Mastodawn

Remember, when you post misinformation and refuse to take it down because of all the engagement or fake Internet points, *you are part of the problem*!!!

In this case it could have been avoided by reverse image searching, which shows the image was recently created with AI. Always look up the original source and corroborate the claims with reliable sources! I should have done this before boosting, but was lazy.

There's a lot of stuff about AI-generated image, video, or text "tells", but—as with good old Photoshopped images and emailed urban legends—the most reliable method is not to look at the content itself, but *find the original source*.

The source may show the content was:

- real but taken out of context (e.g. had a caption attached stating something false)
- real but unethically produced (e.g. posed/harassed wildlife)
- real and by an actual human being who should be credited
- originally from an ad agency, special effects artist, satire site, obscure TV show, generative AI, etc.
- called out as false by people in the comments

Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️Feb 26

@nev

And sometimes a photographer will photo edit a post for artistic reasons, in order to create art, not record reality.

https://the5thc.blogspot.com/search?q=Franzis

THE FIFTH COLUMN

"This column is dedicated to the proposition that Canada (and indeed the world) is in a crisis situation and that fundamental social change is required to remedy this situation." - The First Column, Lambda November 2, 1971 This blog is inspired by my column of the same name in the Laurentian University Newspaper, Lambda, from 1971-1973. The title refers to the concept of subverting the system from within. To read key excerpts from those columns read the first few posts in this blog.

Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni)Feb 25

@nev same

I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥Feb 25

@nev All too often something like "I hate to be that guy, but your post is an obvious fake, and that person never said that" is met with "Yeah, but it's something I could imagine that they WOULD say."

People suck.

Maddy 🏳️‍⚧️ - ADHD-powered

Feb 25

@nev Oh, for fuck's sake... Yeah, I should have done better due diligence too.

Alex, the Hearth Fire Feb 25

@nev I can't find the original to unboost it

@WizardOfDocs She deleted it and posted the slop anew with words only. @nev

Alex, the Hearth Fire Feb 25

@NatureMC @nev welp

alster Feb 25

@nev Ah, now I know why it looked familiar, because this exact one did make rounds some months ago!
And I fell again.

Gondor Feb 25

@nev
Just wondering why someone would come up with such an AI shit. 🤔
Purpose seems only to #floodthezonewithshit 🙄😡

betalars

@home Feb 25

@grootinside idc maybe it's just some urban legend that some concerned snail fan got tangled up in.

Might be a troll, too.

kawunngg Feb 25

@betalars @grootinside
yeah, I think I heard that already before AI took off, so I guess it's just an urban legend.

Nina Felwitch

Feb 25

@nev your source link doesn't lead anywhere on my device.

RadAufheber*in 🚴 🚲 🎡Feb 25

@ninafelwitch Lucky you, it's a masked link switching instantly to FB. 🤢

@radaufheber @nev ah. But that's fine in this case because Facebook IS the source. Where else would it point?
On my device I get

"About this image
No results were found to help you learn more about this image. This could be because it's private, very new, or doesn't appear on many pages."

Maybe because I have redirection blocked.

Idzie Feb 25

@nev I'd boosted too. 🥲 Thanks for the correction and added info!

mayu Feb 25

@nev who gains anything by spreading misinformation about how to handle snails? are they a criminal group that's gonna plant snails in places and then steal your wallet while you're waiting 30 seconds to pick the snail up /j /lh

betalars

@home Feb 25

@mayu you can't imagine the stuff people do because of internet cloud, urban myths and cognitive biases.

It might be a concerned animal lover or a content troll.

It's very difficult to tell, especially as incompetent people are now more and more empowered to create competent looking graphics.

And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

@mayu The FB site which was the origin, has something around 250k followers. It's for the clicks. And often they are connected with fake websites, fake youtube accounts etc where clicks are translated in money.

@nev

@NatureMC @mayu I'd add that posting recycled viral stuff can be used to 1) appear legit and genuine, and 2) amass a high number of followers. The account can then be sold and pivoted to something else, if desired. Accounts that aren't obviously spam and have lots of followers are much more valuable than, say, brand-new ones with no history.

@nev OMG, I hadn't even thought of such "profitable" ideas! 😱 @mayu

Smbsy Feb 25

@nev oh no! Me too :(

Androcat Feb 25

@nev Stellar response!

RadAufheber*in 🚴 🚲 🎡Feb 25

@nev ⚠️ Warning: The link "https:// g . co/about/jb9fd7" is a masked g👀gle🤮 link to FB switching instantly to "https://www. (feces)book . com/groups/allcreatures1/posts/3203453276628751/" 😡

Everything else I like in your toot.

Gaymeshonk Plushie

Feb 25

@nev The post has been deleted since it seems

@sharkitty thanks!

@nev I'm one of those expressing skepticism. I'm going off my experience with snails and my understanding of their biology (which is I can teach an Invertebrate Biology course but not at the level of a Gastropod specialist).

But is there a Malacologist that can confirm that the information is incorrect?

The only Fediverse Malacologist that I'm aware of is our Clam Man Dan @dantheclamman

Quinn Comendant Feb 25

@ubi @nev @dantheclamman Having not seen the original post, now I really want to know how to handle snails safely. I guess, ideally, “don’t pick them up” is the right answer, but what if you want to save them if they’re on a road?

Dr. Dan Killam Feb 25

@com @ubi @nev I think the mantle collapse thing is overblown. I've heard it mentioned before by hobbyists as if snails will 100% die if they are yanked, and that is just false. I can't speak for all species, but the ones common in pet trade and most of the wild ones we encounter are adapted to deal with predators yanking them. They pull into their shell, retract their operculum if they have it, and wait for the predator to move on.

