To anyone thinking about joining BlueSky, especially artists: everything you post is sent to a third party for AI labeling.
BlueSky uses AI to label content for moderation, and to do that they use a company called https://thehive.ai. If you look through their privacy policy, you will see that they can use content sent to them to train models for all their services, which include generative AI for both text and images.
Update: https://meow.social/@FluffyDeveloper/110652053858910840
@FluffyDeveloper This is very worrying if true. I just got here and I'm still trying to figure it all out.
My concern is that if it's forcing AI on its users, and only people with those sort of right-leaning, libertarian values use it, then it is only learning from those people.
Boycotting companies, non-fungy bollocks and crypto bollocks might make those things go down in value, but I don't know if the same logic applies here. If it goes mainstream enough, people who don't like that stuff may just be forced underground.
I might be wrong, but I was hoping Bluesky would be the 'new Twitter' that fixes its mistakes and Mastodon would, if anything, just be a slightly clunky stopgap. This news makes me feel like the whole internet would split into two camps based on values and political ideologies.
@briiz BlueSky and it's AT protocol are definitely the new Twitter, in the sense that they are backed by venture capitalists who have a very vested interested in controlling everything that happens on the network :/
ActivityPub and Mastodon are here to stay I think: they are extremely easy to implement, and while not as groundbreaking as e-mail was when it was first introduced, AP is just too big a change to simply fade away.
@FluffyDeveloper I'm a little confused though. In some of your replies, you say that the point is to offload all responsibility for moderation onto AI and the owners of various servers running on Bluesky, thereby just automating their income and having to do very little.
But you also say they have a vested interest in controlling everything that happens on the platform? Which is it?
Also does it mean that eventually if people want to start up other servers/instances running on Bluesky, you can avoid AI that way? Will there even be tools to help you customise your experience to that extent?
@briiz They have an interest because they paid for it, so eventually they will sanitise so they can start making money out of it as with every company-backed social media thus far. They talk about "composable moderationβ but it's really a fancy way to say racists are welcome :/
For the moment no other instances are allowed. The server code is open source though, so the AI functions could be removes, but if the main instance is big enough then posts and images will still make their way there.
@FluffyDeveloper Hmm. A lot to get my head around. But I think if everyone is using the main instance, doesn't that sort of defeat the point of a federal network in the first place?
I hope the media will eventually ask the right questions about this.
@briiz It definitely does, and I can't not be suspicious about the fact that they aren't allowing other instances yet.
Honestly, BlueSky is just too small to be interesting for the media beyond a few articles here and there. I have seen more than article about it though, and basically all of them criticise the hands-off approach to moderation.
@sirlan_ff00ff @briiz @FluffyDeveloper embrace, extend and extinguish pattern I believe you are referring to and...
Yep! I mean, it's like if you want good internet platforms it's better off being owned by the workers themselves instead of a megacorp.
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