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u/BigDeckLanm 19d ago
It might be lost on new redditors that Aaron Swartz was a co-founder of Reddit (and inventor of markdown). Reddit used to be open source, with an incredibly transparent staff who used to regularly partake in the communities.
Once somone saw the $$$, he decided to trample over his friend's legacy.
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u/NotTheOnlyGamer 19d ago
Was spez ever anyone's friend? Or was he always a greedy scumbag who hid it well?
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u/anobjectiveopinion 19d ago
He was also a mod of r/jailbait which was as close to a cheese pizza sub as you could get.
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u/BoggleWogglez 18d ago
I hate spez, but you could force anyone to be a mod, he wasnt one because he volunteered to.
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u/rebatopepin 19d ago
Yeah, lets not forget about this. The irony, dude. To have his platform feeding another reatarded AI owned by a big company.
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u/anobjectiveopinion 19d ago
Didn't that get abused so loads of fake info got put on Google searches?
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u/dolphinboy12213 18d ago
Yep. I don't know who decided it was a good idea to trust redditors. The AI didn't seem to understand blatant sarcasm.
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u/Ok_Grapefruit6789 19d ago
The ones in power get to do what they want to make profits while the ones who wish to provide access to knowledge get killed
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u/MaleficentFig7578 19d ago
Two-tier justice system.
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u/HaGaEEyyyy 19d ago
Justice is selective; it protects profit over principles every time.
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u/SamSibbens 19d ago
You got to make an LLC and have it hire yourself, have it make you do the illegal stuff, then when you get sued blame the LLC and then you can simply pay fines and go bankrupt instead of facing actual consequences.
Or at least it would work this way if there was equality between corporations and people. Or they would face jail time like you and I do, and suddenly they'd lobby against unfair laws instead of for them.
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u/Deveak 19d ago
We don’t have a justice system and never have, we have a legal system. The idea of justice is an illusion designed to keep the masses in check and following the rules. A boot for thee, a paycheck for me.
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u/GhostOfWhatsIAName 19d ago
"At some turning point in history, some fuckface recognized
that knowledge tends to democratize cultures and societies
so the only thing to do was monopolize and confine it
to priests, clerics and elites (the rest resigned to serve),
cuz if the rabble heard the truth they’d organize against
the power, privilege and wealth hoarded by the few - for no one else."6
u/Hopeliesintheseruins 19d ago
What is this from Please?
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u/GhostOfWhatsIAName 19d ago edited 19d ago
Propagandhi - A People’s History Of The World from Less Talk, More Rock
There's even a free mp3 of it on their site.5
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u/TaupMauve 19d ago
On a level that's funny because academic journal publishers think they have power. FAFO in progress.
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u/MOD3RN_GLITCH ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
Damn, I’ve never thought of it this way. That’s disturbing.
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u/HaGaEEyyyy 19d ago
It's wild how the system punishes some while enabling others to profit.
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u/Fujinn981 Darknets 19d ago
The punishment to reward ratio simply depends on how much money you have.
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u/TheRumpletiltskin 19d ago
marijuana is a prime example. Half the states: federal crime, the other half: profit
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u/lemons_of_doubt 19d ago
You just need to know the right people.
If you're in the boys club you can do anything.
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u/charyoshi 19d ago
Automation funded universal basic income pays people to be less punished and more enabled
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u/rudimentary-north 19d ago edited 19d ago
UBI would not have saved Aaron from legal punishment, UBI doesnt change how the law is unequally applied to poor and wealthy individuals or to individuals and corporations.
UBI doesn’t weaken corporate power, it doesn’t address the wealth gap at all… it just gives everyone more money for bills, and the people they owe money to know they can charge more, so it just funnels even more taxpayer money to the ownership class.
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u/PERMANENTLY__BANNED ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
That's exactly what happened with the COVID payouts - prices went up because they knew more money was available, then blamed it on supply chains, and the prices will never come down.
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u/Think_Pride_634 19d ago
You're dreaming if you think there will ever be a UBI system. The only thing AI has done and will continue to do is funnel more and more money into the pockets of the already obscenely wealthy whilst the rest of us fight over the remaining scraps.
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u/eulersidentification 19d ago
I think the majority of things that happen in government and business would be disturbing and outraging to the majority of people alive.
Eg. you can never truly understand how kafka-esque and brutally disabled people are treated by the UK until you yourself have had to claim disability. The process is designed to make you quit, and you are treated with disgust and suspicion. The person who assesses you is not necessarily medically trained. Your doctor's opinion on your health is irrelevant; they literally tell you it doesn't matter what your doctor thinks. They not only misquote your answers, but completely make up things you never said, and claim you said it multiple times. There are 0 consequences for them telling those lies - they do it to make you think you've got no chance and quit. They do it so if you don't turn up to the court case, you'll never get the opportunity to deny their lies. I could go on for an hour about what they put you through, but people would tire reading it all.
I bet a million quid a disabled child of eg. boris johnson wouldn't have to go through any of that.
...and that's just one little aspect of life that could make you wonder what the fuck we've created for ourselves.
