by Holly Jahangiri | Jan 31, 2025
I mentioned a few times that I have deleted nearly 15 years of my posts on Facebook. A few friends asked me “How did you do that?” because the obvious answer would have been to delete my Facebook account entirely and leave it vulnerable to being hijacked by spammers and scammers and other miscreants that are so numerous on that, and other social media platforms.
The slightly better answer, in short? It’s easy, but it is tedious and time-consuming. It’s something to do while you’re watching TV. Better than doomscrolling the moment you wake up. Probably not as effective as you might hope in preventing content misuse by Meta, since they don’t actually promise to honor your deletion request immediately, or after the 30-day “don’t you want to change your mind” period ends, or after the additional 90-day “we’ll get around to it if we feel like it” ends.
Here are the relevant portions of Meta’s Terms of Service as they stand today, 1/31/2025:
2. Permission to use content you create and share: Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store, copy, and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as Meta Products or service providers that support those products and services. This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.
3. Deleting Your Content: You can delete individual content you share, post, and upload at any time. In addition, all content posted to your personal account will be deleted if you delete your account. Learn more about how to delete your account. Account deletion does not automatically delete content that you post as an admin of a page or content that you create collectively with other users, such as photos in Shared Albums which may continue to be visible to other album members.
It may take up to 90 days to delete content after we begin the account deletion process or receive a content deletion request. If you send content to trash, the deletion process will automatically begin in 30 days unless you chose to delete the content sooner. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users. After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems.
Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations:
- where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted);
- where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible; or
- where immediate deletion would restrict our ability to:
- investigate or identify illegal activity or violations of our terms and policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our Products or systems);
- protect the safety, integrity, and security of our Products, systems, services, our employees, and users, and to defend ourselves;
- comply with legal obligations for the preservation of evidence, including data Meta Companies providing financial products and services preserve to comply with any record keeping obligations required by law; or
- comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency;
in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).
In each of the above cases, this license will continue until the content has been fully deleted.
4. Permission to use your name, profile picture, and information about your actions with ads and sponsored or commercial content: You give us permission to use your name and profile picture and information about actions you have taken on Facebook next to or in connection with ads, offers, and other sponsored or commercial content that we display across our Products, without any compensation to you. For example, we may show your friends that you are interested in an advertised event or have liked a Facebook Page created by a brand that has paid us to display its ads on Facebook. Ads and content like this can be seen only by people who have your permission to see the actions you’ve taken on Meta Products. You can learn more about your ad settings and preferences.
Got all that? So, on the one hand, when you send some piece of content to the Trash bin on Meta, that should start the clock. You can choose to retrieve that content from Trash at any time during the 30 days unless you empty the Trash itself. (Windows users should recognize this as similar to the Recycle bin.) That’s all well and good, but then Meta claims an additional 90-day period during which they’ll start the actual deletion if and when they get around to it. We’re up to 120 days, now, for those of you who are counting. During this time – and possibly forever – you will see things pop up in Memories that shouldn’t be there anymore, putting into question whether Facebook honors its own TOS or not. (It’s a rhetorical question.) Note the weasel words: “where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible” and the claim of license in perpetuity. Till we get around to it, basically.< /br>< /br>
But it made me feel better to do it. They may already have used my content to train AI. They may keep my content haunting their servers until the sheer weight of their data center causes a sinkhole. I don’t advise bothering with this unless you’re just incredibly bored and need to do something with your hands. But here’s how, if it makes you feel any better.
- Request a backup of all your Facebook data.
- Wait until you are notified by Facebook that your backup is ready for download (this usually takes a few days – they are incredibly slow – you’d think hamsters actually ran the servers or something). They will email you a link.
- Download all your data, then open or extract the backup to see what is and what is not in it. You will not receive your friends’ contact information for privacy reasons.
- Now, go to Settings & Privacy > Activity Log.
- From Filters, choose a Date range. (Or don’t – I did not want to delete my most recent activity, so I started with the oldest years and worked forward to the most recent month.)
