tante"On the acceptance of GenAI"
https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on-the-acceptance-of-genai/
https://smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on-the-acceptance-of-genai/
John
AI6YR Ben@buckfiftyseven @tante So let me get this right. You are an AI fan, and you don't like people who are not fans of AI (for the reasons in that post), so you are unfollowing people who don't like AI? That's fine, I guess. 🤔
@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.
@buckfiftyseven @tante Ah, so you are saying if you are using an ad blocker, you are as wrong as the AI companies?
Ulrik@buckfiftyseven @ai6yr @tante I think most running an adblocker is doing so to block data brokers, not the ad itself. Privacy is as much part of the equation here as the actual ad.
@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
@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
Clare Hooley@buckfiftyseven what a weird argument - no, looking at things you want to and not things you don’t is def. not equivalent to taking everything someone has worked to do, repackaging it and selling it through a for-profit company without consent. That’s even apart from it’s not simple static ads most have an issue with but profiled non-context data broker content served up for manipulative purposes (e.g. targeted political disinformation). 1/2
more simply, copyright has a clue in the name - if you’re not copying, you’re not doing anything against it.
Viewing bits of something is not copying, so using a tool to block some content is nothing to do with copyright.
Not only this, to run my simple blog, I actually have to pay real costs in bandwidth/time/other people’s effort to set up up blocks etc. to stop stealing AI scrapers making it all fall over trying to take my work *wholesale* for their profit. 2/2
Viewing bits of something is not copying, so using a tool to block some content is nothing to do with copyright.
Not only this, to run my simple blog, I actually have to pay real costs in bandwidth/time/other people’s effort to set up up blocks etc. to stop stealing AI scrapers making it all fall over trying to take my work *wholesale* for their profit. 2/2
Ozzelot 
gbsills@buckfiftyseven @ai6yr @tante Actually sites that don't want you to see their sites with ad blockers can easily do so.
Kwaze Kwaze"There is literally no difference between you and a corporate product -- wait why are you booing me"
Tim Allen@buckfiftyseven @ai6yr @tante Sorry, that’s nonsense. Your business model is not my problem (not you in particular, any possible you who runs an ad-supported business). If I like your service enough to look at it, it’s still my choice as to how much bs I’m willing to put up with. If that means your business isn’t profitable and has to shut down, that’s still my choice as to whether I want to support your business model or not. Everyone has a right to decide how valuable your service is to them.
@kalong @ai6yr @tante Don't you think it's a moral issue to support the intent of the author/creator, in any context?
I can see it being a moral decision never visit ad supported sites if you have some opposition to them, but to reject the intents of another human being, and to take their hard work?
Are you actually putting this forward as a high moral position?
@buckfiftyseven @ai6yr @tante Not sure I would call it a moral position, that would be coming it a bit high. Just that if you choose, for example, to publish some piece of writing and hope people will see ads that pay you while they are reading, that is a choice you have made. Your potential readers did not make that choice, and it’s not for you to make the choice for them. Some may choose to cooperate with your business model, others may not. As another commenter pointed out, we’re talking about reading or otherwise consuming your content, which is very different from copying it and then republishing or reusing it without acknowledgment - in that latter case then I would agree that the moral arguments and invocations of copyright would have merit.
@buckfiftyseven @ai6yr @tante I don’t think I am proving your point, but looks unlikely you will be persuaded of that, so I wish you joy of whatever it is you do.
El DuvelleIt's really not the same. Ads are manipulative, do not reflect the reality, and are designed to force themselves inside your brain, using resources that might otherwise be employed for more useful things, for example remembering your actual life events. Sure, maybe one ad won't change anything but being bombarded with ads every second of your online life has to be very bad for your attention and memory (I am not aware of existing studies on this, but this is my educated guess given what we know about how memory works).
So, protecting your brain from ads is completely legitimate and is similar to, say, using an umbrella when it rains. People should have all rights to use ad blockers if the website they're on chose to disregard their mental health and use ads to fund itself. There are other ways to fund a website and ads are not the way.
@elduvelle @ai6yr @tante I get what you're saying, but again I observe that you are putting your moral values upon someone else.
You are not accepting the values of the author or creator.
This is again what bad AI companies do when they simply take from websites.
@elduvelle @ai6yr @tante it goes without saying that when you don't use an ad blocker you can see which sites advertise too much, according to your values, and then simply leave
There are lots of websites where I don't block, but I bail fast.
Clarissa@buckfiftyseven @elduvelle @ai6yr @tante Similar vibes. (How do you people talk yourselves into these positions? *lol* Well, asking “why” answers the question.)
@clarissawam @elduvelle @ai6yr @tante absolutely not. If you want to take the high moral position that you are going to avoid advertising, you should prefer sites that are socially supported
I support both Mastodon and Wikipedia, do you?
@clarissawam @elduvelle @ai6yr @tante maybe I should explain what exactly I do:
I don't run an ad blocker. That allows me to quickly detect which sites are inundated with ads. I pretty much always leave immediately. I don't give them my custom.
When someone is trying hard and has a nice little web page on coffee or chili peppers or whatever, and has a few ads, I accept their bargain. This is a social contract that I accept.
And of course I support public efforts.
@clarissawam @elduvelle @ai6yr @tante maybe you should think through what you're doing for the coffee person or the chili pepper person when you sit on their site for a few minutes reading their content while blocking their ads.
Perhaps you have no sympathy for them.