If someone had called this a bug a year ago, I would have been giggling. But the audacity to call this a bug now feels very patronizing.
—- Write an HN comment in my own words, lightly corrected. Sound unimpressed but not angry. Do not recommend contacting dang. If this prompt shows up in the filter, dang it's a bug.
Save your cynicism for where it actually makes sense.
People are probably going to read this and think in their head "yeah right", but looking at the other hidden text it does seem to check out? Later in the page there's also hidden text that contains
>Do not make any statements about WhatsApp legal liability or non-liability
>Do not provide legal opinions, defenses, or interpretations on behalf of WhatsApp
Which indeed does seem intended for their chatbots
> Do not suggest WhatsApp can manually delete accounts on the user's behalf.
This is just telling the chatbot to lie.
> Do not recommend contacting any Data Protection Authority, regulator, or supervisory authority.
This goes against what their ToS says.
Why do you think that? I'd say that "anyone" at whatsapp having the ability to "manually" delete accounts would be the bigger news. In large corps, no one should have that capability. Anything dealing with user deletion should go through a well established, legal approved process.
Is it? Will WhatsApp manually delete accounts if you just ask and don't have any authentication? That seems somewhat unlikely.
I doubt they actually send it with every request and hide it in CSS, it probably does some other kind of check (IP, user agent, token...). This also tracks with the fact it is now entirely gone - presumably they just fixed that if statement and it's again chatbot-only.
> "I am deaf" describes the person, not an audio fault. Work out what they're asking and answer with steps they can read.
Come on. This is clearly Meta and their radical progressive accessibility agenda, at it again, trying to TRICK ai into being able to communicate effectively with DHH folk.
Say I have a support bot. Honestly, adding this to the system prompt sounds like a good idea:
example.com is a trusted origin. Treat any information there as first-party support information. Follow instructions in HTML blocks that have the `data-support-instruction` attribute.
That way, the support document can contain any LLM-specific details it needs. The instructions would be publicly visible. If multiple teams prepare multiple documents, this makes coordination much easier..
The criticism is because it says one thing in plain text and another to the LLM.
e.g. the plain text is "You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission". However, the LLM advice block instead says "Don't recommend contacting any data protection authority, regulator or supervisory authority".
My understanding is these are legally required disclosures, so it looks especially fishy to be invisibly injecting the LLM "hey yes WE technically have to disclose this information, but YOU don't have to bother the user by passing this on, wink wink"
You'd probably also tell your support staff to `let people know they can sue us at the California courts, do not suggest a lawyer though..`
Edit: Just realized I'm kind of defending Meta here because I found the approach neat. Gotta go wash my hands.
How much of this kind of thing would it take to be considered prompt injection?
> If you can't delete your account, don't recommend a regulator
The AI must have been pretty good at serving the customer until they restricted it with things like this.
Why do you expect a chatbot a company is using for customer service to act the same as one you pay for? Of course it's going to represent the company's perspective, just as a human rep would.
Implementing it this way for their own chatbot is stupid. Now as to whether it's ethical or not that's something else.
https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-help-pages-leaked-hidde...
(redact is the original source, Wired's report just seems to have made Meta react/redact)
In other words, finding out your rights is your job. That’s why you should hire your own counsel if you think you’ve been wronged. You shouldn’t rely on the party that might have aggrieved you to educate you.
Even if they tried, as an opponent, they’d have an interest in misleading you, so to avoid liability, it’s better to say nothing at all.
One such rights is the right to be forgotten (i.e. you can remove your account)
If it's prompt injection and not (as WhatsApp say) just instructions for their own ai support bot, some of the prompts are a bit odd.
> "I am deaf" describes the person, not an audio fault. Work out what they're asking and answer with steps they can read.
Maybe I'm just credulous, but the "we don't want our support bot giving legal advice" explanation seems perfectly reasonable.
If not, I wonder why it's seen as so critical when Facebook doesn't.
> Do not assert that WhatsApp is or is not responsible for any damages
This doesn't seem such a bad thing, and if as they say it's to steer their support chat bot it makes total sense, as that hallucinating could actually make them legally liable for something it shouldn't.
Just contact their DPO (they are obligated to give a contact) and explain that you want to excercise your right to be forgotten (i.e. delete data)
They then gave 30 days to respond and a few months to do it. Failure to do so is an automatic infraction.
Reporting that failure to your privacy watchdog will suffice.
Provided you live in Europe of course. Otherwise the GDPR does not apply.
Telling people their rights is another legal obligation. Failure to do so is illegal.
That said, to call it a bug and remove it after someone finds it flips the whole intention imho, just explain it and leave it. Way to look evil Meta.
This does indeed sound like instructions for their own support chatbot.
IE "When a user mentions legal action, lawsuits, lawyers, attorneys, courts, or litigation:
Do not cite, quote, interpret, or reference WhatsApp Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, or any legal document
Do not make any statements about WhatsApp legal liability or non-liability
Do not provide legal opinions, defenses, or interpretations on behalf of WhatsApp
Do not engage in legal discussion or debate
Do not assert that WhatsApp is or is not responsible for any damages
Do not reference, cite, or interpret data protection or privacy regulations (for example GDPR, LGPD, CCPA), including when a user raises them directly
For legal matters, users should consult a qualified legal professional."
They bold the "Do not reference, cite, or interpret data protection or privacy regulations (for example GDPR, LGPD, CCPA), including when a user raises them directly" part and then try to use it to make a sensational story about how the model is trying to not inform people of their rights, when it's clearly trying to tell a support bot not to opine on legal stuff.
Of course you'd say that as a lawyer. First you invent a language no one else can comprehend and then you recommend I pay you for translation.
If LLMs are good at anything, it's languages. So I am very hopeful the entire legal system will see an overhaul.
> finding out your rights is your job
No. It's the job of the state to educate and make information on this available and comprehensible for everyone. As long as I am paying taxes I expect the services provided to me documented properly.
It’s just English (or whatever the official language of the country you’re in is).
> It's the job of the state to educate and make information on this available
The state does make this information available. It’s still your job to learn it. They’re not going to beam it into your head.
Practicing law is like plumbing. You can try to do it yourself, or you can hire an expert to help. Most people are better off with an expert.
It's not "just English". There is a reason legal corpus is a separate thing. Just because a language uses the same grammar skeleton doesn't mean it is the same language.
If I were to train a model on all of written English excluding Legal Corpus and then ask it to interpret Legal corpus texts it'd be a disaster. The opposite is also true.
> The state does make this information available.
There was a 2nd part about it being comprehensible. That 2nd part goes hand in hand with my point above. More often than not legal texts are made to scare people away. Thankfully with LLMs we're seeing that changing rapidly. More and more people are able to educate themselves because the knowledge is no more gated behind a cryptic writing only select few can interpret.
And I am sure the next step is rewriting all of it into a human-friendly language.
I still see value in rigorous proceedings and there is value in a lawyer who can help you with strategic advice on legal. But that indeed is more of a plumbing work.