I’ve seen some reviews describe the new Mission Impossible movie (apparently featuring a malicious AI) as perfectly suited for our time of ChatGPT. I’m more worried about things like this: content farming, model collapse, etc.

It appears that Musk’s “free speech absolutism” continues to be selective and self-serving.

Hear hear. Ring is a creepy company, and we shouldn’t support them.

I read that “chronological order of Star Wars” media piece mentioned here in io9 and I was baffled by how poorly done it was (not realizing it was done by AI and wondering how an io9 writer could get things so wrong). Using AI to content farm is a terrible idea.

I get that it’s straightforward language that everyone will get, but I think “uncensored” is the wrong word here. Content moderation is not (necessarily) censorship, and content moderation is good and helpful for tools like generative AI.

I appreciate Masnick’s thinking, and I’m a big Doctorow fan, so it’s always neat to see them come together.

This is very exciting! I’m far too locked into Apple’s ecosystem to seriously consider this right now (even this post is being composed thanks to Siri Shortcuts), but I hope this does well, because I’d love to own a Fairphone one day.

This is disgusting and reprehensible. I refuse to watch the video myself, but it sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on the Gab groups I’ve looked at for research projects.

This is a wild, compelling story that I missed when it first came out. Glad to be reading it now.

Good focus on the digital labor aspects of this whole thing. I sympathize with Reddit for not wanting to provide free value for generative AI (this is one of the trickiest parts of that conversation), but Reddit’s users are right to balk at providing free value for the platform.

Helpful summary by Masnick; bookmarking for later.

C’mon Reddit.

Perhaps most interesting thing here is official comment from Reddit. It’s not quite “auto-reply with a poop emoji territory,” but it might actually be worse?

Student monitoring software is gross to begin with, but monitoring for LGBTQ+ content makes it even grosser. Love it when EFF tackles ed tech.

I’ve linkblogged a lot of stuff on Reddit lately, but this is a good summary and reaction, so I’m adding it to the list.

Lots of ugh here.

I had never heard about this story before. It’s tempting to think of World War II as “a good war,” but stories like this complicate it. How is this blatant racism compatible with fighting against the Nazis?

I’m glad this article points out how much unpaid work mods do to make Reddit a place people want to go. They arguably add more value to the platform than employees do, and this strikes me as a bad move.

Reddit’s response continues to feel tonedeaf and sketchy to me.

Here’s Masnick saying some of my thoughts but better—and adding some observations I would not have come to on my own.

Feels pretty sleazy to me.

I get that any platform has to pay its bills, but Huffman keeps coming off as a real jerk.

Keep it up, subreddits!

What I appreciate about coverage of this from The Verge and Techdirt is the way that it draws attention to questions of digital labor.

Good for them. Let’s hope it makes a difference.