🔮 oracle of dylphi :crumb_dancing: ðŸ‡¬ðŸ‡¾Feb 20
icymi, local net person Cory Doctorow has decided to give up his unofficial role as the fediverse's Emotional Support Celebrity in bombastic style by coming to the defence of "open source" LLM's https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/ (not tagging him to avoid a pile on)

Tante has a good write up about the strangeness of his argument here https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/ (again, don't want to pile on).

I also wanted to add that Cory deploy's all this rhetorical barrage in service of... having a robot proofreader. His use case is not restoring justice and dignity to the underpaid, traumatised transnational workers who built the models he uses (https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor-behind-artificial-intelligence/), it is not helping the people of Southern Memphis escape smog and pollution, it is not protecting the mostly female victims of NCII generation (indeed, millions of private unmanaged generative machines might make that problem even harder to fight against). It is not a meaningful argument about leaving space for "good" or ethical generation - it is sophistry in service of avoiding the inconvenience of actually assessing if he's acting ethically. Tante is right to expect more from him.
Pluralistic: Six Years of Pluralistic (19 Feb 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show thread🔮 oracle of dylphi :crumb_dancing: ðŸ‡¬ðŸ‡¾Feb 20
all I'm saying is if he'd sat down and gone "who am I helping with this?" the answer makes it clear that this isn't a useful thing to do with LLM's

because the answer is "Cory Doctorow" and no one else
Show threadmx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)Feb 20
@kalviter @Sharksonaplane we have long since been baffled as to why people treat that guy as anything other than a capitalist hack writer trying to sell you his books and speeches, but maybe this will break people's illusions finally
Show threadDźwiedziuFeb 20

@atax1a
Maybe because of the body of his generally anti-captslist work?

@kalviter @Sharksonaplane

Show threadmx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)Feb 20
@dzwiedziu he is a slop purveyor and a kept pet of the tech industry. you are a rube if you believe him to be anticapitalist
Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminFeb 20
@atax1a @dzwiedziu I've never once seen him promote alternatives to capitalism. He exposes very specific problems with capitalism, but he has never to the best of my knowledge challenged the edifice directly or even entertained the thought.
Show threadMilo Trujillo
@reflex @atax1a @dzwiedziu He's written a whole book on the subject - Walkaway. You can critique the book in a variety of ways, but it most certainly promotes an alternative to capitalism.
Feb 20 at 11:00pmWeb
Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminFeb 20

@illegaldaydream @atax1a @dzwiedziu I have not read it so I'm not going to say you are wrong, but the summary on wikipedia seems to imply it's a fiction story set in a near future world where people can quit working because tech made it all possible.

That world does not exist, is not likely to exist, is not a solution to society and is what people like Elon and Sam promote constantly to distract from harm.

Maybe it's better than the summary, I don't know.

Show threadMilo TrujilloFeb 20
@reflex Yes, most of Doctorow's work explores social issues through fiction, including his post-scarcity anarchist utopia. As I said, we can critique that vision, but to suggest that Doctorow has never entertained the thought of alternatives to capitalism is demonstrably false.
Show threadDavid Fleetwood - RG AdminFeb 20
@illegaldaydream I do not consider that to be a serious work of anticapitalism, but I don't challenge your right to do so since you've read it.