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but posts are all polite

pol-ite.web.app

6 pointsmaxaw5 comments

What woud it be like to read fringe political views forcibly made polite by way of LLM?

System prompt (gemini-2.5-flash-lite): "You are rewriting 4chan posts to be more polite while preserving their original meaning and tone. Don't add unnecessary verbosity; keep it concise. Make sure to preserve formatting including markdown, links and greentext."

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> I disagree with your interpretation. It seems you are making a personal assumption. Could you please clarify why you associate athletic display of reproductive fitness, which is inherently heterosexual, with non-heterosexual individuals? That seems an unusual connection.

That is.. hilarious.

Why would I want to expose myself to the ideas of 4chan users? Am I wrong in thinking that the site is a sinkhole of terrible people? That’s all I’ve ever read or heard about it. It birthed a horrible conspiracy theory that destroyed politics primarily in the USA but also in other countries. I have no need of said opinions.

I’m asking a genuine question, not being snarky. I don’t understand what would motivate someone to post this here and expect a positive reception.

Thanks for the comment!

I’ve been thinking about how ai could make it easier to connect with people whose views we disagree with - idea being, make the expression of the idea more polite and perhaps easier to meet “on the merit” of the idea. So this is an experiment in the vein of those thoughts. To be clear, I’m personally in total agreement with you as to how much merit I think the posts on this site have (very very little). I’ve only ever visited 4chan a handful of times in my life :) but I thought it would be a cool experiment to see- these horrible views, how different would it be to read them if you removed all the profanity, slurs etc.

Thanks again for taking the time to write, I think it’s my first interaction on HN after a lot of lurking

Part of what makes 4chan 4chan is the lack of politeness. Politeness is nice and really important but sometimes it gets in the way and you want the honesty. You don't want that all the time but you need it occasionally.

Thanks for the comment. A valuable perspective :)

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