I myself just transferred 50 juvenile mystery snails (Pomacea bridgesii) I raised to new homes. I do think the advice to nudge them to get them to retract, rather than just yanking them up, is a good idea to reduce the stress for the animal, which can impact their growth and survival. That's what I did, just a tap with tweezers. Some were still adhered to tank glass so I nudged them a bit more to get them to retract. But I don't think yanking them leads to a sudden destruction of organs.

Something similar came up when I was raising giant clams (mostly Tridacna derasa) and some people were claiming exposing them to air is fatal, and you need to 'burp' the clams to protect them or they'll get an air embolism or something. This is just silly because in the wild, these clams are commonly in the intertidal and can handle being exposed to air for hours at a time. They burp themselves!

I appreciate being compassionate to these invertebrates and caring about their welfare. That's a beautiful thing to me. But let's not make stuff up about their biology and definitely not cite AI about their care!! The best way to ensure good care is to look back to the conditions that these creatures face in the wild and try to replicate those conditions as closely as possible!

@dantheclamman thanks for the informations! @com @ubi @nev

ubi Feb 25

@NatureMC @dantheclamman @com @nev Based on other conversations that I'm having, it seems like the AI ingested advice from Giant African Land Snail hobbyists about handling snails, discarded the context, mixed it up with some hallucinated facts and generalised it to all snails.

@ubi @NatureMC @dantheclamman @com yeah, seen similar errors before with AI-generated text. That's what's so insidious about it—elements may often be true in some contexts and it turns into something subtly wrong that seems plausible to non-experts and takes some effort to untangle and debunk.

@nev This is what makes me so immensely tired. I'm not a scientist. But as a journalist, I have to get the facts. And meanwhile, this work of untangling and debunking takes more of my time than what I really had to do: writing!
And after writing, I have to deal with people questioning the facts because they heard something "completely different on Facebook", and those sites have many more followers, so "they must know better."
I'm so extremely tired of #AISlop and #LLM

@ubi @dantheclamman @com

ubi Feb 25

@nev @NatureMC @dantheclamman Thanks to everyone for helping to debunk this. While the AI slop infographics are insidious, this thread is a step forward on how to debunk them.

It's a good community effort to flag suspected disinformation, discuss the erroneous facts and contact a subject matter expert to verify the information.

UkeleleEric Feb 25

@ubi @NatureMC @dantheclamman @com @nev which is one of the many reasons why we should eschew AI. If, in 'summarising', it gets things wrong, it is no good as a tool.

Dr. Dan Killam Feb 25

@ubi @NatureMC @com @nev that's interesting. I have heard it about L. fulica but I don't have expertise to know if it's true or not, maybe it is more common for them based on their extreme morphology, being so large and terrestrial. if it is real and more common for them, another piece of evidence of why they aren't good pets aside from the more widely known invasiveness and disease vector issues.

Otte Homan - remember Geordie Feb 25

@dantheclamman @com @ubi @nev the internet is very good at these "might -> could -> can -> will -> always" extrapolations ....

Sara Feb 25

@dantheclamman @com @ubi @nev that's exactly what I thought of when I read this: I've moved literally hundreds of Pomaceae in aquariums over the years and this has never been an issue

The gallant knight Feb 25

@nev Fuck that shit. I fell for it. Not going to reboost anything from people I don't know anymore. I'm so tired of it all.

Ypsilenna Gloomvale Feb 25

@nev Oh. I didn't realize it was AI generated, but still I didn't boost it because the illustrations seemed off.
I picked up plenty of snails as a kid and I literally never saw their feet break.
Thanks for the info, now I feel better about not boosting it 😆

🍀March Mastodoness🍀Feb 25

@nev What's the account for the OG post so I can block and report them for falsely sharing misinfo?

@mast0d0nphan they took it down!

Darkstar Feb 25

@nev Thanks so much for the callout on this, appreciate the help in catching AI slop. I guess now I'm bemused why someone would go to the trouble to make an incorrect graphic about snails.

worms Feb 25

@nev damn, i suspected but then i saw a bunch of ppl i know boost it so i told myself "i trust them and its probably fine", i should be more careful! I did try to go unboost the post and I can't find it anymore so i guess it has been taken down?

@grepfruit yep

@nev Excellent work showing the right way to illustrate a bad image without spreading it!

- Making the most prominent visual element the overlaid explanation of why it's wrong.

- Blurring the underlying image so that the content is no longer readable but it's recognizable as the original folks might have seen already.

@dalias thanks, I try

clang-enby Feb 25

@nev

Did the post with that infographic get deleted? I wanted to unboost it, but I could not for the life of me find it.

@sudo200 yes, the original poster deleted it

@nev and posted it anew! @sudo200

Wow…

@NatureMC @sudo200 are you KIDDING me

@nev no. @sudo200

Granny Art (Shrimp) (Joni)Feb 25

@NatureMC @nev @sudo200 I abused my mod privileges and just suspended them, even though their instance is already limited from ours.

@nev That account deleted the post but repeated the same slop now in words (I think just for "cutting" the critics). The hashtags there speak for pure click-hunt.
Therefore; I also reported it and even blocked it. I no longer tolerate the posting of misinformation after the person has been informed by several parties and should be aware of the facts.
It made me so angry that I wrote an article: https://steady.page/en/naturematchcuts/posts/28951404-a41f-4215-ab89-bc35dbc41233

Snails Or Slop Slime

You're probably all familiar with those pages on the big social media platforms that run as “entertainment” and steal content wherever they can. The main thing is to…

Steady