Chozo

These nazis are desperate to share Kirk’s fate.

As they should, honestly. While those bots can be used to track down and identify predators, they have also been used for harassing and doxxing innocent users. There’s little to no security oversight with those bots.

I agree! I think the Fediverse needs more “normies” to be present around here. Not just for the sake of having more numbers and being a more popular platform, but we need difference of opinion, and it needs to be embraced much better than it currently is.

When everybody in a community agrees on 99% of things, they tend to become rather tight-knit. But whenever that 1% comes up which goes against the flow, the reactions around here tend to be quick and harsh, and the 99% of other things you previously agreed with that person on get thrown out the window all because they don’t share the same opinion about Linux as you, or something.

It’s not a healthy pattern for a growing community.

I notice that a lot here on Lemmy, and I think that’s because most of us here have at least an above-average understanding of current technologies, and tend to forget that we’re a very small minority of people. So when above-average understandings are commonplace in your online bubble, your view of what an “average” understanding is can become skewed.

It seems to have at least inspired a few.

General intelligence is substrate dependent, meaning that it’s inherently tied to biological wetware and cannot be replicated in silicon.

We’re already growing meat in labs. I honestly don’t think lab-grown brains are as far off as people are expecting.

That’s 100% true, but YT also foots the bill that creators would otherwise be responsible for when it comes to just the basics. Free hosting/distribution of high res full-length videos, globally accessible, with a player app that is actively developed and maintained, a recommendation algorithm to put your content in front of viewers’ eyes… That, alone, has tremendous value for a creator that they really can’t get anywhere else without paying out of pocket. All of those things would have to otherwise be paid for/maintained by the creators. While it’s not a direct payment, YT relieves a huge burden for creators.

It sucks because it keeps creators’ success dependent on corporate oligarchs. But at the same time, it’s also great because it gives them a fighting chance to get started.

No, and neither has anybody else. Not saying that to be rude or dismissive, but just using their own numbers on the front page to paint a picture. They have ~3,000 paying members as of right now. Patreon has over 10,000,000 paying members, and even then only a tiny, tiny fraction of their creators are actually sustainable.

Paid subscription services like this are a great idea, in theory; I’d love to get away from ad-supported platforms. But the truth is that they just don’t work for all but a few lucky people.

What if it was to track an immigrant? Or a pregnant woman seeking an abortion? Or a peaceful protestor? Because those are real examples of this technology being used, as well. Where to you draw the line at when it is or isn’t okay to become collateral damage in somebody else’s petty power play?

These Stingrays steal data from maybe 1 criminal per usage of the device, and hundreds of nearby innocent people. They are indiscriminate. And no, they don’t just delete your data just because you’re not relevant to their search; everything they gather on you will be kept, tagged, and stored indefinitely in multiple government agencies’ databases.

If you want monetization and scalability, you’re gonna have to get ads. Ad-free subscription services that actually benefit the creators are exceedingly rare. Very few people (less than 0.1%) are “making it” on Patreon and the like. The bitter truth is that most users can’t afford to financially support their favorite creators, and damn near zero creators could get the level of exposure needed to be sustainable without an ad-based platform backing them.

Video hosting is expensive af. Ultimately, small-time content creation is completely dependent on corporate benefactors. This is why every video platform that’s tried to compete against YouTube has failed. Nebula is trying, but that’s only useful to creators who fit within its specific niche.

I’m not saying this as a vote of support for the current system. Just an observation of how the market has played out so far.

That’s fucking creepy, and I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to see a lot more of this going forward, too.

Are there any known ways to detect or interfere with Stingray devices? I know that in the US, police often use these devices illegally, without the necessary warrants, so sabotaging these devices is a just and moral decision.

At that point, if such content is already posted there and available for download, it doesn’t matter if it is only allowed to be downloaded via clearnet or VPNs as well. Blocking VPNs doesn’t make any difference here.

My understanding is that it’s for tracking/reporting purposes, and to mitigate future offenses by banning those IPs. You can report an IP to an ISP for CSAM violations, but it’s not as useful when the user’s on a VPN.

I’ve seen a debate regarding lemmynsfw with some people asking to turn off caching/proxying for images. I don’t know what’s their current status on this, but on my instance even thumbnails were not visible for catbox images. I’m not sure if it’s disabled or it’s the instance server itself having trouble accessing catbox.

Yeah, I’ve also noticed that Catbox links don’t seem to generate previews on Mbin, as well, so I suspect that may be a Catbox block of some sort. That’s interesting… I wonder if that causes a Lemmy instance to attempt a live preview instead of giving you a cached one. If so, that seems like something that probably shouldn’t be in place, IMO.

This would be somewhat believable excuse if they only blocked uploading/posting under VPNs.

With CSAM, you want to block uploading and downloading, because both are problematic for a host.

In this scenario catbox images posted to Lemmy for example, they don’t only reveal your IP the moment they are loaded when you scroll your feed

I’m 99% sure it doesn’t work that way. The Lemmy instance caches a preview image for posted links. But scrolling past without clicking a link will not expose your IP to Catbox unless you have an auto-preview setting enabled that opens/caches every link you scroll past automatically, which I don’t believe is enabled by default.

I’ll be honest, I don’t mind a free file host banning VPNs. Yes, VPNs have tons of legitimate uses, but they also have illegitimate uses that (what I understand to be) a one-man team is likely not prepared to deal with. They already have to deal with CSAM getting uploaded as it is.

I think they need money first, before increased traffic.

Nah, Kiosks are legit. The kiosk doesn’t roll its eyes when you ask for a customization.

It’s still a step up from iOS, which has had similar restrictions since they started.

Although, this is a distinction without a difference—it’s still AI of a sort being used to modify videos.

It’s actually a big difference. “AI” is an almost meaningless term without specifying what type of AI it is. ChatGPT is an AI, Sora is an AI, the “magic eraser” in your photos app is an AI, the AOL chatbot “SmarterChild” was also AI. “AI” can mean almost anything even remotely adjacent to “machine learning” right now. Just calling a tool “AI” says literally nothing about what the tool is or what it does. This sort of reductive, dismissive attitude toward anything an author doesn’t understand in tech articles is getting really worrying lately.

I feel like this site needs more attention.

No! I’m sick of these influencers giving a platform to fascist birds. Enough is enough! #cancelmrpigeon