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Post by Helen Toner on X

Helen Toner@hlntnr

Fun demos of DeepSeek's new r1 shutting itself down when asked about topics the CCP doesn't like ⬇️ But the censorship is obviously being done by a layer on top, not the model itself. Anyone have the open source version running and able to test whether/how much it also censors?

521 likes42 repliesPosted Jan 20, 2025

View the original on X Written by Helen Toner. Captured Sep 4, 2026.

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Based on absolute engagement — the platform doesn’t expose follower counts here, so large accounts score higher.

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Why it worked

Ends on a question, which is the most reliable way to turn readers into repliers.
Short enough to read in full without expanding, which removes a step before the point lands.

The mechanics

Hook: Plain observation
Structure: Hook → Turn
Style: Conversational paragraphs at a steady pace.
Tone: plain, matter-of-fact
Written for: People building with AI

Analysis by ViralLoop — not written by the original author.

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More from Helen Toner

I mostly agree with this, but it does seem like a bad and trust-damaging move to degrade performance on AI R&D tasks silently, rather than handling like other topics of concern (warning box + bumping the chat down to a less capable model)

One thing the Pentagon is very likely underestimating: how much Anthropic cares about what *future Claudes* will make of this situation. Because of how Claude is trained, what principles/values/priorities the company demonstrate here could shape its "character" for a long time.

On self-driving cars: "In medicine, when a treatment shows this level of benefit, we stop the trial early. Continuing to give patients the placebo becomes unethical. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do. In driving, we’re all the control group."

Every so often, OpenAI employees ask me how I see the co now. It's always tough to give a simple answer. Some things they're doing, eg on CoT monitoring or building out system cards, are great. But the dishonesty & intimidation tactics in their policy work are really not. E.g:

Sharing this, recorded a few weeks ago. Most of the episode is about AI policy more broadly, but this was my first longform interview since the OpenAI investigation closed, so we also talked a bit about November. Thanks to @bilawalsidhu for a fun conversation!

New piece from Tasha McCauley and me, on the connection between why the OpenAI board decided to fire Sam and recent debates about whether the AI industry needs outside oversight. (Believe it or not, we had basically finished writing this before the last couple weeks of news)

Helen Toner on AI · ViralLoop