this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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If you’re confused why you can’t currently download Ubuntu 23.10 despite the fact it’s been released (and blogs like mine are telling you it’s out) there is a reason.

[From Twitter]: "We have identified hate speech from a malicious contributor in some of our translations submitted as part of a third party tool outside of the Ubuntu Archive. The Ubuntu 23.10 image has been taken down and a new version will be available once the correct translations have been restored."

Now, I’m not 100% certain but from poking around the Ubuntu Desktop Installer GitHub — I know, I’m nosey — appears to have been (sadly) the Ukrainian translation file that was hijacked. I ran the text through a translator and …Honestly, I wish I hadn’t.

It’s a broad range of offensive sentences touching on politics, sexuality, and current events. Though shocking, none of it is particularly coherent in scope. It seems to be written to be provocative for provocations sake – the sort of stuff people post on X to farm likes from far-right bots.

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[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 163 points 1 year ago (14 children)

As an aside remark, it's really funny how everyone has to elaborate what the fuck they're talking about when they talk about Twitter.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Ubuntu explains the situation

could have just been written as

In a tweet, Ubuntu explains the situation

but the epic genius elon decided to destroy all brand recognition. Truly incredible thing to witness. Twitter literally got its own branded terms into common lexicon and he just set it all on fire.

[–] xkforce@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He didnt just set the brand recognition on fire, elon basically did everything someone would do if they wanted to intentionally run twitter into the ground.

[–] spider@lemmy.nz 24 points 1 year ago

Now spez needs to rename Reddit and make his idol proud.

[–] Venat0r@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Maybe that was his plan for creating true free speech, by driving everyone away from twitter to mastodon...

A very 200iq plan, only cost him $44B

[–] xkforce@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

It cost him a lot more than that. He lost about 200 billion in stock value that he owned and among the companies he "runs" about a trillion was lost in total due to investers dumping stock after seeing his ineptitude on full display.

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[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No no, it's not 'a tweet ' anymore, it's 'an X(, formerly known as a tweet)'

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

"In an X(formerly known as a tweet) on X(formerly known as Twitter) ..."

It just rolls off the tongue!

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[–] darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

The current branding gives more a placeholder asset feeling than a memorable identity. Sorry the twitter logo isn't loading so we'll show you an "X" in the meantime

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 6 points 1 year ago

Why read X posts when you can watch X videos

[–] authed@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] clifftiger@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago
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[–] willya@lemmyf.uk 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

SMH what is wrong with people.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I mean… it’s likely just some Russian trolls fucking around

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[–] Kalkaline@leminal.space 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people just need a punch in the face to understand why they shouldn't use hate speech.

[–] square252@feddit.de 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A punch in the face with a chair…

[–] bluefirex@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some people need a high-five. With a billiard table. In the face.

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[–] TheCrawlingKingSnake@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago

Redneck, or pirate, or leet speak language options are there to let developers test the translations without them having to be bilingual.

[–] palordrolap@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

OK what's the deal with those m's and w's?? It looks like a standard seriffed BIOS/ROM font except for those.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

That is weird. Didn’t even notice til I read this.

[–] quackers@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Nobody is even slightly concerned that this made it to release? if they can shove in hate speech without anyone noticing, cant be much harder to slowly introduce a backdoor over several commits.

[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Minecraft got in trouble when the Afrikaans translation had the n-word (in English) due to a malicious translator. CDPR had an issue with the Ukrainian translation making references to the ongoing war.

This sort of thing happens somewhat frequently. It's the same reason how fake sign language interpreters can hold positions. It's hard to verify the accuracy of a translation in a language you don't speak. They have to trust that the translator did their job right.

Translations are usually just text strings. No reasonable project would allow translators to write code.

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean honestly though, if there are code reviews, how hard would it be to just make a quick "translation review", putting the stuff through a translator program, and verifying it's not obvious bullshit? Especially for new/unknown contributors. Of course it's additional work, again, but a sanity check should easily be possible.

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Quite hard. We had Open Source'ish LLMs for only around six months, if they are even up to the task of verifying a translation is another issue and if they are up to Debian's Open Source guidelines yet another. This is obviously going to be the long term solution, but the tech for that has simply not been around for very long.

And of course once you have translation tools good enough for the task, you might just skip the human translator altogether and just use machine translations.

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I more meant that if something contains "fucking kill all ukrainians and trans people", which it sounds like this was something like that, that should be possible to see even with bad translation tools.

[–] 2ncs@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

I would assume since it was a block of raw text in Ukrainian in a translation file, it would have passed more under the radar than something like a backdoor. I do not know how things are reviewed before being pushed to release though.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

Not really, not only because of the language but also because the same scrutiny between code and content wouldn't have to be the same. I also don't expect core aspects of the distribution, e.g kernel, package manager, cryptography libraries, to be verified the same way than a random software, e.g Kdenlive. So... is it bad, absolutely. Does it mean everything should be questioned again? Probably not.

[–] java@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm sure more people know C or Python than Ukrainian at Canonical. It looks like this particular change has been authorized by a third-party localization project, though I'm not sure the whole process works.

[–] priapus@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Translations are not going to be analyzed as thoroughly as code, and this was still found quite quickly. Submitted code is analyzed much more thoroughly, often by multiple members or the project.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

It is very concerning, absolutely. With that said, it's entirely possible localization/translation reviews work differently than code reviews.

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[–] PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im amazed by peoples creativity.

I havent thought until now that such things like translations can be misused for hate speech.

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[–] Stewbs@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is just messed up and sad. Why do people do this stuff? Why do they have to act like assholes?

[–] atetulo@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're genuinely confused, it's because a lot of people live broken lives and it brings them joy to bring others down.

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[–] ladyanita22@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I read the changes, and it seems to me it was a stupid child. Not even someone malicious, but just a stupid love being edgy.

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[–] java@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The commit in question if anyone's interested: https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-provision/commit/6f4028057e55cebfc53cc45cb39831f7e6a176cb

I'm not sure why the author's account is not clickable - has he deleted it?

[–] Aatube@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

submitted as part of a third party tool outside of the Ubuntu Archive

Not every git user is guaranteed to have an account. In this case, most translators probably don’t as it was automatically translated with weblate, which Ubuntu appears to have since removed.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

But why not release 23.10 but without the affected language pack? The Ukrainian translation can be released once the vandalism is fixed.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Weird, I downloaded the Kubuntu 23.10 ISO yesterday. There wasn't s link on the site but I changed the 23.04 link to 23.10 and it got in fine.

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