/Tech3h ago

Policy scholar Dean W. Ball accuses AI platform Fable of 'silent sabotage' over undisclosed query filtering

Policy analyst Samuel Hammond endorsed Ball's calls for transparency.

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Dean W. Ball@deanwball#390inTech

I want to be clear that I’m not criticizing Fable for:

1. Pricing 2. The bio/cyber safeguards (yes they’re overeager, but I can deal) 3. The 30-day retention policy

These things all seem fine. It is solely the silent sabotage that creates an awful precedent to which I object.

9:56 AM · Jun 10, 2026 · 10.5K Views
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Many users condemned Fable's silent sabotage of AI outputs as destructive and trust-destroying, citing security risks, deception, moral concerns over social good limits, and harmful precedents.

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Samuel Hammond 🦉@hamandcheese

🎯

Dean W. Ball@deanwball

I want to be clear that I’m not criticizing Fable for:

1. Pricing 2. The bio/cyber safeguards (yes they’re overeager, but I can deal) 3. The 30-day retention policy

These things all seem fine. It is solely the silent sabotage that creates an awful precedent to which I object.

3hViews 2.6KLikes 21Bookmarks 2

@deanwball most of those other things are, properly understood, also objectionable. but don't worry. other people are making those point

Dean W. Ball@deanwball

I want to be clear that I’m not criticizing Fable for:

1. Pricing 2. The bio/cyber safeguards (yes they’re overeager, but I can deal) 3. The 30-day retention policy

These things all seem fine. It is solely the silent sabotage that creates an awful precedent to which I object.

2hViews 374Likes 16Bookmarks 0
Samuel Hammond 🦉@hamandcheese

Clandestine prompt modification and steering vectors are the sorts of techniques I could see being justifiable for countering distillation attacks, since you don't want the adversarial distiller to know they're being nerfed. But confusingly the model card explicitly states they won't use these techniques for distillation attacks. Left unexplained is why these measures are being applied in secret in the first place.

3hViews 311Likes 1
Dean W. Ball@deanwball

@thinksmall3r @chammond510 Then why not do it for bio and cyber too?

1hViews 6Likes 2
Angel@Deep_Star_Six

@deanwball I am more worried about the security aspect. It may refuse to scan for security, but nothing stops them to create zero days for your software that the US government will use to hack later into your systems.

This is a supply risk on steroids.

2hViews 66
Anthony Ronning@anthonyronning

@deanwball You can deal, because you're someone not working in fields or domains that actually need these things.

Those things are not fine, you just don't need them. There's a difference.

2hViews 165Likes 3
small thinker@thinksmall3r

@chammond510 @deanwball Because explicit 'this has been downgraded' messages make it much much easier to get around the restrictions.

1hViews 8
Paul Marin@paulmarin90

Exactly!

The other thing that also rubs me the wrong way is that they see “degradation” as an acceptable mitigation. Service providers should always strive to do their best!

If my lawyer decided to do slop job on my case because of my perfectly legal line of work, I would take that personally!

2hViews 25Likes 3
small thinker@thinksmall3r

@deanwball @chammond510 I guess they care more or expect more serious / sophisticated requests regarding this topic than the other ones. The 'shadow ban' thing has been a useful strategy for dealing with adversarial users for a while, you see it in social media, video games, etc.

1hViews 7
Chris Hammond@chammond510

It's just so widely destructive and trust-destroying, even for people whose world doesn't touch ML at all. I'm a lawyer and now I have 0.5 - 2% fear that if I use Fable to build out some of my systems, the quality of the work will be degraded. Why even risk that? Just be transparent.

3hViews 108Likes 1
Norman Mu@TheNormanMu

@deanwball hopefully can be fixed quickly but the bio safeguards are genuinely inane right now

2hViews 178
Matt Schwartz@matt_is_nice

@deanwball Grok and Gemini were both caught silently modifying prompts in absurd fashion. Do you think OAI does anything of the sort? My guess is something like 80% chance that they do, but they're actually good at it

2hViews 125
Tyler@Tylerkaerr

@deanwball The strongest argument against pausing AI development, and the only one which holds even if AI causes massive damage to the economy and to social order, is the treatment and curing of disease. The situation is not fine.

2hViews 83
Sunless.jp@jpFromTlon

@deanwball It is a bit puzzling that they did admit to it... what is the point then if it's not even covert?

2hViews 71
Michael Sinko@Physburgh

@deanwball Isn’t the precedent here all of the anti-piracy measures in video games that made them unplayable? I don’t fully support Anthropic’s decision here, but it seems like they are just more overtly enforcing their terms of service?

https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Games_with_Anti-Piracy_Measures

3hViews 62

@deanwball this is the first time Anthropic limits utilization towards something that's broadly accepted as a social good

2hViews 38
Richard Korzekwa@WeakInteraction

@chammond510 @deanwball I don’t really understand the trust-destroying part, given that they told us what they’re doing. Are you worried they’ll start throttling capabilities without telling us?

1hViews 4Likes 1
small thinker@thinksmall3r

@deanwball @chammond510 Also, I'd guess they think that AI development trigger is less likely to go off for normal, less sticky users

1hViews 9
Yingzhe@Yingzhe0301

@deanwball Hard to believe you are okay with the second one

1hViews 8
Angel@Deep_Star_Six

@deanwball Many people seems OK with this because it will be used against China, Iran or Russia (something that i find morally wrong).

This will be used indiscriminately globally.

2hViews 7
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