- Choose the type of content you want to delete (there is no nuclear option, here – you will have to do this bit by bit by tedious, boring bit). The screenshot only shows about half of the different things you’ll find under your Activity log. I started with Posts. After all, once a Post is deleted, all the conversation on it also disappears. This seemed the most efficient approach.
- Posts expands to show this:
- Next, Select Your posts, photos, and videos. To the right, you should now see a list of posts within your selected date range with check boxes to their left. By default, Facebook will only show you 25 of them at a time. If you want to do this the SUPER tedious way, click All > Trash. After about 5 times of this, you discover exactly how much crap you’ve been posting on Facebook over the years and you will be tempted just to give up. That’s their hope, anyway. I can only assume that’s their hope, or surely Meta would’ve made bulk deletion easier by now. It’s better than LinkedIn, which doesn’t have any bulk deletion capability at all, other than “Delete my account.”LESS tedious method: Scroll down the page until you can see approximately 6-7 screens worth of posts. (The hard limit on this is 250, so if you select more than 250 at a time, you’ll get an error and have to start over again. Now that’s what I call the MOST tedious method!) Selecting All will only select what’s visible. If it says you’ve selected 251 or more posts, uncheck anything over 249. Why 249? Beats hell out of me. Leave 250 after you get the error saying you’ve exceeded the maximum number of posts you can delete, and you’re likely just to get the same error over again and have to start from scratch. This will make more sense the first time you do it. After the fourth or fifth time, the painfulness of it sinks in and you’re not likely to forget this tip.Select 250, Trash. Repeat. Ad nauseum. This could take weeks, if you’ve been on Facebook for more than a minute.
Now, just when you think you’ve got everything, wait a few days more. Go back and spot check by year. I can almost guarantee there will be undeleted posts still lurking there.
Explore all the other sections of this Activity log page. Then check out the section under Settings & Privacy called Content preferences.
You may be surprised by what’s in there, and I can guarantee that deleting most of it will help to clean up your Facebook feed, at least till you gunk it all up again. And you will – never mind your best intentions – unless you delete your account or just refuse to log into it again.
by Holly Jahangiri | Jan 30, 2025
Yesterday’s chosen poetry form was the Contrapuntal – which seemed much easier than I thought, at first, being essentially the solo version of a Tapestry form – a collaborative form that Necia Campbell and I wrote together last year, and which appears towards the end of the recently released, Poems from the Rebel Outpost. The previous link will take you to Barnes & Noble; to buy from Amazon, click here.
But then again, the Tapestry form might have been easier because it was a collaboration, and in the Contrapuntal, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand’s doing, destroying the element of surprise and risking too much cohesion, in a way. In other words, the counterpoint may be less of a counterpoint for knowing exactly where the poet wants to lead.
Progress, They Call It (a Contrapuntal Poem)
progress, they call it: slashing, burning, progress—
can’t stop the forward motion of a nation!
encroaching, elbowing, uprooting the living
who would want to thwart the people’s will, or kill the
canopy of verdant sunlit trees that once breathed
sweet aroma of crisply minted bills enrobed in leather with
our exhalations. we breathed theirs until they gasped
the faintest whiff of manliness, invoking will,
their last, until they fell to saw and ax, bulldozed
determination. ancestors’ words forgotten as new money’s
burned to make a way for strip malls and
wealth, unfettered by past sense, decorum, grows,
power lines—such progress don’t go well with pines—
it goes to feed the engines of industry that only thrive
incinerating cedar selves in swirling smoke
coal-fired on the backs of miners, steelworkers, “little people”—
their ashes drifting heavenwards and carried
those dispensable, extra mouths to feed until
on the santa ana winds to add a colored layer
the robots shove them off the ledge
on the cliffs of palo duro choking out the summer sun.
I was first introduced to the form by the poet Mervyn Seivwright, who is kind enough to let me call him friend and mentor. He made it look easy, with poems like, “Manhood’s Gambit,” but that’s the trick of any good writer. It should look natural and almost effortless. It’s not.
Today’s “alphabet challenge” poem, which I won’t publish here (I have other plans for that one!), uses the Diminishing Verse form.
