Mastodon updates terms of service to ban AI model training on user data
Submitted 9 hours ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://www.neowin.net/news/mastodon-updates-terms-of-service-to-ban-ai-model-training-on-user-data/
Comments
Ascend910@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
mintiefresh@lemmy.ca 32 minutes ago
Well done Mastodon.social.
Even if it may do much, it’s still better than not doing it.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
it_depends_man@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Mastodon dot SOCIAL did, the big public instance. Mastodon the software doesn’t have these restrictions.
Scrollone@feddit.it 1 hour ago
It wouldn’t even make sense for the Mastodon software to have such a restriction… The article title is misleading.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 9 hours ago
Yeah this will do absolutely nothing.
Cris_Color@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I agree, but I’m glad they did it anyway.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 6 hours ago
Fair, there is no reason not to.
SmolSteely@lemmynsfw.com 9 hours ago
It does provide for the possibility of future legal action. This should have been done a year or two ago
drmoose@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
No it doesn’t because all mastodon data is public and does not require ToS agreement to be collected.
Mastodon could only argue damages but that would be impossible to litigate in any extent due to decentralized and free nature of Mastodon and Fediverse.
This is a good thing. Mastodon shouldn’t control anything related to the legality of data flowing in the fediverse - that’s the entire point.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 hours ago
Gives them legal standing against scraping for if ot is needed in the future.
cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 2 hours ago
Why?
Ulrich@feddit.org 7 hours ago
It potentially gives them grounds for a lawsuit. Probably not but potenrially. There’s no reason not to explicitly deny permission. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
anothermember@feddit.uk 7 hours ago
That’s a really misleading headline; a Mastodon instance has done this, Mastodon as a whole can’t do this because it’s free software, it can be used for any purpose.
froufox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
I’m wondering, is it possible to include that restriction in public license for the software mastodon?
anothermember@feddit.uk 3 hours ago
It wouldn’t be a free software licence by the FSF definition (rule zero). Of interest the FSF rejects the original JSON licence because it contains the clause “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” Since Mastodon uses AGPL, it wouldn’t be compatible.
bizza@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Just like when mastodon.social condemned Meta for their horrible moderation decisions and inability to act properly in the interest of its users, and said that the instance would be cutting ties/not federating with Threads, they kept on federating like nothing happened.
I don’t believe anything coming out of mastodon.social unless I can see action being taken with my own two eyes.
Also, blocking scrapers is very easy, and it has nothing to do with a robots.txt (which they ignore).
Ulrich@feddit.org 17 minutes ago
blocking scrapers is very easy
The entirety of the internet disagrees.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 2 hours ago
How is blocking scrapers easy?
This instance receives 500+ IPs with differing user agents all connecting at once but keeping within rate limits by distribution of bots.
The only way I know it’s a scraper is if they do something dumb like using “google.com” as the referrer for every request or by eyeballing the logs and noticing multiple entries from the same /12.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
I wonder how does that work with federation.
If a second instance does not have that restriction, is there any “legal” effect on the federated content?
D06M4@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
This was one of the few ToS updates I was actually glad to read. ToS changes usually mean a company is slowly rephrasing them to fuck us over.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
I will create a masto instance where this is mandatory to counter balance
papigkos@lemmy.wtf 16 minutes ago
Failing to train an AI model using your posts as part of the training data within 7 days of posting will result in a permanent ban.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 minute ago
Wait, they changed the TOS on a site to say that you can’t scrape it, when the entirety of the site is available without agreeing to the TOS?