8mo ago

Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts

wedistribute.org Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts

A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.

Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.

Fediverse @lemmy.zip

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

8mo ago

Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts

wedistribute.org /2024/06/maven-mastodon-posts/

6 2

Fediverse @lemmy.world

Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

8mo ago

Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts

wedistribute.org /2024/06/maven-mastodon-posts/

237 93

39 comments

To be honest, the extreme negative reaction was a surprise to me, as I thought interaction between disparate systems was the entire point, but clearly we didn’t navigate the culture correctly.
Noooo fucking shit? If they spent more than a minute on a proper instance and not ~~milquetoast~~ mastodon dot social, they would have realised that a good number of fedi users despise shenanigans like this?

@deadsuperhero
Been looking into #Maven all morning
Just going to copy-paste two posts
The head admin/dev @jsecretan claims:
"Happy to remove any of your posts from Maven and cease ingestion from those servers going forward"
So, after the fact, individuals on Mastodon have to contact you personally and ask you to stop?
Is that your position?
Reminds me of Byron Miller (@Supernovae @universeodon.com) and his since-deleted "In four months of having full text seach [we haven't heard from anyone who has be directly harmed]..."
That last is a paraphrase because Supernovae has pretty much removed any mention of himself from the Fediverse, right down to deleting his involvement with Mastodon on Github, causing renchap to opine:
"I suspect that @Supernovae closed it because they do not want to be involved with Mastodon anymore."
here: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/21398#issuecomment-2145321855
Executive summary: there are a lot of people On Here(tm) who don't appreciated every new idea all you bright-eyed young creatives can come up with
- @deadsuperhero
  Instructive to read #Maven's #About page and see who's behind it.
  Here: https://www.heymaven.com/about
  Selected excerpts from "Who is behind Maven?"
  "CEO Ken Stanley is an expert on open-ended discovery in both AI and human systems and ... (most recently leading the Open-Endedness Team at #OpenAI )."
  At: "Is Maven part of a larger company?"
  "No, Maven is an independent startup."
  But
  "Here are a few of our investors, who also commented on their reasons for supporting Maven:
  - Ev Williams, co-founder of #Twitter: “Maven lets you follow your deepest curiosities instead of the trends of the day.”
  - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: ”In Maven, there is a chance for AI to play a role in fixing much that is broken in our online discourse.”
  - Rana El Kaliouby, co-founder of Affectiva..."
  Sam Altman
  SamAltman
  Where have I heard that name before?
  
  Sam Altman
  Everything he touches tends to inevitably turn to shit. This guy and his fellow silicon valley cronies are scum of the earth

A short while ago, Jimmy Secretan posted this response on everything that happened today:
"We have paused everything related to our Fediverse ingestion for now and we are removing everything ingested.
To be honest, the extreme negative reaction was a surprise to me, as I thought interaction between disparate systems was the entire point, but clearly we didn’t navigate the culture correctly."
Make the world a better place, bully your local tech bro today!

Hmmm it was even able to pull in private DMs.
Maybe private DMs on Mastadon aren't as private as everyone thinks... that, or the open nature of Activity Pub is leaking them somehow?
Edit - From the article:
Even more shocking is the revelation that somehow, even private DMs from Mastodon were mirrored on their public site and searchable. How this is even possible is beyond me, as DM’s are ostensibly only between two parties, and the message itself was sent from two hackers.town users.
From what @delirious_owl@discuss.online mentioned below, it sounds like this shouldn't be very shocking at all.
- They're called DMs not PMs
  
  PM never implied any form of end to end encryption. It only ever meant people couldn't see it apart from site operators. I genuinely don't believe people thought it meant otherwise.
  
  They're called DMs not PMs
  ? Did you mean that the other way around? And if you did... forgive me, I don't really use Mastodon. I was never much of a twitter fan. I don't really like how all of my likes are public (although I guess I have had to get used to that with Lemmy).
- The shocking part was less about Maven's methods or lack of ethics, and more along the lines of "How the fuck did they do that?!"
  
  What @delirious_owl@discuss.online seemed to be implying is that direct messages on Mastodon should be considered "public" rather than "private".
  I'm assuming that's along the same lines of how Lemmy users generally think that their upvotes/downvotes are private when in reality, if you know how to look for them, you can see them.

And there were people on here saying that licensing your comments CC was stupid...
- Have those but been harvested? Did the users get compensation?
  The day that has any effect aside from bloating the thread, I'll accept they are not stupid.
  
  Ah yes, the old "laws don't work so let's get rid of them" argument.
- Offers no protections that are durable.
- Maybe Lemmy should start adding NoAI meta tags to posts and comments like some other websites have started doing for images? Though I doubt it helps that much.
  
  Normally you can do it in your robots.txt so each instance can choose to do it.
  
  I think it is more important to have a non-commercial tag/license added.
  _Anti _{Commercial-AI} _license _(CC _BY-NC-SA _4.0)

I looked at their site and thought: What a #!@$ stupid idea.
The whole thing stinks of Twitter brain. "Follow topics, not people"? So what you're saying is that the null brains on Twitter are far too focused on whenever one of the Kardassians farts to focus on anything real?
Puhh-lease. The Fediverse isn't about that all.
Hard pass.

Even more shocking is the revelation that somehow, even private DMs from Mastodon were mirrored on their public site and searchable. How this is even possible is beyond me, as DM’s are ostensibly only between two parties, and the message itself was sent from two hackers.town users.
I find this hard to believe but stranger things have happened.

Please, if there's a god, don't let ChatGPT learn from hexbears.
I don't want it explaining why actually invading Ukraine is good for Ukraine when I ask for a smoothy recipe.
- But... its good for the Ukraine you know /s

Why would you expect anything that you post on social media to be private? I don't get it.
- You missed the point. It is not about if it is private or not, it is how they use it. You are allowed (on some pages) to read news article. Are you allowed to copy and publish them on your own site? No. You have a Copyright on your posts same as a author has on his books.
  If it is legal or not is still to be discussed.
  Similar to how data was mined (or even still is) about users without consent. Now there is for example the GDPR.
  
  We should definitely be copying and pasting authwalled news articles. Do what's right, not what's legal.
  
  Still doesn't explain how public posts on a public, decentralized social media platform are implied to be "mine" or that I have any influence on the end use. It's hosted on someone else's computer from the get go, if anything the server owners are the content owners more than I am.
  Edit it'd be like if I started seeding a file on a torrent platform, then got upset when someone downloaded it.

39 comments