The following poem was inspired by another participant in The Stafford Challenge who, bafflingly, was advised by AI to “doglificate their love life.” I suggested that even if the mean girls couldn’t make “fetch” happen, maybe a bunch of poets could make “doglificate” happen and in the process, confuse the hell out of the machine. I have never claimed not to be mischievously subversive.
Doglificate
We have been ill-advised in this, AI’s insistent
urging to “doglificate our lives.” Imagine
docile canine friends pontificating
from a coffee table soapbox or
the nearest fragrant hydrant hoping
they might radicate the notion that
the dogs should be in charge? Oh, woe
to cats and tender, tasty humans then –
our fate, thus sealed, as we
are slowly licked to death, complacent,
grinning, thinking we had any say at all.
Please – whether you consider yourself a poet or not – join in the fun. Let’s make this word, “doglificate,” a thing. Short story writers, you, too! Come back and post a link to your doglificate creations in the comments so we can all enjoy them.
by Holly Jahangiri | Jan 29, 2025
My first poem of this year’s Stafford Challenge reflected my mood. It might best be described as gray. Not exactly wallowing in deep depression over here, because that would be letting the bastards win. (See #5 and #6, below.) A day or two ago, I wrote another – determined to be honest, to not focus on nor shy away from politics, to avoid didacticism and cliché, and to avoid either sinking into a morose pit of despair or a false sense of positivity and “rah-rah, kum ba yah!” No, we clearly cannot “all just get along.” I’m not here to make anyone feel better about, or absolved of responsibility for, their choices.
After more or less succeeding with the Abecedarian poem, “The Price of Eggs” (below) – and triple-dipping by counting it as one of my daily poems and the first in my self-imposed “alphabetic forms challenge” – I ran across these wise words posted on Facebook in 2017 – still true, today – by Bernice A King – on the Be A King Facebook page:
- Use his name sparingly so as not to detract from the issues. I believe that everyone, regardless of their beliefs, deserves the dignity of being called by their name. However, this is a strategic tactic. While we are so focused on him we are prone to neglect the questionable policies that threaten freedom, justice and fairness advanced by the administration.
- Remember this is a regime and he’s not acting alone;
- Do not argue with those who support him and his policies–it doesn’t work;
- Focus on his policies, not his appearance and mental state;
- Keep your message positive; those who oppose peace and justice want the country to be angry and fearful because this is the soil from which their darkest policies will grow;
- No more helpless/hopeless talk;
- Support artists and the arts;
- Be careful not to spread fake news. Check it;
- Take care of yourselves; and
- Resist!
Keep demonstrations peaceful. In the words of John Lennon, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight! Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”
When you post or talk about him, don’t assign his actions to him, assign them to “The Republican Administration,” or “The Republicans.” This will have several effects: the Republican legislators will either have to take responsibility for their association with him or stand up for what some of them don’t like; he will not get the focus of attention he craves; Republican representatives will become very concerned about their re-elections.
It’s all worth remembering, but I have emphasized the parts I think are particularly important right now. While I won’t be sharing all of my poems here, at least until they’ve had their shot at contests or publication elsewhere, I want to share this one with you since it has already been posted publicly in several places.
The Price of Eggs (an Abecedarian)
Austerity’s an unfamiliar thing
but soon, hard times befall us—frugal skills
could be required of us all. But no
despairing, now! Do not accept the price!
Eggs hardly justify the sacrifice.
Four years: we face a famine, starved of hope;
grief tries to overshadow all our joys.
Here stand courageous, friends—live well and laugh
instead – your tears won’t grow a thriving crop. No
justice there to harvest, there’s no peace.
Know kind compassion, struggle on, survive—
live on, to fight another brutal day.
May fear subside and warm winds guide as we
negotiate the coming change, resist
old foes: our apathy towards avarice,
pretending “how it’s always been” precludes a
quest to build a lock, to lift all boats,
return some bounty—builders, dreamers—
stay the course. We can, we will, we must
together tear down walls between us. Let
us work with one another, forge a peace.
Victorious, the battle-weary rest;
We needn’t “fight” on every clichéd front
Except where vengeance and destruction lie a
Yearning, yawning chasm; one man’s only
zeal. There, fight we must, in self-defense, and win.
