investigation

Some threads on PhysicsForums have ChatGPT generated answers from the past. The authors, David and Felipe, investigate how this was possible and why it was done. It seems the forum maintainer used accounts of old users to reply to threads with LLM generated responses. Was it consensual?

It’s hard to imagine that 110 existing users gave consent to be used as test accounts, for 115,000 posts, over four waves spanning almost a year. The idea that these are test accounts gone wrong, or a bot accidentally mislabeled, doesn’t seem to align with the facts.

Discovered via 82MHz.

YouTuber MegaLag investigates Honey, the browser extension that supposedly finds you deals right before checkout. The video shows evidence of Honey overriding affiliate codes with their own biting the same influencers that promote them, specifically avoiding higher discount codes for some partnered stores, and repeatedly trying to inject themselves at every checkout even if there are no savings to offer so they can get a commission of the sale. The video has a lot more information and is only the first part of a series, some good investigative journalism from MegaLag.