davehtaylor

SA is just 4chan in a tuxedo. Both are cesspits.

You seem to not understand the scale at which these things operate. We’re not talking about niche tools that only incels and creeps will use to jerk off to CP, we’re talking about tools that can be used to manipulate, spread mis- and disinformation, and imitate actual people doing things they wouldn’t normally do, and can do so at a scale that is exponentially greater than anything we’ve ever seen.

Go take a look at Facebook. Log out of YouTube and look at the front page. Try to do a Google search. Look at the absolute flood of AI generated shit. I know a lot of authors of short fiction, and the publications that they submit to that normally see a couple hundred to a couple thousands of submission per month have been flooded with hundreds of thousands of submissions per month, all AI garbage.

Now imagine it becomes so good that it’s indistinguishable from the real. Pics, vids, articles. The scale and speed at which people can create society-level harm and destroy lives is incomprehensible. This is not a “think of the children” thing. This is an inflection point where you will never know if the video you just saw of a political candidate calling for the extermination of X group is real or not. But the harms and consequences will be real. You will see revenge porn not just of nudes, but of videos of people seemingly doing horrific acts, and having their lives ruined because of it. And it will happen so fast and in such a flood that nothing will be able to stop it or counter it, because no one will see the truth buried in the inundation.

Again, we could do some of this now, but not at the unimaginable scale or speed that AI generation allows for.

This is not a good thing. And if this is the world you want, then there is no reasoning with you. You are truly lost.

Hang on. Are you actually saying that making fake porn of teenagers without their consent is a good thing because it teaches valuable skills?!

This right here.

I’m so fucking sick of the “it’s just a tool” or “sO YoU wANna BAn EvErYthiNG?!” bullshit. It’s all bad faith garbage that people hide behind because they want the results of these “tools.” They want the AI porn fakes of teenagers and celebrities (because they’re pathetic creeps and incels with no concept of dignity or consent). They want to be able to rip off actual artists so they can pretend like they’ve done something “creative” so they can get social media clout. They’re completely unserious people who can’t be reasoned with. They need to be shunned and shamed.

I think one of the big things that would be great is having a shared space between 2 or more people who can all be in, and interact with, a virtual/augmented environment. Say you and I are working on a prototype of some sort. We can put a model of it in our shared space, and manipulate it together. we can see what it looks like in the real world, touch it, move it, change it, shape it, etc. Tony Stark kinda stuff. Lots of people in maker space, or engineering, design, etc. would go nuts for this I’d imagine. But I think one of the things we lack right now is physical feedback. It’s really hard to wave your hands around in the air trying to manipulate something but having no feedback at all. And I don’t know what it would even take to make that work. Having gloves with some sort of haptics is a start, but it’s not enough.

Otherwise, why do I gaf about my spreadsheets floating in front of me? Watching a movie could be fun, but I can just watch a regular tv and not have a massive headache and feel like my eyes are being ripped out 20 mins into it. If it’s just going to be another monitor, then I don’t see how you’re going to drive mass adoption with that

Yeah this looks like more of an alternative to Sublime

Might be neat. Might check it out. But devs really need to stop asking me to install things by curling a script and piping it into my shell. There are better ways to do this. Doing this leaves a massive possible attack surface.

On a policy level, if we are to bring about a more harmonious Internet (and civil society), we will likely have to tackle wealth inequality and make our political institutions more democratic.

Really burying the lede there.

Another big factor is a lack of moderation, as well as the things that get platformed. People sit and stew in a broth of violent, hateful rhetoric all day long because platforms not only allow that kind of content, but massively profit from it. We seriously need social media companies, podcast apps, YouTube and other video hosting sites, etc. to step the fuck up and deplatform misinformation, disinformation, bigotry, hatemongering, and ragebait. Do not give it light. Do not give it oxygen. Smother it. Ban it. And be extremely aggressive about it. You wanna cry about censorship? Go ahead. But the first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, and you are also free to setup your own website/service/app/whatever and spew your own bile there.