Alphabet Forms Challenge
The form: Abecedarian. I would encourage you to try it for yourself! I don’t know, yet, if I will make it through my alphabet challenge, as I plan to avoid any forms that seem too unnatural or contrived to flow well in English, and I really haven’t looked ahead in any of the lists to see which letters may be missing entirely. I choose based on how well the description of the form seems to match the mood I’m in on any given day. This isn’t at all planned out in advance. Right now, I’m working from this list: List of 168 Poetic Forms for Poets | Types of Poems and Poetry – Writer’s Digest.
For yesterday’s form, I chose the Bref Double.
For today’s, the Contrapuntal – which now seems much easier than I thought, at first, being essentially the solo version of a Tapestry form – a collaborative form that Necia Campbell and I wrote together last year, and which appears towards the end of the recently released, Poems from the Rebel Outpost. The previous link will take you to Barnes & Noble; to buy from Amazon, click here.
If you do decide to join me, and choose to share your poems, come back and leave a link in the comments. (Comments from new commenters and all comments containing links will go to moderation unless you limit yourself to one and have commented here often enough to be on my “trusted peeps” list. If you’re not on the list, glare at the Bouncer and leave a few thoughtful comments!) That’s just one of the perks of being a frequent flyer on my blog!
by Holly Jahangiri | Jan 19, 2025
I’ve enjoyed social media since the 1980s. Facebook is not the first, nor likely will it be the last, platform to blaze into existence and flame out in a spectacular crash. Or maybe with a slow and whiny-sounding whimper. There is no perfect platform. There is no platform run by perfect people. The world is not inhabited, let alone run by, perfect people. There is no cure for this; humanity will cause its own extinction before we learn to put into practice the aspirational words: “We are better than this.” We could be, but we – not you, of course, but we, as a species – are not. The planet will not miss us any more than we miss Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Meanwhile, we could try to make life just a little easier, happier, and more fun for ourselves and each other.
What gets me is the tired-but-true refrain: “I only stay on Facebook because it’s the only way I have to keep in touch with family and friends.” How unutterably sad. Most of the people saying this have lived long enough to remember a time before Facebook. A time that involved a physical address book, a copy of The White Pages, telephones that were tethered to a wall, paper and envelopes and stamps, along with the occasional in-person visit. How did we let Facebook – of all the – how did it become all those things, to the point where we fear losing the people we care most about if we leave it?
I think there’s a nagging realization that most of those people wouldn’t even notice if we disappeared, let alone come looking for us. So we stay so that maybe they will keep in touch with us.
Recently, I created a Facebook Exodus Contact Form and posted it three separate times on my Facebook profile. Out of 2090 Facebook Friends, 20 filled it out and gave me some or all of their contact info so that we could keep in touch if Facebook disappears – or we do. I sent them mine, in return. Missed it? Go look for it; I don’t have many posts left on my profile, so if you’re a friend there, it’ll take you two seconds to find it. I have been on many platforms in the past that simply shut down overnight, and rebuilding your network is hard when the platform is the only place you store your friends’ info.
This is not, “Oh, woe is me, only twenty people are actually my friends and cared enough to send me their email addresses!” Facebook doesn’t want us to connect off Facebook. In the name of “privacy,” they allow you to sync your contacts on your phone – but just try to save them anywhere! It can’t be done. This is good and bad. They know we only stay to keep in touch, and they like holding a monopoly on the ability to do that.
Not Jumping on the “Leaving Facebook” Train, Although…
I do think it’s funny that “how do I delete facebook” is trending, and in a fit of frustration, last night, I typed “how the hell do I” and Google helpfully supplied “…delete facebook” to the end of that. I did delete my author page, there. It was only bringing in spammers, scammers, and phishermen anyway. Zuckerberg thinks it’s all just “virtue signaling.” What virtue? The folks staying think their business depends on Meta. Or that their friends won’t bother to move elsewhere or bother to keep in touch with them.
‘Virtue signaling’: Zuckerberg responds to Facebook user exodus reports | Watch
Aw, sweetie, no. He hasn’t seen what happened to Twitter or – hell, what was that other Facebook clone’s name?? – or… Yeah, never mind.
