There’s a reason scam artists target the elderly. If a box on the computer screen says “put payment info here” then who are they to argue with the box?

I’m still convinced that he’s actively and intentionally trying to destroy Twitter.

Well, let’s talk about when Twitter was founded…

I mean… It’s Las Vegas. You don’t go to Vegas expecting a vacation experience free from the perverse corruption of money.

The only difference is who pays you to do it 😁

Try finding a dumb tv for sale of relevant size and quality. I know you don’t have to connect it to wifi… Usually. But I just want a TV that doesn’t have all this shit in it to begin with.

They have become the evil they were once apart from.

In a streaming landscape dominated by ad companies like Google and Amazon, Roku was once the viable alternative. Unfortunately, in the 21st century, enshitification comes for us all eventually.

Give me freedom from advertising or give me death.

Just as venture capitalism demands.

Waterproofing is a lame excuse that I won’t accept from these manufacturers. It may be not as easy as just permanently gluing the thing together, but it’s definitely possible to have a sealed battery compartment.

So you’re just out here trying to start a riot, eh?

Die Bart die

i’m the bestest browser guys, i swear. source: trust me bro.

Microsoft Edge has entered the chat

Rich people’s real estate investments would lose value if we suddenly didn’t need massive office buildings.

These are some very pretty words that express ideas without much self-reflection on why the ideas might be bad.

I mean, I suppose you did say it yourself that you can’t trust the US government… but why would you trust ANY government? You know why I trust Google more than any government? I understand Google’s motivations ($$$). Put something into the hands of government and suddenly that thing is burdened by the desires of every politician and their special interest financiers.

“Place it in the hands of something like the UN” would mean some international body I assume. Comprised of and led by whom exactly? And also, who would fund the thing? You suggest nationalization, so… taxpayers? Sure, here’s your $99/year Degooglebase access fee tax I guess? And beyond just making sure there’s enough money to keep the lights on, we need to make sure there’s enough money to pay creators. After all, YouTube isn’t just a library. It’s an economy larger than some countries and there would be consequences to destabilizing that economy. People aren’t just posting content for the love of the shared experience.

Please don’t take what I’m saying here to be a defense of Google. Google is a shitty company for so many reasons. But advocating for nationalization of YouTube is just a horrifically bad idea in such manner as it was presented.

But - all is not lost. First: for the creators you enjoy - find ways to support them other than Google. Make it possible for them to continue when YouTube stops being lucrative enough.

Second: find, use, and advocate for the use of alternative services. There is no single site that is going to be able to replace YouTube. It simply isn’t going to happen unless PornHub wants to step up to the game and create their own SFW site YouTube-killer. They have the infrastructure and capacity to host and share absolutely massive amounts of video and have the business capabilities to accept income and pass it on to creators on a large scale. But that’s an entirely different discussion.

Best to look at things differently. Like the Fediverse and the internet itself, it might be better off if the platform were distributed.

Let’s not pretend like Google isn’t earning any money

Just getting back around to this.

My main reasoning is simply that authors and artists should be fairly credited and compensated for their work. If I create something and share it on the internet, I don’t necessarily want a company to make money on that thing, especially if they’re making money to my exclusion.

So while I belive that IP as we know it today is probably not be the best way to handle things, I still think creators should have some say over how their works are used and should receive some reasonable share when their works are used for profit. Without creators, those works wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Are there other jobs where it would be okay to take a person’s services without paying them? What would motivate people to continue providing those services?

Prompting for a source wouldn’t satisfy me until I could trust that the AI wasn’t hallucinating. After all, if GPT can make up facts about things like legal precedent or well documented events, why would I trust that its citations are legitimate?

And if the suggestion is that the person asking for the information double check the cited sources, maybe that’s reasonable to request, but it somewhat defeats the original purpose.

Bing might be doing things differently though, so you might be right in your assessment on that front. I haven’t played with their AI yet.

I tend to agree with your last point, especially because of the way the system has been bastardized over the years. What started out as well intentioned legislation to ensure that authors and artists maintain control over their work has become a contentious and litigious minefield that barely protects creators.

Your argument poses an interesting thought. Do machines have a right to fair use?

Humans can consume for the sake of enjoyment. Humans can consume without a specific purpose of compiling and delivering that information. Humans can do all this without having a specific goal of monetary gain. Software created by a for-profit privately held company is inherently created to consume data with the explicit purpose of generating monetary value. If that is the specific intent and design then all contributors should be compensated.

Then again, we can look no further than Google (the search engine, not the company) for an example that’s a closely related to the current situation. Google can host excerpts of data from billions of websites and serve that data up upon request without compensating those site owners in any way. I would argue that Google is different though because it literally cites every single source. A search result isn’t useful if we don’t know what site the result came from.

And my final thought - are works that AI generates is truly transformative? I can see arguments that go either way.