Kyle Thayer

@kylethayer@hci.social
301 Followers
827 Following
3.5K Posts

Assistant teaching professor at UW iSchool. Interested in Programming, Culture, and Education. Co-author of Social Media, Ethics, and Automation (https://bit.ly/smeabook). PhD from UW CSE. Opinions my own.

He/him.
kylethayer.com

websitehttps://kylethayer.com
Blueskyhttps://bsky.app/profile/kylethayer.bsky.social
Social Media, Ethics, and Automation (Textbook)https://social-media-ethics-automation.github.io/book
Kyle ThayerJun 19
Show threadCory DoctorowJun 18

I am very shocked to see this in the ToS for the flagship Mastodon instance, promulgated by the Mastodon nonprofit.

To be clear, I think this is *much* worse than, say, requiring users of mastodon.social to agree to have their posts used to train LLMs. The harms of having your work fed to an AI are mostly hypothetical and relate to moral qualms.

By contrast, a binding arbitration waiver would literally allow the management of mastodon.social to cause your DEATH and face no consequences.

Kyle ThayerJan 15
Dare ObasanjoJan 15
All those snarky comments telling people to “learn to code” just seem so silly now. The tech industry is cooked.
Kyle ThayerNov 8, 2024
Anil DashNov 8, 2024
I wanna say something to people who work in tech-related jobs in America: this is still a field where most people hate the rise of fascism and want to stop it. I know the media & amplification of the tycoons makes it seem like that’s the whole industry. But it’s not. And we still have power.
Kyle ThayerOct 16, 2024
Hrefna (DHC)Oct 15, 2024

It's always frustrating when you are part of a group that has talked about the problems with someone for years and then finally others start to see it and get on board.

Just as with JK Rowling—who trans and indigenuous people had been talking about for _years_ before her final series of "mask off" moments—I welcome people for learning and amending.

But it also decreases my willingness to extend good faith assumptions to people who continue trying to defend him. https://toot.cat/@zkat/113309785457516889

Kat Marchán 🐈 (@zkat@toot.cat)

I know a lot of y’all are probably reeling from that Stallman report and I’ve even seen people remarking on how no one was listening until now. What you need to understand is that the things in that report have been known, widely, for many years. They are not “open secrets”. They are things people have actively tried to address, at significant scale, many many times. Some of those times even resulted in (brief) consequences. The man Is like a cockroach in more ways than I care to describe and what we should all be noticing here is the how incredibly impossible it is to remove an influential white man from power and have him face real consequences. He’s not even remotely rich. The people defending him aren’t turning a blind eye. They are actively, knowingly enabling him. And that’s not because they care about the movement… …it’s because they know they are like him, and if he suffers consequences, they’ll be next. And that just won’t do. They don’t give a shit about a “movement” that’s basically petered out by now.

Toot.Cat
Kyle ThayerOct 16, 2024
Wren ReillyOct 16, 2024

Tapping the sign again:

Being autistic does not make anyone sexist, racist, eugenicist, an advocate for gendered violence, an apologist for child abuse, or any of the things that white dudes in open source technology are starting to be held accountable for.

Being an *asshole* makes someone an advocate for abuse.

Stop infantilizing grown-ass adults.

Criticism of a sexual harasser is not ableist. You know what's ableist? Your colleagues who refuse to prioritize accessibility in FLOSS.

Kyle ThayerOct 14, 2024
Qasim Rashid, Esq.Oct 14, 2024

As US funded bombs burn Palestinians alive in Gaza, Jewish-led protesters in Manhattan stormed the NYSE to demand an end to Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza by divesting from war profiteering companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Jewish people standing strong for justice.❤️✊🏽

Kyle ThayerOct 14, 2024
Luke KaniesOct 14, 2024

My god this report is damning.

Yes, it is damning of Stallman.

But far, far more so of the people and industry who have enabled him. He has been an out and proud proponent of sexual abuse for decades now. He posts it on his web site! How the hell can anyone justify any role for him, anywhere, or inviting him to any event, ever?

Let Stallman rot. I don’t care. But the people who kept him around while he was defending child pornography? My god

The Stallman report https://stallman-report.org/

The Stallman report

October 14th, 2024 Richard Stallman (aka “RMS”) is the founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation and present-day voting member of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors and “Chief GNUisance” of the GNU project. He is responsible for innumerable contributions to the free software movement, setting its guiding principles, organizing political action, and directly contributing to a flourishing free software ecosystem. The majority of Stallman’s political activity has been of priceless value to society at large.

The Stallman report
Kyle ThayerOct 11, 2024
Show threadmyrmepropagandistOct 11, 2024

I don't know, there is just something very disturbing to me about random intimate moments of people's lives first turning into ad bait online (which is bad enough) then into a packaged content product optimized to meet the need of public spaces.

There is no way to connect with the creator, to follow them, or tell them you liked their little creation. The point of "sharing" is gone... this is just... mining. Strip mining of content.

Kyle ThayerOct 7, 2024
Emelia 👸🏻Oct 6, 2024

Given I'm not really able to work at the moment due to my heart and I've a €1600 bill related to immigration coming up, it'd mean a lot to me if people would support my work now more than ever:

https://support.thisismissem.social has all the links & payment options

Support Emelia Smith (@thisismissem)

Fund her work on the Fediverse, improving trust & safety and other open-source contributions

Kyle ThayerOct 6, 2024
Show threadIrene ZhangOct 6, 2024
@lazowska There are also two additional men in the systems lab that sexually harassed a woman for a whole year, and it was so bad that she quit. But she won’t name those men because she’s scared. Again, just within the systems lab, there are FIVE active sexual harassers, I don’t even want to think about what is going on in the rest of the department.