(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* So, DeviantArt found a way to monetize the fact that 99% of accounts over there are abandoned and they just have all these assets that no one will object to using.... They are selling it as AI with ethically sourced art, but this is just taking advantage of all those assets and I am not surprised.

I've deleted all my stuff and deactivated my accounts. It's likely for the best with the site's rep to just not be there. It wasn't doing anything for me anyway and the groups I was in got taken over by NFT shilling anyway...

Most Jeeves & Wooster fanart on dA was posted before they had a tagging system so it's not searchable. I did a big project to find the art there and stick it in a collection so it could be found. Oh, well. I thought making the art accessible again would be cool but no one cared so that project is over.

* John Rogers on twitter commenting on a fake-verified account for a pharmaceutical company causing it's stock to tank. Causing Elon's idiocy to have some serious consequences and drawing attention to the BS prices Americans pay for insulin? Win/Win.

* I rarely post about Crypto stuff because any grift that isn't at least a 100 Mill just doesn't hold my interest any more. But the current FTX stuff is interesting. The second biggest crypto exchange is in bankruptcy and Bermuda has frozen assets. It appears that someone bribed their way into have their withdrawals processes and this one person is now offering to buy accounts for ten cents on the dollars. Oof, that is cold.

* Okay no more internets time to write things.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Sounds like the DiviantArt thing isn't as bad as all that, but it did remind me to delete my account anyway, as I'm annoyed about NFTs.

Twitter this month has been a wild, wild ride, and I'm not even on twitter.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it might not be, but if how they are communicating things to their followers is that bad, it's a worry in and of itself. Honestly, I shouldn't have even bothered over there.

It's a mess. As of today, I am officially having problems with not being able to verify information due to the shambles it is. Oh well, hopefully something else will become reliable for verification without needing login.

[muccamukk]

It constantly amazes me HOW BAD social media sites are at talking to people. Like that's your whole thing!

[mistressofmuses]

Oh, the dA thing is shitty. I mean, yeah, clearly it's banking on the "welp, if you didn't opt out (because your account has been abandoned forever at this point) then you consented to us using it, thanks bye!"

I don't even know if I COULD get into my dA account... not that shitty mid-late-00s colored pencil anime art is prime for AI generators, but it's the principle of the thing.

The whole thing with the "insulin is free now!" fake tweet tanking stock is fucking hilarious.

I have not heard anything about the FTX thing. That IS kind of interesting. Eat shit, cryptobros.

[olivermoss]

dA now say they are make it opt-in-only, but I wouldn't trust them.

The big problem for AI is context. They aren't mining for quality, they want to have content on what an Ako or a Keyblade should look like and what acceptable variations are. So, even low pencil sketches provide some of what it's after if I understand correctly.

And yeah, most accounts are abandoned or people can't get back in so they have all these assets...

The FTX thing is a LOT. I am not in the loop to know about all of it, but Coffeezilla said that financial channels smaller than his were getting 50K a month to shill it and man, that must be weird for him. He wont take any endorsements, for good reason, but to see smaller channels rake it in like that... that man is a saint or he is playing a looooong game. Also "someone" just hacked them and took off with $600million from the exchange... and the popular assumption is that it's an inside job.

It's almost like this simmering hatred of 'the establishment' lead to a lot of people falling for scams from people being all 'you are so smart, you redditor you, banks shouldn't have fees! Give me your funds!'

Like, the hatred of 'blue check mark elites' on twitter and people falling for crypto scams, there is a connection here...

And they are basically demonstrating why every banking and finance law on the books exists.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I saw a "clarifying" post come around, and that's... better, I guess. But at the same time, I don't really trust it.

And that's true - the bigger the dataset the "better" in terms of AI, so even shitty high school pencil drawings increase that dataset, I suppose.

It feels so deeply sketchy (uh... no pun intended, I guess?) to weaponize utilize the fact that there are a lot of people who no longer use the site. While I know that using the service gives them certain rights to the works they store, something like AI art generators are absolutely not anything that people a decade or two ago were thinking about in terms of sharing their own art.

It really is ASTOUNDING how many similarities there are... how many people respond so predictably to someone patting them on the head and stroking their egos while selling them on an idea. Cults and scams the world over follow the same pattern, and I guess it's because it works!

But no kidding. It's the kind of object lesson in "proving why the thing you hate is super necessary, because now you've been fucked over!" that would be considered heavy-handed in fiction.

[olivermoss]

It's a weird mess where people's anti-intellectualism been used to fleece them. The FTX thing has big 'look this guy is just like you, wouldn't it be awesome if someone just like you was in charge of money' vibes.

Sometimes the structures we've been refining over centuries are good and don't exist just to annoy people.

[mistressofmuses]

I think it's the fact that the scam plays on that "don't you like knowing you're better than regular people?" ego stroke that makes it hard for me to feel bad for them, too. I try to be understanding toward a lot of people who get taken advantage of, even when they should have known better and were warned - people who blow their money on MLMs, people who fall prey to phishing schemes, people who wind up in serious cults. But crypto attracts such a specific type of person, by encouraging many of their worst traits... it's hard to stay terribly sympathetic.

Right? Like... it's stunning to me how these people - self-proclaimed geniuses! - can't see why regulation and safeguards are necessary, actually? I mean, I know the people on the top of most of these scams do get it, and are counting on the absence of safeguards to help them take advantage... but they dupe SO MANY PEOPLE.