@jrconlin @ai6yr @tante I understand that Mastodon is a public effort, and I have support it in a variety of ways. I've been doing patreon for 2-3 sites I didn't even use, even as I was hiring my own server separately.

But even if we think it's a public effort, do we want it to be a declining one? Perhaps only for right-thinking people?

@jrconlin @ai6yr @tante If Mastodon was in any kind of growth phase I think that might be a stronger argument.

But if the platform is shrinking at the same time as people are putting out purity requirements, maybe not.

The top post I replied to is obviously a purity test.

@ai6yr @jrconlin @tante here's the thing, what if he's not?

What if he's a mainstream technology observer, and what if Mastodon is in the process of divorcing themselves from the mainstream?

That's where I'm putting my bet for what it's worth.

@jrconlin @ai6yr @tante fwiw

https://mas.to/@carnage4life/116351978261689682

@3Fingers @ai6yr @tante I definitely got that vibe already, that many on Mastodon, and to a lesser extent Bluesky, approach AI as a class issue.

Seems strange, both because it's what AI has been building towards for the last 70 years. No surprises here that the first command would be "ok, read everything."

But also because Moore's law applies. All of this will be local and distributed over time.

We're actually quite lucky that there are no binding patents or copyrights on AI.

@mrbase @ai6yr @tante so we are into a muddy legal ground that will probably have to be battled out in the actual courts, about how a fair use doctrine invented in 1741 for copyrighted works applies forward now.

That's just the input side of course. On the output side it seems clear that too closely reproducing an existing work would be a violation as well.

2/2

@mrbase @ai6yr @tante we definitely ended up in an unsatisfactory situation with respect to ads, brokers, and blockers. There's no denying that.

It's interesting that no matter what your website license says, the courts say that the blockers are legal, filtering available content under some concept of fair use.

So we are back to what exactly are AIs doing that is stealing? We can give public domain data a clean pass. I think that they honor most open source and Creative Commons licenses 1/2

@ai6yr @tante it seems pretty similar doesn't it? Taking what you want from a website, regardless of the host's intentions?

@ai6yr @tante That's a very shallow way to represent it. I would say I understand American copyright law, and I understand the contradiction of people who run ad blockers while claiming they support copyright law and the contradiction of people who run ad blockers saying that AI training is stealing.

Public domain exists. Open source exists. Creative Commons exists. And the body of law on fair use goes back quite a long time.

@tante @ai6yr I wrote about this yesterday, Mastodon's decision to voluntarily downsize in the face of AI. I think it's sad, but I'll take the clue and start unfollowing.