Yikes, I’m finding this quite emotionally difficult to read, and I didn’t expect any of this.
Amongst many disturbing things, Annie reports:
Shadowbanning across all platforms except onlyfans and pornhub. Also had 6 months of hacking into almost all my accounts and wifi when I first started the podcast”
I don’t currently see how this could work out. Shadowbanning on Twitter and Reddit and Facebook (and more) is something the mods on each of those platforms controls, I am unclear how a young Sam Altman could’ve accomplished this.
Hypotheses:
Sam and his allies engaged in a systematic campaign to report a lot of her content to mods on each of these platforms and somehow knew how to specifically cause shadowbanning on all of these platforms.
This was done when Sam was a significant figure in YC / Silicon Valley and he reached out directly to senior people in those companies to make a shadowbanning request.
She was shadowbanned on these platforms for sex work / other unusual content and inaccurately attributes it to Sam.
She is mistaken about what happened, or something close by happened once (e.g. he reported her to a subreddit mod who took mod action against her) and she is exaggerating this.
The claim is fabricated for other reasons (not very in touch with reality, attention, etc).
I’d certainly be interested to know what evidence led her to believe she had been widely shadowbanned.
Update: While I don’t consider this evidence of a widespread shadowbanning effort, some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed.
some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed.
It’s possible that Sam or HN/YC have been abusing their mod powers, but this is also consistent with manual flagging by legitimate users. There’s an active contingent of HN users who think this kind of post is a “gossipy distraction”, and so it’s very common for posts like this to be hidden via flagging even when they’re not about someone involved with HN/YC.
(While HN does have a shadowbanning system, where your posts are not shown by default and only users who’ve manually set showdead=true can see them, it looks like that term is being misapplied here.)
I also find Annie’s claims emotionally difficult to read. Annie’s claims are very serious. Though, as I have acknowledged, their validity has yet to be convincingly established.
I also would be interested to know what evidence led her to believe she had been widely shadowbanned. In general, I would be interested to hear more from Annie, Sam, or those close to this.
Yikes, I’m finding this quite emotionally difficult to read, and I didn’t expect any of this.
Amongst many disturbing things, Annie reports:
I don’t currently see how this could work out. Shadowbanning on Twitter and Reddit and Facebook (and more) is something the mods on each of those platforms controls, I am unclear how a young Sam Altman could’ve accomplished this.
Hypotheses:
Sam and his allies engaged in a systematic campaign to report a lot of her content to mods on each of these platforms and somehow knew how to specifically cause shadowbanning on all of these platforms.
This was done when Sam was a significant figure in YC / Silicon Valley and he reached out directly to senior people in those companies to make a shadowbanning request.
She was shadowbanned on these platforms for sex work / other unusual content and inaccurately attributes it to Sam.
She is mistaken about what happened, or something close by happened once (e.g. he reported her to a subreddit mod who took mod action against her) and she is exaggerating this.
The claim is fabricated for other reasons (not very in touch with reality, attention, etc).
I’d certainly be interested to know what evidence led her to believe she had been widely shadowbanned.
Update: While I don’t consider this evidence of a widespread shadowbanning effort, some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie’s claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
https://twitter.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888
I have updated this post to include this information as well (c.f. item 3.a. in “What Annie has stated on her X account.”)
It’s possible that Sam or HN/YC have been abusing their mod powers, but this is also consistent with manual flagging by legitimate users. There’s an active contingent of HN users who think this kind of post is a “gossipy distraction”, and so it’s very common for posts like this to be hidden via flagging even when they’re not about someone involved with HN/YC.
(While HN does have a shadowbanning system, where your posts are not shown by default and only users who’ve manually set showdead=true can see them, it looks like that term is being misapplied here.)
I also find Annie’s claims emotionally difficult to read. Annie’s claims are very serious. Though, as I have acknowledged, their validity has yet to be convincingly established.
I also would be interested to know what evidence led her to believe she had been widely shadowbanned. In general, I would be interested to hear more from Annie, Sam, or those close to this.