Besides all the damage control Automattic is trying to do about selling user data to openAi and Midjourney, I don’t think they realize how much they have jumped the shark for some of us.
See, I worked for the company for a long time. I was really proud of being part of Automattic: For years, there was a clear push to be ‘the odd silicon valley company’, one that actually respected user privacy, gets its money from the users themselves and not from stealing their privacy, etc.
When Automattic bought tumblr, I remember Matt saying on an interview that his plan was to try to show the world that there was a different way to do social media, one that was not based in selling user personal data: he wanted tumblr to be funded by its own users. I remember actually defending him on tumblr itself: People was skeptical, but my reply to them was always that even if I not always agreed with Matt on everything, I believed he was really serious about protecting user privacy (even if it was only to protect his own reputation of being, somehow, a champion of the open internet).
Well.
Now this has been proved as bullshit. Automattic signed a deal with the two more prominent AI companies to sell user data, and didn’t announce it until the first data delivery was already done. What’s worse, if you read the announcement they posted, it’s clear they intended to gaslight the userbase: They talk about a new profile setting to protect your blog from AI scrappers. They are trying to sell it as an extra layer of protection against data scrappers, when they know very well that they only think they can do to prevent that is politely request the scrappers to not take this or that blog (spoilers: AI companies couldn’t care less about those requests). And of course, what is worse, at any moment it’s mentioned that Automattic has reached an agreement with the people behind those scrappers to proactively sending the data on their own, without even needing to scrape the web to get it. In exchange for (what I assume) is a hefty amount of money.
Not only Automattic has sold your data behind your back, but on top of that, they are trying to gaslight you about it.
The AI data selling is a punch in the gut. It’s horrifying, but at least it’s not surprising: Matt Mullenweg has been hyper-bullish about AI since last year, so he probably doesn’t even see this as the huge betrayal of user trust that it is. But the way they intended to communicate it to the end-user, the sneaky, shady way to talk about it in the official posts… that feels like an entire battering.
For me, the trust is absolutely broken. I can’t trust automattic more than I trust Meta: Yeah, there’s this ‘don’t share my data with AI thieves’ checkbox in tumblr and WordPress now, but they haven’t even communicated clearly what the 404 media article is telling us: That the data is already in OpenAi hands, and that the only thing the toggle does is kindly request them to not use your data, and that they are not even contractually obliged to comply.
Even if they actually comply and don’t use that data, I can’t trust Automattic to not change their approach and remove that checkbox in the future (It’s not the first time I see the company doing these kind of changes, but I always lied myself thinking that in the end it was minor issues with less impact than the overall stance of the company). I can’t trust Automattic to not start doing these kind of things behind our backs (since they have clearly tried to do it this time and got caught only because some brave soul leaked an internal doc to 404 media).
How could I trust Automattic anymore, when they even tried to keep which kind of data they were selling to OpenAI in secret from its own engineering team? I feel terrible for my ex-coworkers still in Automattic, because I know a big share of them are mortified and aghast for everything that has happened in the past week. But it’s their job and they are powerless against greedy and evil executives ('evil’ as in “couldn’t care less about the users or their employees”)
When I was laid off last summer, the reason I got from HR was that 'I wasn’t aligned with the direction the company needed to take’. And holy shit, wasn’t that true.
As I said, I can’t trust Automattic more than I trust Facebook, Google, or Twitter. And it breaks my heart and I can’t believe I’ve just wrote that.
My art history professor just said in a lecture “Protesting with art is really good because you don’t harm things, you don’t kill. You don’t have fights at universities and things like that.”
Then she paused and said “who do you think gives all the water to Gaza? don’t you think they should be grateful? The world is watching.”
And you know what I think I’m done with this lecture.
This is the professor who said that there wasn’t much history of religious conflict in England in the 1600-1700s, so who wants to guess what painting was displayed when she was talking about why Gaza should be more grateful because it’s going to make you want to set something on fire.
I already want to set something on fire but go on?
fuuccckkkk
Image description: Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” which depicts the chaos and tragedy in the aftermath of a bombing of a civilian population.
The attack gained controversy because it involved the bombing of civilians by a military air force. Seen as a war crime by some historians, and argued as a legitimate attack by others,[2] it was one of the first aerial bombings to capture global attention. Under the international laws regarding aerial warfare in 1937, Guernica was a legitimate military target.[3] The number of victims is still disputed; the Basque government reported 1,654 people killed at the time, while local historians identified 126 victims[4] (later revised by the authors of the study to 153).[5] A British source used by the USAF Air War College claims 400 civilians died.[6][7] Soviet archives claim 800 deaths on 1 May 1937, but this number may not include victims who later died of their injuries in hospitals or whose bodies were discovered buried in the rubble.[8]
You know something funny? On internet, when someone says that something feels like a Goya painting, they mean this:
But most of your average Spaniards who went through high school history classes would think of this:
Kind of a different vibe 😁
Now I think of it, it’s kind of funny. The guy was SUPER famous back in the early 19th century, he was the court painter of the Spanish crown and all that, but most of the “goth” paintings people on internet know him for were almost fanfiction he painted for him and his closest friends: his “black paintings” were all done as decorations of his house just outside Madrid (where he retired trying to flee from the court because his quite left-wing opinions made him to be at odds with the royalty), were only his closest circle was invited. They weren’t actually found by the public until decades after his death.
