Sorry for the delayed response—yes, I think this kind of gets at the heart of the matter. I think, though I did a pretty good job with being rational in this post, and trying to make rational, unbiased claims from/using the information that exists, I could have been a bit more refined and clear-cut.
I honestly feel a bit bad, because this is an important issue, and I hope I didn’t screw things up by (unintentionally) presenting things in a irrational or biased way. I’ll try to be very rational and unbiased in this comment.
I think my statement that I was “trying to figure out the truth” in an earlier comment was misguided and imprecise. You were keen to notice this. In a situation like this, there are large amounts of uncertainty, and there is currently no proof of misconduct (that I’ve seen.)
I think what this post does is {provide a (relatively) accurate description of the state of affairs regarding Annie’s claims.} I do feel pretty good about the way in which I presented the information relevant to this matter in this post. Though I don’t want to necessarily “take shots” at Elizabeth Weil, whose nymag article provided basically the only significant written third-party acknowledgment of Annie’s claims, I will say that I prefer the (hopefully, more) objective, straight-from-the-source, uncertainty-acknowledging approach I’ve taken here.
The key thing here is that, currently, the primary information we have is:
Claims that Annie has made on social media, as well as a few pictures of her from when she was sick that she took, and a few screenshots of her social media that potentially indicate, but do not provably or definitively, indicate that she experienced shadowbanning, let alone that the low engagement/shadowbanning occured because of Sam. It is important to avoid the conjunction fallacy:
Let A = the event that Annie Altman, or (digital) media relating to her did indeed experience shadowbanning, low engagement, etc. Let B = the event that Sam Altman caused A to occur.
Then P(A ∧ B) ≤ P(A).
To me, it seems very hard to prove that one has been shadowbanned. To me, this would require proof of an arrangement between a “shadowbanning-requester” (e.g. Sam Altman) and the “shadowbanners” (e.g. developers or mods at Instagram, X, etc.), or direct evidence of actions taken and/or code written by mods, devs, etc. that shadowbanned Annie’s content. In this matter, that has not been provided.
A 2018 podcast episode that Annie did with Sam, Jack, and Max. Yes, while it is potentially suspicious that Sam cut Annie off around 24:50 ish, it doesn’t prove anything.
A Twitter post from 2018 where Sam Altman shared a link to Annie’s Youtube channel.
A variety of other social media posts from Annie that, while they are not inconsistent with the story she is telling / claims she is making about Sam, do not provide proof for the claims she has made about Sam.
For example, Annie seems to have posted multiple social media posts showing her in Hawai’i at the times that she claims she was. So this does corroborate the part of the larger claim-story in which Annie claims she was in Hawai’i at time X. However, these only support that individual part of her story; they provide no evidence for anything else.
So, I think the main thing that this post has going for it is that it aggregates what is out there in a relatively objective/unbiased way. That is, it aggregates (many of) the claims Annie has made, and related media that exists on the Internet.
Sorry for the delayed response—yes, I think this kind of gets at the heart of the matter. I think, though I did a pretty good job with being rational in this post, and trying to make rational, unbiased claims from/using the information that exists, I could have been a bit more refined and clear-cut.
I honestly feel a bit bad, because this is an important issue, and I hope I didn’t screw things up by (unintentionally) presenting things in a irrational or biased way. I’ll try to be very rational and unbiased in this comment.
I think my statement that I was “trying to figure out the truth” in an earlier comment was misguided and imprecise. You were keen to notice this. In a situation like this, there are large amounts of uncertainty, and there is currently no proof of misconduct (that I’ve seen.)
I think what this post does is {provide a (relatively) accurate description of the state of affairs regarding Annie’s claims.} I do feel pretty good about the way in which I presented the information relevant to this matter in this post. Though I don’t want to necessarily “take shots” at Elizabeth Weil, whose nymag article provided basically the only significant written third-party acknowledgment of Annie’s claims, I will say that I prefer the (hopefully, more) objective, straight-from-the-source, uncertainty-acknowledging approach I’ve taken here.
The key thing here is that, currently, the primary information we have is:
Claims that Annie has made on social media, as well as a few pictures of her from when she was sick that she took, and a few screenshots of her social media that potentially indicate, but do not provably or definitively, indicate that she experienced shadowbanning, let alone that the low engagement/shadowbanning occured because of Sam. It is important to avoid the conjunction fallacy:
Let A = the event that Annie Altman, or (digital) media relating to her did indeed experience shadowbanning, low engagement, etc.
Let B = the event that Sam Altman caused A to occur.
Then
P(A ∧ B) ≤ P(A).
To me, it seems very hard to prove that one has been shadowbanned. To me, this would require proof of an arrangement between a “shadowbanning-requester” (e.g. Sam Altman) and the “shadowbanners” (e.g. developers or mods at Instagram, X, etc.), or direct evidence of actions taken and/or code written by mods, devs, etc. that shadowbanned Annie’s content. In this matter, that has not been provided.
A 2018 podcast episode that Annie did with Sam, Jack, and Max. Yes, while it is potentially suspicious that Sam cut Annie off around 24:50 ish, it doesn’t prove anything.
A Twitter post from 2018 where Sam Altman shared a link to Annie’s Youtube channel.
A variety of other social media posts from Annie that, while they are not inconsistent with the story she is telling / claims she is making about Sam, do not provide proof for the claims she has made about Sam.
For example, Annie seems to have posted multiple social media posts showing her in Hawai’i at the times that she claims she was. So this does corroborate the part of the larger claim-story in which Annie claims she was in Hawai’i at time X. However, these only support that individual part of her story; they provide no evidence for anything else.
So, I think the main thing that this post has going for it is that it aggregates what is out there in a relatively objective/unbiased way. That is, it aggregates (many of) the claims Annie has made, and related media that exists on the Internet.