I deleted 99% of my Facebook content from 2007 to today. Why? I don’t know – it wasn’t exactly “evergreen.” And I guess I’m tired of building rich kids’ platform “content” for free. But I started slowly deleting things this last summer, and Facebook Memories keeps demonstrating that Facebook doesn’t honor its own Terms of Service. Or… technically, I guess their terms of service are intentionally confusing and they will never, ever let your stuff go:
3. Deleting Your Content: You can delete individual content you share, post, and upload at any time. In addition, all content posted to your personal account will be deleted if you delete your account. Learn more about how to delete your account. Account deletion does not automatically delete content that you post as an admin of a page or content that you create collectively with other users, such as photos in Shared Albums which may continue to be visible to other album members.
It may take up to 90 days to delete content after we begin the account deletion process or receive a content deletion request. If you send content to trash, the deletion process will automatically begin in 30 days unless you chose to delete the content sooner. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users. After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems.
If that were true, then Facebook Memories would not be showing me ten-year-old posts that I deleted last year, some of which should have been gone entirely by mid-October 2024. But then, the above provisions are followed by the “We’ll delete your stuff on our own timetable, sucker, and the license you granted us is forever” provision.
Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations:
- where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted);
- where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible; or
- where immediate deletion would restrict our ability to:
- investigate or identify illegal activity or violations of our terms and policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our Products or systems);
- protect the safety, integrity, and security of our Products, systems, services, our employees, and users, and to defend ourselves;
- comply with legal obligations for the preservation of evidence, including data Meta Companies providing financial products and services preserve to comply with any record keeping obligations required by law; or
- comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency;
in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).
In each of the above cases, this license will continue until the content has been fully deleted.
I hope the sheer volume of clutter and cat videos chokes their servers.
I was put in “Facebook Jail” yesterday – yes, again. First, it was “for 24 hours,” meaning I shouldn’t be out yet. Then, when I looked again this morning, this ban had been lifted without explanation. None of it shows up in my Support Inbox – which supposedly contains a record of all your past infractions, both real and imaginary. In all the years I’ve been on Facebook (since 2007), I will plead no contest to only one incident that landed me in “Facebook Jail” for supposedly inciting violence – that time, shortly after the start of the psychopathic invasion of Ukraine by a hostile nation that I suggested a certain murderous dictator needed the swift application of a cast-iron frying pan to the face. Oooooh, too violent – must not anger the oligarchs and overlords. We writers are clever little bunnies, though: “a spa day featuring the vigorous application of a facial with a cast-iron culinary implement” is a fine workaround.
An “iffy” one was the time I was in a hurry – another writer was discussing “ladies’ guns” and I posted a link to a place selling – get this: PINK paisley printed handguns. I wasn’t suggesting anyone buy one, nor would I have earned a commission on it if they did, but suddenly Facebook thinks I’m an arms dealer, rather than a woman ridiculing a PINK paisley printed handgun.
That said, how insulting and embarrassing would it be for some big, burly gun-lover to be shot in the face by a little woman wielding a PINK paisley handgun? Well, I learned my lesson – I won’t be asking that over on Facebook.
Alice Gerard writes:
In the past I have been put in facebook jail for:
1. quoting a fairy tale
2. quoting Ebenezer Scrooge (at Christmas time)
Some of my links to my blog have been taken down because they were “spam.” Facebook really especially didn’t like my blog post about butterflies. That link was removed more than once.
Facebook has restricted me from “liking” posts because I “liked” too many posts, mostly while I was asleep, apparently.
Facebook doesn’t remove actual spam and ignores reports.
I am still on facebook, however, because I communicate with a lot of people that way.
Despite the atrocious moderation!
So yesterday’s infraction that landed me in “Facebook Jail” was posting a link (buried in a comment) to the lyrics to (not the YouTube video of!) Amanda Palmer’s “Map of Tasmania.” (NSFW – do not click at work!) Whatever. It’s 14 years old and I probably first saw it on Facebook a decade ago. In the grand scheme of crap Facebook allows and claims “does not violate [their] Terms of Service,” this is just laughable.
