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That was escalated quickly. :O Any ideas how we, the users of the internet, should act to prevent those steps? or building a much better connected and not cont

That was escalated quickly. :O Any ideas how we, the users of the internet, should act to prevent those steps? or building a much better connected and not controlled by mega-corporates INTERNET social platform?

HumblyTossed 3y ago
> Any ideas how we, the users of the internet, should act to prevent those steps? Don't use services with ToS you don't agree with.
- mandevil 3y ago
  What about when someone else buys a company and changes the ToS, taking possession of work we've already contributed under a different ToS that you were okay with?
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    Clearly you should live under a rock if you don't want anyone to cross their fingers behind their backs or take advantage of the fact that you didn't say "no backsies".
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    Assign no loyalty to any company that forces you into a TOS. Understand that nothing is more sacred than the Holy Dollar to an entity whose only purpose is to extract money from its customers. Always assume you'll be betrayed by corporations and store your possessions (data in this case) accordingly. Diversify your interests and hobbies such that a betrayal by a corporation doesn't significantly impact your life. At this point, trusting corporations without putting any mitigations in place seems like begging desperately for trouble.
- transformi 3y ago
  Yea that's the first step... but I think that as a group of users we can do much more and build a better internet. This is like Cold-war between companies, that we as users are the cannon fodder...
- sb8244 3y ago
  Bad take when the ToS can change on a dime and companies don't give a hoot about retroactive respect.
  - lsmeducation 3y ago
    The problem with TOS changes is they never provide a diff. They provide the entire TOS again, one that most people already skipped. I don’t think it’s fair to even provide a legal TOS that does not match your demographic. These things need to be shorter and written at a 8th grade writing level, and I don’t mean that in any pejorative way. It needs to be clear to the average person (and I’m not even sure if I’m being generous there by suggesting 8th grade writing/reading level).
- lsmeducation 3y ago
  We need legislation that forces companies to prompt users with a ToS that’s no longer than 400 characters. The prompt should read “So, you cool with that brah?”, and the word “Accept” needs to be replaced with “Yeah sure why not”, and “No” with “Nah, no thank you”. Current TOS’s don’t provide enough clarity. That way any semantic issues down the line can be boiled down to “brah, users said they were cool with it” (to the judge).
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  That helps, but individual boycotts/market actions can't easily overcome the momentum of preferential attachment because brands are not fungible. Market evangelists/absolutists often rely on naive models of supply and demand, but forget that those models only work under conditions of perfect competition. This means ignoring the many many factors that contribute to inelastic demand like the cost of switching, the lack of ToS clarity, sunk costs, and prior network effects. There are plenty of people who hate Twitter but can't disengage from it because that's where most of their clicks are coming from.
- Angostura 3y ago
  More importantly, I think official organisations like government, local government, safety, charities etc should not be encouraging people to use non-safe channels to interac. We should be lobbying them to stop
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  Unfortunately that is basically all of them.
thinkingtoilet 3y ago
The obvious first step is to not give these companies your data in the first place.
- SkipperCat 3y ago
  I can't upvote this enough. I don't know why people clutch their pearls so hard when they find out the free app they are using is trying to monetize their content. I'd actually be critical of X if they didn't do this. There's plenty of places where you can pay a nominal free to have your data 100% controlled by you alone. Plus, you can still use X, Insta or whatever to drive traffic to your site. Its not that hard folks!
  - jprete 3y ago
    > There's plenty of places where you can pay a nominal free to have your data 100% controlled by you alone. Do you happen to have a list handy? If I had to do this today the only clear way would be a personal cloud setup.
  - mola 3y ago
    Actually there isn't. We live in a world where the freakin TV I paid for is spying on me
candiddevmike 3y ago
Stop commenting on HN? It'll take government action around copyright of training data + the use of decentralized and private instances of Mastodon to avoid it. Though it's still probably inevitably going to happen. What I want to know is, what's the endgame? We've proven that AI learning eventually plateaus, so you keep feeding it data and...? Seems like an underpants gnome problem or companies trying to find another stock bump for all of this data lying around (that should be considered toxic instead)
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
For me it was one part deleting my Twitter/Reddit accounts and one part rethinking the role of these sites in my life so I don't end up adopting the same habits elsewhere that will inevitably let me down, commercial or otherwise.
jazzyjackson 3y ago
https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> Any ideas how we, the users of the internet, should act to prevent those steps? Don't use services with ToS you don't agree with.