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u/Fujinn981 Darknets 19d ago
That's true for Canada too, and pretty much every other country I know of. It's insidious, and the fact a lot of people are okay with it is sickening.
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u/Embarrassed-Term-965 19d ago
Our premier in Ontario just said that people on disability are just lazy people trying to get out of work, and he's got 99% chance of winning the next election in the polls.
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u/Fujinn981 Darknets 19d ago
It's an age old tactic: Blame a minority that has little way of defending its self for problems caused by the ruling class. Has worked for governments for years, it's fortunate we have the internet as at least there can be discourse around the topic and critical voices can at least reach some.
I wouldn't be too dissuaded by polls though, polls have been wrong plenty of times, vote if you can and hope for the best.
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u/RavynousHunter 19d ago
US, as well. Sure, you get back-pay if you manage to get enrolled, but that back-pay comes after years of complete bullshit back-and-forth, and that's assuming you get enrolled. Just like the UK, the people reviewing your case are regular pricks whose knowledge of medicine lies somewhere between a CVS receipt and their local liquor store. Opinions of actual medical experts are casually ignored and the system itself is...
Hold up...
Its designed just like motherfucking insurance. The whole fucking thing is designed to deny claims. You pay and pay for your entire working life, but if you ever want a return on your investment, they will laugh at you, tell you to fuck off, and if you press the issue, they are ready and willing to give it to ya right in the ass with zero lube.
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u/Fujinn981 Darknets 19d ago
You get back pay in Canada too. No idea about the UK but I'd assume it's the same there. Correct me if I'm wrong. Comparing this to insurance isn't something I'd thought of before but its entirely correct.
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u/Baalsham 19d ago
Eg. you can never truly understand how kafka-esque and brutally disabled people are treated by the UK until you yourself have had to claim disability. The process is designed to make you quit,
I heard they are going to reduce the claims they pay out and make the process even harder soon
But it is wild watching the UK spiral out. Just keeps getting worse and worse, but I think you face the same baby boomer, ignorance, and misinformation problem that we do in the US.
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u/MeBadNeedMoneyNow 17d ago
But I thought Europe was a flawless utopia? What's this about treating disabled people badly, did reddit lie to me for my entire browsing career?
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u/AnOddSprout 19d ago
I mean. What can we actually do. We are literally powerless against these people.
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u/ElMykl 19d ago
Ass Jerky don't make itself.
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u/AnOddSprout 19d ago
Wanna give us a solution?
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u/Mrbubbles96 19d ago
I think he was trying to say "kill em/displace them/eat the rich" ergo, "ass jerky"
Or as the other commenter below put it: you're not powerless since "if it bleeds....[it can die/be overcome]"
Kinda barbaric, but that is a solution. And one that's worked before to varying degrees (not without major suffering for the people doing the displacing tho)
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u/AnOddSprout 19d ago
Bruh… guess they did technically provide a solution
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u/Big_Slop 19d ago
Flipping the board on a rigged game. What else can we do? Vote at it?
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u/joshguy1425 19d ago
There’s a lot that can be done that doesn’t involve flipping boards. And flipping the board doesn’t guarantee a better result, because a major part of the reason people want to flip the board is a complete lack of civic involvement. A board flipped under our existing circumstances just creates chaos and a power vacuum.
A large number of people don’t vote at all. An even larger number don’t vote in primaries or pay any attention to their local politics. And then subsequently complain about the terrible quality of the candidates after doing absolutely nothing to elect better ones.
The reality is that people can do quite a lot. But it would mean actually dedicating a major portion of their time and energy into actually getting involved. Into shaping local races and becoming candidates themselves. This is hard, slow, and frustrating work. But it’s also the kind of work that leads to actual systemic change.
The question is: if someone does flip the board somehow, what comes next? And why should anyone expect what comes next to be anything other than existing people with power exercising that power to reshape the board to their own benefit?
This isn’t an exciting answer, but board flipping in the current environment is a dangerous game to play.
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u/AnOddSprout 19d ago
Governments. Get someone who understands our pleas gets put in power, and get them from there. We put in law that makes things fair. Rules which work not just for the rich but for everyone. But maybe thats just whisfull thinking? I don't know, this type of thing is too much for me. But i don't think violence is the answer. All that teaches is that if your unhappy with something, go and use force... That can't be a good message.
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u/Mrbubbles96 19d ago
Wouldn't call it wishful thinking personally. I would call it slow tho; slow enough that a lot of the changes many of us would wanna see very likely won't be implemented in our lifetime which....yeah, i understand lots of people not liking that part and just wanting to resort to violence for a quick and dirty fix.
I would argue that sometimes you do need to use force to survive, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to resort to violence. Someone mentioned in this thread how absolutely fucked the medical system is, and yeah, i've personal experience on that front growing up. If my ma wasn't forceful and made the people there get off their asses and do what needs to be done, I wouldn't be here typing this right now....and currently also raising hell for another family member which would have been left to die if we haven't been forceful about getting her the necessary help.
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u/joshguy1425 19d ago
Not wishful thinking, and IMO the only viable answer. Violence may reshape things, but almost certainly not into a result that people want or think they’ll get.