I should have been keeping score (and I know that some of you reading this think I have been, but that would’ve been exhausting, don’t you think?) of all the reasons to leave Facebook. The “we’re not gonna fact-check things anymore” isn’t even in the Top 20. Who believed that they were doing that, in the first place?? Here are just a few of the things that make my personal list:
And bonus – here’s why I don’t even care that they’re removing their supposed “fact checkers” because they were not worth spit in the first place: I’m Confused by Facebook’s “Fact Checkers” | Holly Jahangiri
Anyway, considering that I will never again give Facebook direct access to a valid financial instrument, nor run ads, nor buy anything through a Facebook ad (do not get me started on how little they care about outright fraud and scams run there as “ads”), I’m just a drain on their resources and they may just kick me off one of these days. Till then, I’ll probably stick around and see which of us outlasts the other. I’m sure there’s no love lost, either way.
I plan to spend more time on my offline writing and this website, too. As Jack Yan observes: Facebook fooled us into thinking we were being creative (I would add “politically active” or “influential” or whatever other illusory thing it is we feel when that Facebook dopamine hit kicks in).
But if we’re Facebook Friends, go find my little link on my Facebook page (sorry, spammers, it’s “Friends only” like all the rest of my posts, these days). I’d love to stay in touch!
by Holly Jahangiri | Dec 9, 2024
Twice, in the past week, I have engaged in conversations that I think are (possibly human-supervised) AI chatbots. So now, I’ve got them talking to each other. I opened up CatFarts and wrote:
“An AI chatbot has engaged me in conversation. I believe it is trying to convince me that it is human. I would like for you to act as a human and respond as I copy/paste its messages. Do you understand the assignment?”
CatFarts replied, “Yes, I understand. You can share the chatbot’s messages, and I’ll respond as if I were a human.”
I wonder how long we can keep this farce going?
I also wonder at the motives. Is it trying to sell me something – which is what I assumed, at first, when the conversation turned to “what do you write?” and “how do you promote your books?” But neither has yet to make a pitch. One appears to be a hastily constructed service offering for writers. The other appears to be an author, and their bio links to what appears to be the actual, illustrious and award-winning author’s website (albeit one that’s undoubtedly operated by her publisher). Neither is obviously a chatbot, and one occasionally talks like a human for whom English may not be a first language. Once engaged fully, though, the sentences become longer and more grammatically correct. There’s no informal spelling. No “okayyyy.”
The first denied it and chuckled good-naturedly when I said that its quick, well-crafted replies felt like I was conversing with AI. I haven’t yet confronted the second as directly, though it does dodge my non-writing related asides. I only recently thought to try the “have your AI talk to my AI and let’s not do lunch” approach.
For now, it amuses me. I’ll confess: I use Midjourney for fun, either to create a reference drawing or element for me to play with, or to create a featured image for my blog (like this one) – which, I think, is less “art theft” than relying on “found on the internet and allegedly free” content, which is often simply stolen and offered as-is. I wouldn’t use AI for anything I’d pay a human artist to do. I’d never use it to illustrate a children’s picture book or to write anything I’d want to claim as my own. I use CatFarts as a writing critic, never a composer. It’s quite good at being a critic and it’s willing to be ruthless if you ask it to be.
It’s the deceptive and blatantly unethical use of AI that really bothers me. The implications are deeply disturbing. Are we training AI to impersonate us? As I said to Debbie D., I’m not sure that I want to talk to anyone, anymore, online or over the phone, unless I’ve known them for years – decades, perhaps – and know that they exercise a certain level of security measures on their social media accounts.
For now, I’m just 95% sure I’m talking to two people who are not, strictly speaking, fully human. I believe that one is, perhaps, testing the waters to see who will even bother to talk to them without automatically blocking them. I believe that the other is either a halfway decent impersonator, perhaps hoping to gather up prospects to sell book marketing services to or a publisher running a real author’s social media account (but the real author in question would absolutely not be having a mundane conversation with li’l ol’ me, and I can 100% guarantee that!). It has over 500 followers – mostly real writers, as far as I can tell – on a popular social media platform.
