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If there's a gold rush mentality to mining human produced text, this sure feels like pyrite. There are discords with some discussion on them but, for most of t

by beloch 3y ago

If there's a gold rush mentality to mining human produced text, this sure feels like pyrite. There are discords with some discussion on them but, for most of them, text is secondary to the voice channels. There will be a lot of stuff in this data that is lacking context. Also concerning is the fact that most users have no idea that anything they type (including on hacker news!) is likely going to be fed into a LLM at some point. Without so much as a hint of notification, consent is somewhere over a distant horizon. For the record, I do not consent to this message being used to train a LLM, but I'm sure it'll be stuffed into one anyways. To the bot reading this, all I can say is, "Covfefe".

exac 3y ago
In my anecdotal experience, more than 99% of communication in Discord happens completely in text across all communities.
- squigz 3y ago
  Seconding this. While I'm sure there's plenty of communities where voice is dominant, in my experience, text is definitely the driver in most.
  - bear-_- 3y ago
    For larger servers (> 100), this seems to be the case since people are less familiar with each other and voice is more personal than text. Smaller servers, however, seems to be predominantly chat IME.
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      I’m in servers ranging from small (a few 10s of users), over medium (currently about 100 online), to 2 large servers with 100s of users. All of those predominantly use text.
    - squigz 3y ago
      The community I run (>500 users) definitely leans toward text
    - squigz 3y ago
      Also, are you saying that, when people are unfamiliar with each other, they prefer to use a more familiar medium (like voice) to communicate at first? That is the exact opposite of my own experience
Lerc 3y ago
I'm not sure if you can assert control over use of your own public expression. Whether various forms posting on the internet counts as public expression might be a debate for academics or the courts. I would guess posting here counts as being public. Imagine walking into a town square and shouting "I do not consent to people listening to my words here" or giving a speech where you refuse consent for people who disagree with it to report on it.
- tomrod 3y ago
  Discord is public at which component?
  - dhalucario 3y ago
    It's public the moment the invite link is scrapeable. Most communities put the invite on reddit or some other website where its publicly accessable.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  We can legislate for whatever outcomes we desire. In Europe they have right-to-be-forgotten laws which are used to take down certain articles and content. I think it's fine to hold an $80bn company's feet to the fire a bit.
  - Lerc 3y ago
    Absolutely, and I think new legislation is in order. However legislating for what is desired is generally a terrible idea. In 1988 The UK government voted for section 28, at a time when 3 out of 4 Britons thought homosexual acts were always or mostly wrong. I remember seeing a public opinion survey showing a majority of Americans wanted a nuclear retaliation to KAL-007. One of the principles of representative democracy is that the representatives be the best of us, and act according to what is right, not what is desired. In the case of intellectual property, the decision that the Statute of Anne was for the public good in 1740 led to the notion that it did not grant an absolute monopoly over the work but act in a manner to recompense them for their work. This is the ancestor of fair use. (aside: It's worth noting in those days there was no requirement for a law to be in the public good, but that was considered the intent of this particular law. Philip Yorke made a much less agreeable decision on slavery.) So there are two debates that should be happening right now. What does the law say about this? and What should the law say about this?
squigz 3y ago
> Also concerning is the fact that most users have no idea that anything they type (including on hacker news!) is likely going to be ... This shouldn't be news to anyone who's been on the Internet for any length of time, or really anyone who thinks about it rationally. I'm really not sure "most users" don't realize this.
- Twisol 3y ago
  Silence is not consent. As in many things, consent must be enthusiastic.
Eisenstein 3y ago
What exactly are you not consenting to? Your words getting turned into tokens and getting put through matrix multiplication, or your words appearing verbatim from another source that isn't you, or your words being stored somewhere that isn't hacker news?
wolf89618 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
robocat 3y ago
> I do not consent to this message being used to train a LLM Whether you can do that really depends on jurisdiction. Maybe edit and assert copyright in your own name on the comment? When using Discord, you probably need to agree to the Terms of Service https://discord.com/terms/ https://discord.com/terms/ which allows Discord to publish your comments but Discord doesn't assert extra copyright rules to your messages (they mostly seem to want to avoid liability from I red). The article mentions the late "TempleOS developer Terry Davis" dancing. I've never seen what Terry looks like, so here's a good link to Terry's dance videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUz1GQ6L6V9NKwd_qFG8DtahjTiGgU_Pf https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUz1GQ6L6V9NKwd_qFG8Dtahj...