So Goya would 100% be on Tumblr if he lived today. He would be a famous artist with a nice and shiny blog with hundreds of thousands followers, while keeping a secret secondary blog to post all kinds of deranged illustrations of the obscure fandoms he is into, mostly goth and horror stuff, for his 30 mutuals. His house would look like Guillermo Del Toro’s:
Reconstruction of how Goya’s house was decorated:
And actually got at trouble at work (the court) for posting too lefty stuff in his main blog (see “los caprichos”, a print series of proto-comics where he parodies the aristocrats of the day and the “disasters of war”, another print series where he criticizes the monarchy), to the point of having to delete part of it after posting (they stopped printing the “disasters” after just two copies, in fear of the king getting mad at him)
You show me a single part that looks like google, can search like google should be able to search. - Please, I’m asking.
And the cost of running a server is prohibitive - I asked.
And there is nothing that looks like tumblr or LJ or any other blogging platform. I ASKED!
Sooooooooo.
I agree that the fediverse is important but WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT?!
You? Because yall wont even pay for ad-free tumblr!
I am glad Bluesky is taking off but to say the fediverse is a solution and NOT a heavy regulation on tech corporations? Is the most libertarian bullshit I have EVER heard.
Vote Blue No Matter Who - If you’re american.
If you’re not? Push for regulation in your country of tech giants.
> I agree that the fediverse is important but WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT?!
Me. I’m willing to pay for my part, and since I’m at it, for another 300-400 people my server can probably support. I’m actually doing it already. As others do.
You don’t need everyone to pay for the fediverse, just a few. Or crowd source the costs, you could easily set up a server for a bunch of people for less than a dollar a month if you share costs. You could just use a spare old computer at home and pay only for the domain.
Internet used to work like this before the 2010s. There is no reason it can’t work like this again.
You show me a single part that looks like google, can search like google should be able to search. - Please, I’m asking.
And the cost of running a server is prohibitive - I asked.
And there is nothing that looks like tumblr or LJ or any other blogging platform. I ASKED!
Sooooooooo.
I agree that the fediverse is important but WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT?!
You? Because yall wont even pay for ad-free tumblr!
I am glad Bluesky is taking off but to say the fediverse is a solution and NOT a heavy regulation on tech corporations? Is the most libertarian bullshit I have EVER heard.
Vote Blue No Matter Who - If you’re american.
If you’re not? Push for regulation in your country of tech giants.
> I agree that the fediverse is important but WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT?!
Me. I’m willing to pay for my part, and since I’m at it, for another 300-400 people my server can probably support. I’m actually doing it already. As others do.
You don’t need everyone to pay for the fediverse, just a few. Or crowd source the costs, you could easily set up a server for a bunch of people for less than a dollar a month if you share costs. You could just use a spare old computer at home and pay only for the domain.
Internet used to work like this before the 2010s. There is no reason it can’t work like this again.
I guess I feel like… you have to have some sense of, you know, what matters to you? What you give a shit about? And it has to be at least a little disentangled from how you think the world actually is. Right, like, you have to be able to say “I wish X was so” even if X is not so. Otherwise how do you direct your actions, how do you know what you’re shooting for. Even if you don’t buy the is-ought distinction, your sense of ought can’t be so tied up in your sense of is that “it is not so” is a sufficient counterargument to “it should be so”. Because then how can you even think! How can you even choose actions!
And I made this point, basically, in that old post of mine from 2021 which was in some sense the start of my Posting career in earnest. I made the point about politics in specific but it’s more general than that. That was a good post.
I want you to reblog this if you believe that two people can be very close and physically affectionate with one another, but still have a completely nonsexual, non-romantic relationship.
Even if the two people in question are capable of being sexually or romantically attracted to one another.
Because the friendship I share with someone I consider family in a way that transcends blood has been typecast as a romantic relationship ENTIRELY too many times, and I’m beginning to get sick of it.
it’s fascinating to watch tumblrites side en masse with a catholic fascist publication on generative image models, then simply say “huh wow I never thought I’d agree with these guys!” instead of doing any introspection about their fascist impulses towards art, or whether it reflects poorly on their biases that they share common ground with clerofascists
this is the article I’m vagueing, for those not in the know. there is a post going around with about eighty thousand notes praising it.
the same publication that puts out hits such as these:
it’s fascinating to watch tumblrites side en masse with a catholic fascist publication on generative image models, then simply say “huh wow I never thought I’d agree with these guys!” instead of doing any introspection about their fascist impulses towards art, or whether it reflects poorly on their biases that they share common ground with clerofascists
this is the article I’m vagueing, for those not in the know. there is a post going around with about eighty thousand notes praising it.
the same publication that puts out hits such as these:
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