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> On Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum, a user purporting to be the creator describes Porn Pen as an “experiment” using cutting-edge text-to-image models. “I exp

> On Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum, a user purporting to be the creator describes Porn Pen as an “experiment” using cutting-edge text-to-image models. “I explicitly removed the ability to specify custom text to avoid harmful imagery from being generated,” they wrote. “New tags will be added once the prompt-engineering algorithm is fine-tuned further.” The creator did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Scraping an HN comment to post on an article just to get submitted back onto HN for discussion, classic.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
I’m more surprised by the apparent editing error where the only sex worker evidently quoted is characterized as female throughout the piece except in one instance. I think the intent of the editorial missed-a-spot was greater anonymity provisions by default. I doubt it harmed the particular interviewee in this instance, but that kind of slippery protection of sources certainly won’t encourage more sex workers to talk to them or trust their process. Never mind that their single source is already unrepresentative of a very diverse range of attitudes among sex workers.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Nearly all sex workers (97% in stats I found) are cisgender or transgender women, so that in itself doesn’t seem to significantly de-anonymize them.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    The editing mistake wasn’t deciding whether to identify the interviewee’s gender, but revealing part of their internal privacy process by missing it in edit. It doesn’t matter, for being interviewed, what proportion of sex workers are any gender if the publication reveals flaws in how they protect anonymity of the people they interview. I spotted this with a very cursory read, and distrust the publication on instinct. Again not because I care about the gender of the single sex worker interviewed, but because I don’t think their editorial process was thorough enough to protect one source.
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Ah, thanks for the explanation. From an editorial POV, what makes you think it was a mistake?
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Just seeing several “she”, with direct references to the interviewee, and one “they” that felt really out of place and didn’t feel like a fully formed section of the article.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

I’m more surprised by the apparent editing error where the only sex worker evidently quoted is characterized as female throughout the piece except in one instance. I think the intent of the editorial missed-a-spot was greater anonymity provisions by default. I doubt it harmed the particular interviewee in this instance, but that kind of slippery protection of sources certainly won’t encourage more sex workers to talk to them or trust their process. Never mind that their single source is already unrepresentative of a very diverse range of attitudes among sex workers.

CharlesW 4y ago
Nearly all sex workers (97% in stats I found) are cisgender or transgender women, so that in itself doesn’t seem to significantly de-anonymize them.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  The editing mistake wasn’t deciding whether to identify the interviewee’s gender, but revealing part of their internal privacy process by missing it in edit. It doesn’t matter, for being interviewed, what proportion of sex workers are any gender if the publication reveals flaws in how they protect anonymity of the people they interview. I spotted this with a very cursory read, and distrust the publication on instinct. Again not because I care about the gender of the single sex worker interviewed, but because I don’t think their editorial process was thorough enough to protect one source.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Ah, thanks for the explanation. From an editorial POV, what makes you think it was a mistake?
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      Just seeing several “she”, with direct references to the interviewee, and one “they” that felt really out of place and didn’t feel like a fully formed section of the article.