roombaton-resort

[roombaton-resort]

tumblr has an AI toggle you should turn on to prevent your work being shared with training models/etc! it's under settings & visibility.

#anti-ai #tumblrpocalypse 2024 #just when i thought this place couldn't get worse

[roombaton-resort]

Automattic will sign a contract with OpenAI for Midjourney to learn off of Tumblr and Wordpress

Hello! Automattic, Tumblr's parent company, will sign a contract with OpenAI and Midjourney so Midjourney can learn off of Tumblr's and WordPress' art and other user data. :) (The full text of this article is copy/pasted in the cut below). You can opt out! but I truly cannot imagine a more idiotic or out of touch decision on the part of Tumblr's CEO.

First thing's first: When/if this goes live, opt out of this immediately. Do this even if you're not an artist. The more people opt out, the less valuable this contract is to Midjourney. in an ideal world, literally all of the active users would opt out, but if we can even get to 50% that's pretty delicious.

Second: Contact Tumblr Support. It's vital that you do this politely. Tumblr staff is not responsible for this decision and the point of doing this is to show the userbase's unwillingness to be involved in this, not harangue Tumblr staff. (Seriously, stop haranguing Tumblr staff). Here's a script:

Hi, I'm writing in to express my disappointment in Automattic's pending contract with OpenAI to sell user data. Midjourney is already embroiled in copyright lawsuits, and it is not possible to train it without compromising copyright, including violating the IP of artists on this site. I strongly protest this contract and will opt out if it goes live. Depending on the privacy terms around what user data is sold to OpenAI and why, it is possible I will leave the platform entirely. Thank you for your time.

Third: Download Glaze and start poisoning them prompts, my friends

Fourth: Stare into the middle distance for a second with me because holy fucking shit? How stupid can one decision be?

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

#anti-AI #tumblrpocalypse 2024 #this blue hellsite (derogatory)

[roombaton-resort]

I mean this genuinely: the ceo couldve absolutely just gotten away with this still right after the c/a/r h/a/m/m/e/r posting saga if he just stayed on vacation.

Following a woman to a second website (AFTER SHE SAID SHE WAS DONE WITH THIS ONE) and continuing the drama, blaming her for being banned (when the crux of the issue wasn’t even the bans, it was the repeated harassment staff did nothing about!)

I seriously don’t think he realizes how much this undermines this platform and staff. Like, dude, come on. “If you don’t like it, leave!” Is not a good response, especially if you’re going to follow her to a different site anyway and personally bother her.

He’s even complained about receiving death threats- and death threats are bad! It’s bad to have death threats sent to you. So why is it ok when they’re sent to her? Like that was the issue. THAT was the issue. And from all his posting it seriously seems like he doesn’t get that.

The time to own up to shit and apologize was a few days ago at this point. This is putting a lot of really bad behaviors on display in front of two websites now.

[roombaton-resort]

I mean this genuinely: the ceo couldve absolutely just gotten away with this still right after the c/a/r h/a/m/m/e/r posting saga if he just stayed on vacation.

Following a woman to a second website (AFTER SHE SAID SHE WAS DONE WITH THIS ONE) and continuing the drama, blaming her for being banned (when the crux of the issue wasn’t even the bans, it was the repeated harassment staff did nothing about!)

I seriously don’t think he realizes how much this undermines this platform and staff. Like, dude, come on. “If you don’t like it, leave!” Is not a good response, especially if you’re going to follow her to a different site anyway and personally bother her.

He’s even complained about receiving death threats- and death threats are bad! It’s bad to have death threats sent to you. So why is it ok when they’re sent to her? Like that was the issue. THAT was the issue. And from all his posting it seriously seems like he doesn’t get that.

The time to own up to shit and apologize was a few days ago at this point. This is putting a lot of really bad behaviors on display in front of two websites now.

[roombaton-resort]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/25/22949293/tumblr-nycchr-settlement-adult-content-ban-algorithmic-bias-lgbtq

For those who don't remember, here's the lawsuit two years ago where Tumblr (or specifically Automattic) settled with the New York City Commission on Human Rights regarding Tumblr's terribly implemented porn ban targeting LGBTQ folk more than it should. Here's an excerpt detailing what the NYCCHR ordered Tumblr to do:

The settlement gives Tumblr 180 days to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide related training to moderators. It must also hire someone with experience in this area as well as expertise in image classification, who will review Tumblr’s moderation algorithms to see if they’re more likely to flag LGBTQ content. As part of an overall review, Tumblr will reexamine 3,000 old cases where a user successfully appealed a takedown, looking for patterns that could indicate bias.

Now, on a totally unrelated note, here's the complaint page for reporting discrimination to the NYCCHR. Completely unrelated to what's going on right now or the rest of this post, I swear.

[edited since it looks like the link broke somehow]

[edit #2: again, for unrelated reasons, here's a link to a post about the San Francisco equivalent]

[roombaton-resort]

I found a post on the predstrogen hashtag sharing this Dropbox link with screenshots of the CEO's posts and I was going to reblog it, but when I went back to the post after looking at the link in my browser, it disappeared.

In any case, let's spread this link around, shall we?

[roombaton-resort]

Well hot damn if it wasn't enough for this loser to throw a public tantrum now he's going out of his way to follow predestrogen on other platforms and start harassing her there!!! You can't hide these Matt I got the screenshots lol!!!!!!

HE'S BLATANTLY LYING OUT OF HIS ASS!! SPREAD IT AROUND!! And also since she seems to be from Ireland even though I don't even know shit about eu laws from what little I do know this is a big violation of GDPR and should be reported as such!! https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/redress/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-my-personal-data-protection-rights-havent-been-respected_en

[roombaton-resort]

just in case it gets deleted

[roombaton-resort]

What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?

An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.

[roombaton-resort]

https://x.com/photomatt/status/1760647056597946851?s=46

CEO of Tumblr, Matt Mullenweg, has started openly harassing tumblr users on other platforms. This dude is actually incredibly scary and malicious and should not be involved with this website going forward. Theres just no excuse for this behavior.

[roombaton-resort]

a path to the forest🌱🍃 got the idea for this area from @quenepacrossing’s island tulip hill☘️💛

[roombaton-resort]

[roombaton-resort]

I wish my real life was so chill and carefree as life of my ACNH character and villagers

[roombaton-resort]

𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘱 🍃

instagram | twitter

[roombaton-resort]

Arkaig HHP Log #225 - Groucho's Real Farmer's Farm

[roombaton-resort]

I just started Animal Crossing New Horizons, and Kiki is my favourite villager. I love that she loves plants and likes to read! She’s always so sweet and thoughtful. I wanna recommend books to her.

[roombaton-resort]

welcome to new beginnings, on oath!

#ooh nice starters