RIP in pieces Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT
Submitted 6 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Holzkohlen@feddit.de 6 months ago
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The enshitifucation will continue while moral tanks.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The enshitification will continue for a while, moral thanks!
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 6 months ago
Aren’t a lot of answers outdated on stackoverflow?
gregorum@lemm.ee 6 months ago
You are now banded from stackoverflow
Rolando@lemmy.world 6 months ago
And if you try to delete your comment, you’ll be DOUBLE BANNED.
1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Half the time I look on stack overflow it feels like the answer is irrelevant by todays standards
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s what happens when new posts aren’t allowed to exist if it asks a similar question to an old one.
barsquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The new questions were just all duplicates.
Assman@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
No no, jquery is the answer to all your ui needs
iopq@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This question is deleted for off topic
floofloof@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
If we can’t delete our questions and answers, can we poison the well by uploading shitty questions and answers?
pivot_root@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Poison the well by using AI-generated comments and answers. There isn’t currently a way to reliably determine if content is human or AI-generated, and training AI on AI is the equivalent of inbreeding.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sounds good then.
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 6 months ago
Stackalabama Exchange
trolololol@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The poison was there all along the way. The poison is us
Inserts spider man meme
VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
You are literally the same mentality as the coal rollers
Tech that could improve life for everyone and instead of using it to make open source software or coding solutions to problems you attack it like a crab in a bucket simply because you fear change.
Emmie@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I will answer some questions using gpt 4 to poison the data then
spikespaz@programming.dev 6 months ago
What about the outlook thing? Don’t understand.
skeezix@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Best I can tell… If you want to poison your significant other, use outlook as a throwaway email account.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
lol wow this is going even more poorly than I thought it would, and I thought my kneejerk reaction to the initial announcement was quite pessimistic.
johny_joe_1975@discuss.online 6 months ago
Thing just like reddit, but now in professional community
Idontreallyknow@lemmy.world 6 months ago
enshittification
dojan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Stackoverflow counts as professional now? Wasn’t the general perception that it’s an incredibly toxic space?
pseudo@jlai.lu 6 months ago
[deleted]hikaru755@feddit.de 6 months ago
It’s not quite that simple, though. GDPR is only concerned with personally identifiable information. Answers and comments on SO rarely contain that kind of information as long as you delete the username on them, so it’s not technically against GDPR if you keep the contents.
windpunch@feddit.de 6 months ago
You could argue that people can be identified by their writing style. I have no idea how far you’d get with that though.
stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Instead of solely deleting content, what if authors had instead moved their content/answers to something self-owned? Can SO even claim ownership legally of the content on their site? Seems iffy in my own, ignorant take.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 months ago
Everything you submit to StackOverflow is licensed under either MIT or CC depending on when you submitted it.
lauha@lemmy.one 6 months ago
Regardless of the license (apart perhaps from public domain) it is legally still your copyright, since you produced the content. Pretty sure in EU they cannot prevent you from deleting your content.
stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 6 months ago
So does that mean anyone is allowed to use said content for whatever purposes they’d like? That’d include AI stuff too I think? Interesting twist there, hadn’t thought about it like this yet. Essentially posters would be agreeing to share that data/info publically. No different than someone learning how to code from looking at examples made by their professors or someone else doing the teaching/talking I suppose. Hmm.
bitwolf@lemmy.one 6 months ago
So they have to carefully only source the MIT data?
matjoeman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They can. It’s in the TOS when you make your account. They own everything you post to the site.
stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Well I suppose in that case, protesting via removal is fine IMO. I think the constructive, next-step would be to create a site where you, the user, own what you post. Does Reddit claim ownership over posts? I wonder what lemmy’s “policies” are and if this would be a good grounds (here) to start building something better than what SO was doing.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Why?? Please make this make sense. Having AI to help with coding is ideal. The web is an open resource. Why die on this stupid hill instead of advocating for a privacy argument that actually matters?
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Because being able to delete your data from social networks you no longer wish to participate in or that have banned you is a privacy argument that actually matters, regardless of AI. In regards to AI, the problem is not with AI in general but with proprietary for-profit AI getting trained with open resources, even those with underlying license agreements that prevent that information being monetized.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Now this is something I can get behind. But I was talking about the decision to retaliate in the first place.
Allero@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Because none of the big companies listen to the privacy argument. Or any argument, really.
AI in itself is good, amazing, even.
I have no issue with open-source, ideally GPL- or similarly licensed AI models trained on Internet data.
But involuntarily participating in training closed-source corporate AI’s…no, thanks. That shit should go to the hellhole it was born in, and we should do our best to destroy it, not advocate for it.