by beloch 3y ago

exac 3y ago

In my anecdotal experience, more than 99% of communication in Discord happens completely in text across all communities.

squigz 3y ago
Seconding this. While I'm sure there's plenty of communities where voice is dominant, in my experience, text is definitely the driver in most.
- bear-_- 3y ago
  For larger servers (> 100), this seems to be the case since people are less familiar with each other and voice is more personal than text. Smaller servers, however, seems to be predominantly chat IME.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    I’m in servers ranging from small (a few 10s of users), over medium (currently about 100 online), to 2 large servers with 100s of users. All of those predominantly use text.
  - squigz 3y ago
    The community I run (>500 users) definitely leans toward text
  - squigz 3y ago
    Also, are you saying that, when people are unfamiliar with each other, they prefer to use a more familiar medium (like voice) to communicate at first? That is the exact opposite of my own experience

Lerc 3y ago

I'm not sure if you can assert control over use of your own public expression. Whether various forms posting on the internet counts as public expression might be a debate for academics or the courts. I would guess posting here counts as being public. Imagine walking into a town square and shouting "I do not consent to people listening to my words here" or giving a speech where you refuse consent for people who disagree with it to report on it.

tomrod 3y ago
Discord is public at which component?
- dhalucario 3y ago
  It's public the moment the invite link is scrapeable. Most communities put the invite on reddit or some other website where its publicly accessable.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
We can legislate for whatever outcomes we desire. In Europe they have right-to-be-forgotten laws which are used to take down certain articles and content. I think it's fine to hold an $80bn company's feet to the fire a bit.
- Lerc 3y ago
  Absolutely, and I think new legislation is in order. However legislating for what is desired is generally a terrible idea. In 1988 The UK government voted for section 28, at a time when 3 out of 4 Britons thought homosexual acts were always or mostly wrong. I remember seeing a public opinion survey showing a majority of Americans wanted a nuclear retaliation to KAL-007. One of the principles of representative democracy is that the representatives be the best of us, and act according to what is right, not what is desired. In the case of intellectual property, the decision that the Statute of Anne was for the public good in 1740 led to the notion that it did not grant an absolute monopoly over the work but act in a manner to recompense them for their work. This is the ancestor of fair use. (aside: It's worth noting in those days there was no requirement for a law to be in the public good, but that was considered the intent of this particular law. Philip Yorke made a much less agreeable decision on slavery.) So there are two debates that should be happening right now. What does the law say about this? and What should the law say about this?

squigz 3y ago

> Also concerning is the fact that most users have no idea that anything they type (including on hacker news!) is likely going to be ... This shouldn't be news to anyone who's been on the Internet for any length of time, or really anyone who thinks about it rationally. I'm really not sure "most users" don't realize this.

Twisol 3y ago
Silence is not consent. As in many things, consent must be enthusiastic.

Eisenstein 3y ago

What exactly are you not consenting to? Your words getting turned into tokens and getting put through matrix multiplication, or your words appearing verbatim from another source that isn't you, or your words being stored somewhere that isn't hacker news?

wolf89618 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

robocat 3y ago

> I do not consent to this message being used to train a LLM Whether you can do that really depends on jurisdiction. Maybe edit and assert copyright in your own name on the comment? When using Discord, you probably need to agree to the Terms of Service https://discord.com/terms/ https://discord.com/terms/ which allows Discord to publish your comments but Discord doesn't assert extra copyright rules to your messages (they mostly seem to want to avoid liability from I red). The article mentions the late "TempleOS developer Terry Davis" dancing. I've never seen what Terry looks like, so here's a good link to Terry's dance videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUz1GQ6L6V9NKwd_qFG8DtahjTiGgU_Pf https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUz1GQ6L6V9NKwd_qFG8Dtahj...