we like privacy respect on the fediverse

in relation to this: https://programming.dev/post/177829

edit: the problem isn't so much about a bot that uses AI but about not having an opt-out option

26 comments

I don't know, I generally like the tldr bots. Saved me from clicking on a lot of bait from over the years.
- The tldr bots are good because otherwise people will base their comment entirely on the headline. Every other bot can take off
  
  There's lots of useful bots besides just summarizers. Reminder bots can be great. Some linkifying bots are also useful (like Marv in r/SCP). Bots can detect malicious spam bots. Subs like AITA use bots to tally up user votes. There's bots for moderation actions, too.
  But we really could use a way to get rid of the absolutely useless bots. We don't need terrible spelling correcting bots, a bot whose sole purpose is to tell people not to put "the" in front of "Ukraine", or a bot that lectures people on AMP links.
  
  I mostly liked the Character Bots in LOTR or other sub specific bots.
  Sitewide bots were more annoying because they were not tailored to the community.
  
  Yeah I just don't want people to completely ban any kind of automation on here because there's good examples. Unit converters from freedom units to metric is another good example. And personally I enjoyed the fake bots like BobbyB and elonbot that made jokes all the time, but I'm not gonna die on that hill if the community at large wants to keep them away.
  
  What did !remindme ever do to you eh?

Why not just put a pricing on API…
- 💀

What privacy tbh? These are totally public spaces that send everything said in them to other public spaces...

Well, speak for yourself. I don’t have an issue at all with a bot that summarizes publicly available posts and comments.
Meanwhile votes and favorites by username are publicly accessible. I consider that an actual threat to privacy. This here seems more like somewhat pointless anti-AI rhetoric that anyway hardly affects OpenAI‘s ability to collect the publicly available data we post here.
- I'm sorry, but I don't think your opinion is coherent. Why is one public activity ok for harvesting for corporate interests, and another not ok for people to even know?
  The space is public, or it is not. If expecting to have your data scraped by strangers because it exists is something we just have to accept to speak online, why treat a specific kind of speech differently?
  
  because by collecting votes and favorites one can create a full spectrum profile of a user. However, if I decide to write a couple of sentences publicly I already know that it will be scrapped by unlimited companies and I agree that we have to just accept that it will be happening.
  
  Because they're completely different activities?
  If you walk around outside, in a public space, you're gonna get recorded by security cameras that the local market has pointed towards the sidewalk (and likely don't care), but you would definitely care if someone pulled down your pants to take a pic of your underwear. Is that incoherent?
  EDIT: The data can and will be scraped anyway. If they want, they can just start their own instance, federate with everything they can, and they won't even need to scrape it. At least we can get some use out of data harvesting with bots like these.

I think helpful bots, like this one, are generally a good thing. However I also think there should be a way for a community, either an instance as a whole or a community/magazine, can register their dislike of particular bots and/or have a setting to block them. Right now, I really want to block the lemmit bot. I don't need or want my feed gummed up w/ Reddit reposts.
- I think you should be able to block a bot from a community exactly as a user.
  
  The suggestion from a user in the linked post to put #nobot in the user profile is good though. It gives a way out for some folks. I personally don't mind, but if someone does, put this in your description. It could become a standard on lemmy/kbin.

I’m the author of that bot. It will have an opt-out option, I implemented it as soon as someone suggested it:
https://programming.dev/comment/305938
Don’t spread sensationalist lies.
Oh wow, I’ve just realized it was OP I talked to in the comments. I immediately replied to their suggestion. What a clown 🤡

26 comments