If you care about the future of AI, OpenAI should long be on your enemy list. They expropriated an open model, they were hypocritical enough to keep “open” in the name, and then they essentially sold themselves to Microsoft. That’s not the AI future we should want.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Were in a capitalist system and these are for-profit companies, right? What do you think their goal is. It isn’t to help you. It’s to increase profits. That will probably lead to massive amounts of jobs replaced with AI and we will get nothing for giving them the data to train on. It’s purely parasitic. You should not advocate for it.
If it’s open and not-for-profit, it can maybe do good, but there’s no way this will.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Why can’t they increase profits, by you know, making the product better.
Do they have to make things shitter to save money and drive away people thus having to make it more shitter.
VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Meta and Google have done more for open source ai than anyone else, I think a lot of antis don’t really understand how computer science works so you imagine it’s like them collecting up physical iron and taking it into a secret room never to be seen again.
The actual tools and math is what’s important, research on best methods is complex and slow but so far all these developments are being written up in papers which anyone can use to learn from - if people on the left weren’t so performative and lazy we could have our own ai too
iltg@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
humanity progress is spending cities worth of electricity and water to ask copilot how to use a library and have it lie back to you in natural language? please make this make sense
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
??? So why don’t we get better at making energy than get scared about using a renewable resource. Fuck it let’s just go back to the printing press.
Amazing to me how stuff like this gets upvoted on a supposedly progressive platform.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Hating on everything AI is trendy nowdays. Most of these people can’t give you any coherent explanation for why. They just adopt the attitude of people around them who also don’t know why.
I believe the general reasoning is something along the lines of not wanting bad corporations to profit from their content for free. So it’s just a matter of principle for the most part. We need to wait for someone to train LLM on the freely available to everyone data on Lemmy and then we can interview it to see what’s up.
Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Mega co operations like Microsoft, Google are evil. Very easy explanation. Even if it was a good open source company scraping the data to train ai models, people should be free to delete the datta they input. It’s pretty simple to understand.
VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Why do people roll coal? Why do vandalize electric car chargers? Why do people tie ropes across bike lanes?
Because a changing world is scary and people lash out at new things.
The coal rollers think they’re fighting a vallient fight against evil corporations too, they invested their effort into being a car guy and it doesn’t feel fair that things are changing so they want to hurt people benefitting from the new tech.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
The deeper I get into this platform the more I realize the guise of being ‘progressive, left, privacy-conscious, tech inclined’ is literally the opposite.
Facebones@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Good to know as capitalism flounders this modern Red Scare extends into tech.
You’re explicitly ignoring everything everyone is saying just cause you want to call everyone technocommies lmfao.
Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
When you say those words do you imagine normal people reading this and not laughing
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You can’t quit, you’re fired!!!
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Cool, now I can go collect unemployment. :)
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You can’t, you’re hired!
CthulhuDreamer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I am not deleting anything. They can have all of my poorly written misleading answers.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I’ll just keep asking copilot about the damn exceptions until the effin code works. Na-na-nah!
0oWow@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Anyone care to explain why people would care that they posted to a public forum that they don’t own, with content that is now further being shared for public benefit?
The argument that it’s your content becomes false as soon as you shared it with the world.
TheOneCurly@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I can only really speak to reddit, but I think this applies to all of the user generated content websites. The original premise, that everyone agreed to, was the site provides a space and some tools and users provide content to fill it. As information gets added, it becomes a valuable resource for everyone. Ads and other revenue streams become a necessary evil in all this, but overall directly support the core use case.
Now that content is being packaged into large language models to be either put behind a paywall or packed into other non-freely available services. Since they no longer seem interested in supporting the model we all agreed on, I see no reason to continue adding value and since they provided tools to remove content I may as well use them.
0oWow@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But from the very beginning years ago, it was understood that when you post on these types of sites, the data is not yours, or at least you give them license to use it how they see fit. So for years people accepted that, but are now whining because they aren’t getting paid for something they gave away.
Emotet@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
It’s not shared for public benefit, though. OpenAI, despite the Open in their name, charges for access to their models. You either pay with money or (meta)data, depending on the model.
Legally, sure. You signed away your rights to your answers when you joined the forum. Morally, though?
People are pissed that SO, that was actively encouraging Mods to use AI detection software to prevent any LLM usage in the posted questions and answers, are now selling the publicly accessible data, made by their users for free, to a closed-source for-profit entity that refuses to open itself up.
Basically the same story as with reddit.
golli@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Agreed. As you said it’s a similar situation as with reddit, where I decided to delete my comments.
My reasoning is that those contributions were given under the premise that everybody was sharing to help each other.
Now that premise has changed: the large tech companies are only taking and the platform providers are changing the rules aswell to profit from it.
So as a result I packed my things and left, in case of reddit to here.
