In short, it’s fine. Take a breath.

Ehhhhh, that depends on how you take it. Personally, no, I’m not very worried about the legal aspect. But,

It’s still LLMs. FOSS communities have been better than average, but that bar is a low one considering coders generally have been using LLMs most of all. And LLM usage is reckless, not to mention presently harmful in numerous ways. (And yes, this means the latest models too. “Looks good” doesn’t mean it is good.) I’d just as soon FOSS not use the tech at all.

passed in California, where Democrats control the entire legislative process.

I think that’s the “with the help of tech bros” part. Rather high population of those in California, and boy do they have lobbying money.

Considering the negative impacts LLMs have on so many facets of life today, that’s kinda the problem. Running it locally only solves some of those.

Fundamentally though, I just don’t want the tech involved in my life at all anymore. I don’t care if it has a niche use here or not. It can just fuck off.

No AI is a nice feature; Chromium is not. For those who feel like I do, LibreWolf is a version of Firefox that appears to strip most if not all AI, and being a Firefox fork means that it’s also not Chromium. It also uses more privacy-conscious settings by default.

You are aware translation services are available that are neither a local LLM nor Google-owned, yes? We had machine translation before ChatGPT existed, and I don’t think that tech evaporated in a sudden fire just because a more harmful option appeared.

The appropriate option for Mozilla would’ve been to not include AI at all. If they really, really couldn’t have swung that (they could’ve), then the second best option would be having all AI features set to off-by-default. Instead, we’ve got on-by-default. That is unambiguously a terrible idea.

This is a good way to handle the situation and an understandable and believable scenario, so I’m perfectly willing to forgive this. I’m a little less okay with an apparent “work in spite of illness” policy, however.

But still, it’s a serious blunder, and it needs to be said that any repeat of this at all would be very damning. I can’t forgive this level of fuckup twice. Any AI use is a risk, folks; treat it like one.

I don’t believe him.

I know the internet is full of untrustworthy charlatans, so I can’t blame you, but I’m as anti-AI as they come and I do believe him. Mistakes happen, especially in the context of rushed work done while sick. Remember that a lie by a grifter and the truth from an innocent sometimes look exactly the same; effective lies are made off of what was once a truth, after all.

Just to clarify, we’re only talking about mainstream social media here, right?

Yes, most discussions of infinite scroll center around this use, and it’s what this topic’s focused on. I’m aware that other uses exist, but frankly I’m not terribly worried about that. Pagination is a perfectly viable alternative for most every case I can think of that infinite scroll is used in, especially when paired with a half-decent search system, so even if a clumsy blanket ban were applied I think we’d be fine.

I mean hey, by some definitions it’ll work! “I didn’t check/care that the AI output bullshit” is technically different!

Were it only that we didn’t need to put carets on both sides of every word for one, haha! Ah well, Lemmy issue.

So, sans much context (short of a quick read on Wikipedia on the Telecommunications Act of 1996), this honestly looks like naive libertarianism, and reads like an obnoxious manifesto. Feels appropriate for the attitude of the 90s, I suppose – from what I know, there was a lot more belief in the internet as a frontier of freedom and justice, then – but it’s not so fitting these days. Many of the internet’s ills have spawned from an environment of shockingly little regulation, and I’d argue the all-too-common “move fast and break things” paradigm devolved into existence from that, too. Yet this appears to be rebuffing regulation writ large, in some misguided belief that the internet was perfectly fine how it was, would continue to be so forever, and that no positive government intervention was possible — rather than the reality that the internet was flawed, at risk, and that good law was possible if only a state had been willing to pursue such a thing. ¹

Which isn’t to say that a low- or even zero-regulation environment can’t work. But it needs specific alternatives; you can’t just not fix something. And infinite scroll is definitely a something, here. It absolutely contributes to creating an addictive environment while rarely being used for anything good. Personally, even if this letter had aged well, I don’t think this would be an appropriate time to reference it.

^{1. Some of which was passed in the very law this article so hates! Section 230 comes from the TCA!}

That’s still a separate issue. Infinite scroll is scarcely ever used in a good way, and is almost always used to encourage addictive behavior; something which affects adults just as much as children. Even on the rare occasion that it isn’t being implemented as an engagement tool, it still often ends up being one anyway. It’s a dark pattern and little else.

As far as I’m concerned, banning infinite scroll could easily be a very good thing, and I’m in favor.

Perfectly valid to be angry about Discord’s current behavior, as it’s absolutely terrible. I already cancelled my Nitro over this and am actively taking steps to be prepared to leave the whole thing if needed.

Consequently, it’s worth mentioning that I don’t actually have any faith whatsoever in Discord’s current CEO. It’s just important to make sure that when we hate Israel’s treatment of Palestine, we don’t end up slipping into bigotry towards people just for being from the country and nothing more. Not every Israeli likes Israel’s actions. Plenty of teens have chosen prison over IDF draft, for example.

With regard to that, then: I appreciate the self-awareness and de-escalation. Not easy to do, but always good to see. Thanks for that.

I thought this comment was going too far when you felt the need to mention they were from Israel, as though merely being born in a country is grounds to hate someone. But Jesus Christ, this is a hell of a lot of assumptions to make based solely on an individual’s nationality.

I hate Israel’s genocidal government as much as the next guy, but this is just racism.

Edit: Author of the above comment has retracted and apologized. Good on them.

Your reasoning here appears to be “this solution isn’t thorough enough” with a later-added mix-in of “therefore it is all a lie to trick you.” Which immediately breaks down, as perfect is not the enemy of good, and even if it was a lie (which is a non-sequitur, by the way) then banning some AI is still better than banning none.

I’m not gonna debate it, though. I’ve rewritten this comment three times now because I need to say my piece in a civil manner and that’s hard to do when I’ve just watched someone shit on one of the few pieces of good news I’ve seen in weeks. I’ve done that now, so I’m out.

which OpenAI designed to feel like a user’s closest confidant.

“AI safety,” they cry, as they design some of the most preposterous and dangerously stupid things imaginable. I swear, Silicon Valley only uses creativity when they want to invent a new kind of Torment Nexus to use as a goal for Q4.

Making something like this should be a crime. LLMs are not a replacement for therapy and should never be treated like one.

Hard disagree. This is overdone tripe, which is what AI is best at. Hell, it’s definitionally overdone — need a large dataset to regurgitate this stuff, after all.

At any rate, this text got a man killed, so probably best not to praise it.

or Brave

Uuhhh, yeah, no. Don’t do this. Librewolf – or really any Firefox browser, even with how Mozilla is right now – is going to be a lot better choice than the homophobia-and-crypto Chromium browser.

It is a blogging site, but it’s also notable for being in favor of free-speech absolutism, to the point of allowing Nazis on the platform. From Wikipedia:

In January 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate accused Substack of allowing content that could be dangerous to public health. The Center estimated that the company earned $2.5 million per year from the top five anti-vaccine authors alone. The three founders responded via blog post affirming their commitment to minimal censorship.

Substack faced further criticism in November 2023 for allowing its platform to be used by white nationalists, Nazis, and antisemites. In an open letter, more than 100 Substack creators threatened to leave the platform and implored Substack’s leadership to stop giving bigotry a platform. In response, Substack CEO Hamish McKenzie said the company would continue to allow the publication of extremist views because attempting to censor them would make the problem worse. Creators like Casey Newton, Molly White, and Ryan Broderick left the platform as a result.

Doesn’t really matter if they say it’s praise or not. The reality is that it’s free press, and hardly could be said to be negative. It benefits them.