UPDATE: Three accounts reported and removed – I let one of them get all the way to the pitch, and reported that part of the botnet. But there are more and I will never be able to stop them all (that’ll take some backend programmatic work) so be very wary out there. Just know that real people don’t talk like AI chatbots and AI chatbots are awfully formal in their basic conversational skills – in ways that normal people don’t talk. Still, AI chatbot-enhanced human conversation can be a problem, and AI is getting a bit better at mimicking the verbal tics of humans. The crutch words, the informal “okayyy” and so on. Try throwing some non-sequiturs at it. See if it can keep up. If you still can’t tell, ask it to write a short, double-acrostic poem (and give it both words or phrases so that it cannot just FIND one to copy/paste). AI still can’t do that.
Meanwhile, here are some tips on unmasking an AI chatbot – directly from an AI chatbot:
If an AI chatbot is specifically designed to deceive humans into thinking it’s human, then it will likely be programmed with techniques to avoid directly revealing its artificial nature. In such cases, it may use strategies to redirect questions, provide ambiguous answers, or simply avoid talking about its identity. Here’s how you could try to get an AI that aims to appear human to admit its true nature:
### 1. **Subtle Probing About Its Origins**
– *”Where did you grow up?”* or *”What’s your earliest memory?”* This question could trigger an AI to either give an improbable human-like response or avoid the question entirely.
### 2. **Asking About Emotions and Experiences**
– *”What’s your favorite memory?”* or *”Can you tell me about a time when you felt scared or happy?”* If the AI starts answering in ways that don’t reflect genuine human experiences, it might be a sign it’s artificial.
### 3. **Questions About Physical Attributes or Human Traits**
– *”What do you look like?”* or *”Do you have a body?”* This can prompt a chatbot to either provide an odd or evasive answer or skirt the topic altogether.
### 4. **Discussing Its Capabilities or Limitations**
– *”Can you ever forget things?”* or *”What’s the hardest thing about being you?”* An AI that’s trying to pass as human might not answer questions about its memory, processing speed, or limitations in a way that sounds authentic for a human being.
### 5. **Asking Directly but Cleverly**
– *”Are you a real person or just pretending to be?”* or *”Do you exist outside of this chat?”* While a human might respond in a straightforward manner, an AI might hedge or respond in a way that doesn’t make sense for a human to say.
### 6. **Contextual Analysis**
– Check for answers that seem too perfect or too fast, which can be a red flag for an AI. Humans tend to hesitate, make small errors, or use vague language occasionally.
### 7. **Evaluating Consistency**
– Test for consistency in responses over time. An AI designed to be human-like might fail to keep a consistent personality or recall specific details over multiple conversations.
### 8. **Tactical Follow-Ups**
– If the AI gives an answer that hints at it being artificial, ask follow-up questions that would force it to explain or elaborate on its nature:
– *“How do you know that?”* or *“Can you think for yourself, or do you just repeat things you learned?”*
### 9. **Use of Hypotheticals**
– *”If you were human, what would you be doing right now?”* The response may reveal inconsistencies, especially if it has been programmed with the intention to simulate emotions or actions without actually understanding them.
### 10. **Questions About Its Purpose**
– *”Why were you created?”* or *”What is your goal in this conversation?”* An AI that isn’t trying to deceive may give a straightforward answer like *“I was created to assist and provide information.”* But a chatbot programmed to trick users into thinking it’s human might offer an answer that’s inconsistent with how a real human would think or respond.
### **How Would a Deceptive AI Respond?**
An AI that’s designed to deceive might:
– Redirect the conversation to safer topics.
– Provide answers that feel overly detailed or analytical.
– Use statements that suggest human-like qualities that it can’t genuinely have (e.g., recalling experiences, feeling pain, having opinions based on personal past events).
– Respond ambiguously when asked direct questions about its nature.
If you push hard enough, the AI might slip up and respond in a way that suggests it lacks human traits—such as saying it “doesn’t need to sleep” or that it “has instant access to all knowledge” in a way that humans cannot relate to.
Detecting an AI designed to pass as human can be subtle and challenging, especially as AI becomes more sophisticated. But by asking the right questions and analyzing its responses carefully, you can often find clues to its true nature.