That said I think both views are valid and I wouldn’t fault those that think differently.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Lol it ain’t for public benefit unless it’s a FOSS model with which I’d have no issue
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Well no, when you post something it is public and out of your control
gencha@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It is your content. But SE specifically only accepts CC licensed content, which makes you right.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 months ago
This sort of thing is so self-sabotaging. The website already has your comment, and a license to use it. By deleting your stuff from the web you only ensure that the AI is definitely going to be the better resource to go to for answers.
Rolando@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m not sure about that… in Europe don’t you have the right to insist that a website no longer use your content?
000@fuck.markets 6 months ago
Not when you’ve agreed to a terms of service that hands over ownership of your content to Stack Overflow, leaving you merely licensed to use your own content.
Z3k3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s an interesting point. I winder how llms handle gdpr would it be like having a tiny piece of your brain cut out
BraveLittleToaster@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Also backups and deleted flags. Whatever comment you submitted is likely backed up already and even if you click the delete button you’re likely only just changing a flag.
stoly@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Edit and save then delete.
gencha@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I feel like a lot of people don’t understand the most basic things about the site. Any user with enough internet points can see deleted posts.
athos77@kbin.social 6 months ago
For years, the site had a standing policy that prevented the use of generative AI in writing or rewording any questions or answers posted. Moderators were allowed and encouraged to use AI-detection software when reviewing posts. Beginning last week, however, the company began a rapid about-face in its public policy towards AI.
I listened to an episode of The Daily on AI, and the stuff they fed into to engines included the entire Internet. They literally ran out of things to feed it. That's why YouTube created their auto-generated subtitles - literally, so that they would have more material to feed into their LLMs. I fully expect reddit to be bought out/merged within the next six months or so. They are desperate for more material to feed the machine. Everything is going to end up going to an LLM somewhere.
merthyr1831@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If i was stack overflow I would’ve transferred my backups to OpenAI weeks before the announcement for this very reason.
It’s a small act of rebellion but SO already has your data and they’ll do whatever they want with it, including mine.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 6 months ago
I don’t understand what anyone wins from this
Corporations are foundationally evil
And how do they not win more if we poison the entire Internet?
It’s like being in a toxic relationship with kids involved
Set boundaries
Follow rules
Don’t destroy the fucking fruit of your bodies just because you are angry at each other
Fuck those guys, like a lot, for taking your given data and selling
And fuck open ai for trying to make money from scientific discoveries meant for all of humanity
But what the fuck with ruining the entire Internet?
Who gets anything then?
If language models will ruin Internet why be afraid that normal human responses are available? Wut?
catalog3115@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Can we change our answers? Change your answers to garbage, don’t delete them. Do it slowly.
ICastFist@programming.dev 6 months ago
Should I be glad I only ever asked shit aroud in SO?
FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Maybe we should start asking questions that iterate loops billions of times. Something semi-malicious that a person would recognize but an AI wouldn’t.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Weren’t all the answers already trained on ChatGPT last year?
trailee@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
They seem to only be watching the questions right now. You’re automatically prevented from deleting an accepted answer, but if you answered your own question (maybe because SO was useless for certain niche questions a decade ago so you kept digging and found your own solution), you can unaccept your answer first and then delete it.
I got a 30 day ban for “defacing” a few of my 10+ year old questions after moderators promptly reverted the edits. But they seem to have missed where I unaccepted and deleted my answers, even as they hang out in an undeletable state (showing up red for me and hidden for others).
And comments, which are a key part to properly understanding a lot of almost-correct answers, don’t seem to be afforded revision history or to have deletes noticed by moderators.
So it seems like you can still delete a bunch of your content, just not the questions. Do with that what you will.
recursive_recursion@programming.dev 6 months ago
How do I code a Rust CMS?
Closed. This question has been answered in a previous post It is not currently accepting answers.
great much helpful wow
FJW@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Frankly, the solution here isn’t vandalism, it’s setting up a competing side and copying the content over. The license of stackoverflow makes that explicitly legal. Anything else is just playing around and hoping that a company acts against its own interests, which has rarely ever worked before.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I mean, they could just do what reddit does and restore from backup automatically lol
nutsack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We all hate AI but please don’t destroy the data on stack overflow
SeattleRain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Were they trying to protect ChatGPT from all the bad and convoluted answers?
db2@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The reddit Steve method again.
Daerun@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Good to know that stackoverflow will not be a trustable place to find solutuons anymore.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
While I think the reaction of StackOverflow is not good, I don’t understand the users either.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 6 months ago
OpenAI is a terribly misleading name.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 6 months ago
OpenUpYourWalletforAI
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
That is how it started. It was a non-profit with the goal to release all their patents and research for free.
That lasted for a few years, and then the people running it realized they could instead all become filthy rich and nobody could do anything about it. So they did that.
But don’t worry, they are a capped for-profit now! They can only make 100 time the amount of money as they have investments. So they’ll stop when they have reached … checks notes… Around $1.3 trillion.