mandevil 3y ago
What about when someone else buys a company and changes the ToS, taking possession of work we've already contributed under a different ToS that you were okay with?
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Clearly you should live under a rock if you don't want anyone to cross their fingers behind their backs or take advantage of the fact that you didn't say "no backsies".
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  Assign no loyalty to any company that forces you into a TOS. Understand that nothing is more sacred than the Holy Dollar to an entity whose only purpose is to extract money from its customers. Always assume you'll be betrayed by corporations and store your possessions (data in this case) accordingly. Diversify your interests and hobbies such that a betrayal by a corporation doesn't significantly impact your life. At this point, trusting corporations without putting any mitigations in place seems like begging desperately for trouble.
transformi 3y ago
Yea that's the first step... but I think that as a group of users we can do much more and build a better internet. This is like Cold-war between companies, that we as users are the cannon fodder...
sb8244 3y ago
Bad take when the ToS can change on a dime and companies don't give a hoot about retroactive respect.
- lsmeducation 3y ago
  The problem with TOS changes is they never provide a diff. They provide the entire TOS again, one that most people already skipped. I don’t think it’s fair to even provide a legal TOS that does not match your demographic. These things need to be shorter and written at a 8th grade writing level, and I don’t mean that in any pejorative way. It needs to be clear to the average person (and I’m not even sure if I’m being generous there by suggesting 8th grade writing/reading level).
lsmeducation 3y ago
We need legislation that forces companies to prompt users with a ToS that’s no longer than 400 characters. The prompt should read “So, you cool with that brah?”, and the word “Accept” needs to be replaced with “Yeah sure why not”, and “No” with “Nah, no thank you”. Current TOS’s don’t provide enough clarity. That way any semantic issues down the line can be boiled down to “brah, users said they were cool with it” (to the judge).
anigbrowl 3y ago
That helps, but individual boycotts/market actions can't easily overcome the momentum of preferential attachment because brands are not fungible. Market evangelists/absolutists often rely on naive models of supply and demand, but forget that those models only work under conditions of perfect competition. This means ignoring the many many factors that contribute to inelastic demand like the cost of switching, the lack of ToS clarity, sunk costs, and prior network effects. There are plenty of people who hate Twitter but can't disengage from it because that's where most of their clicks are coming from.
Angostura 3y ago
More importantly, I think official organisations like government, local government, safety, charities etc should not be encouraging people to use non-safe channels to interac. We should be lobbying them to stop
jabradoodle 3y ago
Unfortunately that is basically all of them.

thinkingtoilet 3y ago

The obvious first step is to not give these companies your data in the first place.

SkipperCat 3y ago
I can't upvote this enough. I don't know why people clutch their pearls so hard when they find out the free app they are using is trying to monetize their content. I'd actually be critical of X if they didn't do this. There's plenty of places where you can pay a nominal free to have your data 100% controlled by you alone. Plus, you can still use X, Insta or whatever to drive traffic to your site. Its not that hard folks!
- jprete 3y ago
  > There's plenty of places where you can pay a nominal free to have your data 100% controlled by you alone. Do you happen to have a list handy? If I had to do this today the only clear way would be a personal cloud setup.
- mola 3y ago
  Actually there isn't. We live in a world where the freakin TV I paid for is spying on me

candiddevmike 3y ago

Stop commenting on HN? It'll take government action around copyright of training data + the use of decentralized and private instances of Mastodon to avoid it. Though it's still probably inevitably going to happen. What I want to know is, what's the endgame? We've proven that AI learning eventually plateaus, so you keep feeding it data and...? Seems like an underpants gnome problem or companies trying to find another stock bump for all of this data lying around (that should be considered toxic instead)

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

For me it was one part deleting my Twitter/Reddit accounts and one part rethinking the role of these sites in my life so I don't end up adopting the same habits elsewhere that will inevitably let me down, commercial or otherwise.

jazzyjackson 3y ago

https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf