes and who immediately go on welfare. If we're going to be accepting immigrants, they need to have useful skills and be from compatible cultures. Ironically, a lot of Central and South American cultures are very compatible with western culture. We just import the bottom 5% from those places, put them on welfare, and let them overrun small towns and entire sections of cities. If we had proper standards (and a mostly closed border) I would enthusiastically support accepting more future-citizens from those places.

And end birthright citizenship.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

They claimed they were just platforms and anyone could use them. They were not making “judgment calls.” There was no creation of content or filter of information or anything. The only value judgment they would make was how relevant the result was to your search terms. Which is the purpose of a search engine. They were just places where people could put up their flyers (like a notice board) or meet up freely and express their opinion (like the public square). They allowed you to filter things (through provided content filters or the use of Boolean search language), but they themselves would not make any determination regarding the value or morality or trustworthiness of the information provided.

And this used to be true. Google searches didn’t make judgment calls on the value of the opinions and data presented, it just returned relevant links. The more relevant, the higher on the list. This guaranteed multiple sources and points of view and you could decide for yourself which ones to trust.

For example, I had to look up Stormfront for a class way back when. Google didn’t give me a paragraph explaining why Stormfront was bad. It didn’t insist I must have meant something else and give me those results because no good person would look up neo-nazis. It didn’t give me a dozen articles and Reddit posts that mention Stormfront once or twice.

What it did do was give me Stormfront’s homepage. And the link below it was the Wikipedia page explaining what it was. And the links below that were news articles and blogs on Stormfront. Then at the bottom it gave me some weather sites because maybe I did just mistype “storm front”. Relevant information presented to me, actual decision on what to trust left up to me.

Then Google started exerting more control. It was bad enough when Google started automatically changing your search terms, to what it decided you actually meant, but it now it’s deciding what is allowed to be seen for the search terms you use. What’s a source Google trusts and which ones should be hidden. Judgment calls are being made.

And that’s the important part. Once you’re deciding who is and isn’t allowed to put their flyers up, you’re not an unbiased notice board. You’re not the public square. You’re a publisher. You are deciding what to show based on what you place value on. And if you are making judgment calls, you can be held liable for the result of those calls.

That’s why newspapers and magazines can be sued when they run a piece that states false information as fact. They made the judgment call to spread the libel even though it was someone else who wrote it.

Google has skirted this line for quite a while. It’s okay to block bad information, right? If you hide a website that says battery acid is safe to drink, that’s fine, right? No one is hurt if wrongthink is hidden and only trustworthy sources are presented, right? You can’t be sued if no direct injury was caused to your users, right? No harm no foul, right?

Except… with Google AI and its bad information being presented as the first result of your Google search…

Well. Now there’s provable harm.

An AI cannot make a true judgment call and it cannot be held liable. It’s a machine. It has no values, no morals, no personhood. But someone wrote the program that determines how the AI judges information and presents it and someone put it online and placed it automatically at the top of their search results and someone presented it as a reliable judge of trustworthy information (with a small disclaimer that maybe it could be wrong sometimes). So that someone is the one who should be held responsible for the judgment calls the AI makes.

And that someone is Google.

TL;DR: to be held liable for something you usually need control, cause, and damages (this is very simplified). Google used to avoid liability by not controlling search results. Judgment on what to trust was left to the users so even if relying on the information caused damage, it wasn’t Google’s fault. Google then started exerting control, but claimed it was to avoid damage to users. If users couldn’t prove Google’s search results caused harm to them, Google couldn’t be held responsible even if they had control.