We further need social media companies to change their algorithms to prevent them from rewarding inflammatory posts. People want to have millions of followers and be big stars on the web, and ragebait, lies, and misinformation are perfect ways to do that. It’s gets you to the top of the heap because there’s no such thing as a “bad” click. You still watched it. You still replied (even if to refute it). And that gave it a boost. That shit has to stop. The entire social landscape is built on top of this inflammatory foundation.

Exactly.

Also far, far more often than not, when someone talks about “corrupt banking systems” they’re about two steps away from quoting The Protocols.

It’s all Libertarian/anarcho-captialist pablum, pushed by people who think society was a bad idea

I definitely agree Bluesky is the best alternative right now. It feels like twitter used to, but with much better moderation and no Dorsey (or Musk). And I love things like Aegis, and Feeds.

Threads’ algorithm is extremely aggressive and just viewing a single post will send your entire feed into reccs for that kind of thing. It constantly refreshes, making discovery and finding things extremely difficult. And it’s just Instagram-y. It’s not about building community, it’s just there for throwaway “content.”

But I do agree that Bluesky is doing federation in a way that simplifies it for the users. Non-tech users can just be there and don’t even have to think about it. In fact, most people there (at least across my feeds) have no idea what Federation even is or means. If others want to federate or hang somewhere else and have the knowledge to do that, they can. So they make it much more frictionless.

Because federation is a mess, and doesn’t really solve the problem. There’s no quick elevator pitch that non-technical people can understand, on-boarding is painful, and even if you as the publisher understand it, your audience may not.

Exactly.

Gods this whole “if we outlaw AI only outlaws will have AI” bullshit is so so tiresome and naive

You mean to tell me that the purpose-built disinformation machine that you developed has been used by malicious actors to spread disinformation?!

WTF are you talking about, “trapping” you?

If you can’t give a full-throated condemnation of a company using slave labor, then I don’t know what your position is supposed to be.

Wait. We’re talking about making sure a company isn’t using slave labor in their supply chain, and creating consequences for them doing so. And that’s a problem for you? You think it’s fucked up that a company forced to abide by rules preventing them from using slave labor?

Yeah I think I agree. The law should be: if you can’t positively confirm it’s clean, you can’t use it.

We should have standards for the treatment of people, and strive not to participate in or reward those who treat people in unacceptable ways.

Totally agree.

It’s not good for a country to create an unfair marketplace. And it is an unfair marketplace when rules which acutely affect only certain people drastically for the good of all, are implemented too quickly to adapt to without major setbacks.

Just saying it should be phased in, to minimize local economic tearing.

Totally disagree.

Fines/tariffs/etc. are just cost of doing business for big business. Slowly enforcing regulation gives companies time to hedge, shuffle, and deflect without actually doing anything. Consequences should be hard and fast. Economies be damned. If an economy can’t stand on its own without companies acting ethically, or with them being punished for it, then it shouldn’t stand at all.

Yes, that’s exactly what I expect. If you can’t verify with 100% certainty that your supply chain isn’t using slave labor, then you stop using that supply chain. And if that costs the company an entire market, or even causes the company to fail, then so be it.

And that’s the problem. The average person isn’t looking for it, and will absolutely not see it. As long as it’s good enough, that’s all that matters. A plausible enough video of Joe Biden talking about rounding up Christians into internment camps that gets shared on Facebook, or something like that which panders to right-wing bigotry, is enough to get people going. Even real images and videos that are miscaptioned are enough, and even when a link is there that disproves the caption.

People seriously underestimate just how horrifying the possibilities are with this shit. And as high stakes as this election cycle is, and the state of politics in this country, the tendency for people to latch on to anything that affirms their preexisting ideals creates a fucking minefield

So we shouldn’t do anything about it, and just let big corps scoop up all the data they want, regardless of ownership?

1. The largest code contributors to Linux are corporate contributions
2. Regular people who contribute to OSS do so as a passion project, as a hobby, and have other unrelated jobs that pay the bills. Those people still have to make a living, they’re just not doing it from their software contributions. Journalism isn’t a hobby and you can’t work a day job and still be an effective journalist. News orgs don’t come together as hobby projects.

I’m not defending advertising. I hate it and think it’s ruined the web. I’m just addressing the analogy here wrt Linux.