It’s a good question. Remember how Apple doesn’t like porn apps even in the AltStore? Any app with the same amount of explicit content as X would’ve failed review. And that before we even get to CSAM, racism and hate speech on there… it would be a net positive for humanity if Elon’s platform blinks out of existence.
X has also falsely classified itself as a “news” app. It’s social media not journalism. This deceptive move has made it a lot more visible. The size of its user base means it is number 1 in many countries in the News category, which Musk brags about in daily posts, when he’s not posting explicitly supremacist content (this has become a thing with him in the last month).
Reddit is also in the App Store. It has a significant amount of adult content. They also had some very legally questionable subreddits as well, which they tried to clean up before going public, but I can only assume it’s a cat and mouse game.
I think it’s a user generated content loophole. Since the app it’s explicitly for that stuff, it’s just that some users post it. Web browsers get a similar exemption, there is all kinds of stuff on the internet.
I remember when dating apps had to take it upon themselves to never show explicit photos (even privately shared in DMs) or get removed from the store. That too is user generated content, right?
As for X, all one has to do is stumble on the right hashtag to reveal not only spicy content and csam, but also racist and abusive flavours of porn. Something to circle back to the next time Apple claims the walled garden is there to protect users.
Apple doesn't have to follow their own rules. It's your fault for expecting them to be internally consistent, there's no accountability for Apple within Apple.
Maybe they’re trying to firefight but I just tested it and there was no moderation constraint. IMO this also doesn’t address the horrible content people post there. It’s a clear violation of the App Store rules
It's just not worth getting into a political struggle with the government and Elon's supporters over the removal. Ultimately, it doesn't make a difference to users who hate Twitter, so there's nothing really to gain by doing so.
Not taking action is also a political statement and I don't agree that there is nothing to gain - if there is any notion that App/Play Store guidelines are there prevent malicious content then those rules must be applied equally for all apps.
Of course, but not taking action is far safer from a business perspective. The government has real power to impact Apple, whereas X critics are essentially powerless by comparison.
> if there is any notion that App/Play Store guidelines are there prevent malicious content then those rules must be applied equally for all apps.
Apple has a very long history of not caring about this, long before the current political situation.
He’s done it before with a modicum of plausible deniability, but there’s no denying it here. Straight up Stormfront rhetoric. And these voices are amplified by the algorithm.
It would be wrong to kowtow to these people out of fear. I thought that lesson was already learned in the 40’s, but maybe it needs to be learned again.
Chrome and Safari are browser agents, your window to the internet. Where you go is your problem.
X is a curated social network with algorithmic timeline. They’re 100% responsible for what gets posted there. Grok is a service of X, they’re 100% responsible and liable for what it outputs.
Curated means that everything is manually filtered. X is not manually filtered. Just like I can have anything on my domain on the Internet, I can post anything on my timeline and people can access it there.
There's no jailbreaking going on here. The filters are all functioning as intended when someone requests transparent, skimpy, impossibly thin, or skin-tone clothing even on posts that explicitly give context that a child is pictured there. It's on the service.
> Unlike other leading chatbots, Grok doesn’t impose many limits on users or block them from generating sexualized content of real people, including minors, said Brandie Nonnecke, senior director of policy at Americans for Responsible Innovation. Other generative AI technologies, including ones from Anthropic PBC, OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, are “giving a good-faith effort to mitigate the creation of this content in the first place,” she said. “Obviously, xAI is different. It’s more of a free-for-all.”
If GIMP had AI features like this, I'd expect safeguards. It doesn't. All other AI tools have safeguards against this kind of bad behavior that are lacking in Grok.
As always with AI, the barrier to entry has evaporated. You can create nasty stuff with a pencil but you can't flood the internet mass producing nasty stuff with a pencil.
There are basic, obvious safeguards that are not in place here. That's why the software is to blame. If it was some sort of jailbreaking or circumvention, that'd be one thing. But given the owner himself is amplifying this, this borders on being an intended use case.