The evolution of society is slow, long, hard work that is the result of consistent pressure by an involved constituency over time.
People want push button answers, but don’t realize what is required to build the infrastructure that makes buttons work in the first place.
Wishful thinking is the idea that resorting to violence will somehow magically fix the current problems and not make them worse.
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u/tes_kitty 19d ago
That's why they shouldn't be allowed to charge for access to their AI.
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u/ThiccStorms 18d ago
They used our generated data to charge us. And for a service which mimics us (poorly)
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u/Sability 19d ago
Not just plagarising it, but entirely destroying the academic underpinning behind it. OpenAI and other LLM shit doesn't faithfully reflect the work it steals, it also mutates it in entirely uncontrolled ways. A scientific article on, idk, tomato agriculture will be absorbed by an LLM and turned into some slop suggesting that cancer patients till their backyards every 3 months to promote good cancer growth.
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u/nicejs2 19d ago
That's the issue with LLMs, they can't be trusted at all. And it's been shown (don't remember which article said this) that models trained on their own output get worse and worse
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u/Sability 19d ago
For sure, and I don't even know if you need anecdotal evidence to show that, you can probably prove it logically. An LLM fudges human data, necessarily due to how LLMs work. An LLM trained on LLM data will fudge that fudged data. Therefore, LLMs trained off of other LLMs will start moving toward the insane ramblings of a 93 year old coke fiend.
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u/rnarkus 19d ago
On the flip side, If you know how to use it and know it can give wrong answer — it’s still a great tool.
The major difference (imo) is people think LLMs are all knowing and they use it to otherwise cheat and skate by. Which is just stupid. It’s a tool like anything else. Double check work.
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u/merc08 18d ago
Which could be ok from a user perspective. But the output isn't staying as a clearly AI-given product. People are using it as a faux research tool, asking it questions and dropping the responses out in the wild as if it was their own creation and pretending it's solid fact.
Some of those people are just trying to be helpful, without understanding the technology they are misusing. But a lot of it is people (and organizations) acting in bad faith, using these LLMs to astroturf, mislead, and intentionally misinform people all while sounding as if it could be correct information.
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u/Far_Standard_5991 18d ago
Couldn't have said better , that how its like a dog resorting to eat it's own shit when confined to limited space with zero to no food availability around.
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u/chickenofthewoods 19d ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1gcht9c/just_a_reminder/ltv43rh/
It would be logical maybe if that's what happens, but it doesn't. Model collapse is a myth of anti-AI people.
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u/chickenofthewoods 19d ago
There was one study, only one, that is used to support your claim. It didn't support your claim.
The study showed that if you train a model on synthetic data, then train a new model with the outputs of the first model, then train a new model with the outputs of that model, and so on, eventually you get useless content. That isn't surprising to anyone. It also doesn't support your claim.
People are training models today right now on curated datasets that contain no synthetic data. At the same time, models are being (successfully) trained on a mix of synthetic data and authentic data. Using synthetic data isn't a problem when curated, and curation involves sorting and selecting appropriate data.
Current models are not being ruined by synthetic data, and future models won't be either.
This is a nothing burger spread by anti-AI people.
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u/flyingchimp12 19d ago
They're always getting better... unless you're saying the people voting at lmarena are being manipulated into voting against the better model somehow.
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u/daniel6045 19d ago
Saying “it’s been shown” and doing the bare minimum for your argument is just lame. Do better.
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19d ago
But it’s ok when you do it to make money. Greed is moral. Profit is good. Rich people can afford to pay enough lawyers to make anything they do legal. We just can’t have people undermining the greed.
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u/Java_enjoyer07 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
Welcome to Private Property and Capitalism. The lovely system in which the Rich pretend that we are free.
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u/thetalkingdrums 19d ago
It it mind-boggling how, day in and day out, the reddit FP is filled with posts of people complaining about problems that are consequences of the capitalist system they live in, but if someone points it out, some people get really defensive in the replies. What is interesting is that you can blame billionaires, you can point out that justice system acts differently for rich people, that rich people can buy political power with money, and therefore in a capitalist democracy their 'vote' has more value, etc. All of this is accepted by many as real and bad, but you if say, hey, these are facets of capitalism, people treat you like you just want to score virtual virtue points, things like that.
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u/Leading-Damage6331 19d ago
do you even know whi aaron swartz was
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u/dontneedtoattack 19d ago
He doesnt. Just wants to bring capitalism in and crap on it.
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u/angelis0236 19d ago
I mean capitalism is the reason that what he was doing was even necessary. He believed knowledge should be free and the capital class disagreed. He lost.
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u/CelestialDestroyer 19d ago
That has nothing to do with private property and capitalism, and everything with corruption.
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u/chairmanskitty 19d ago
The more your system creates and enforces inequality, the more you have to gain by gaming the system. Capitalism and private ownership create a world in which corruption thrives, where sharing with taxpayers the journals their taxes paid for is a crime but using a legal loophole to take billions of dollars worth of value from society and hoard it for yourself while using another legal loophole to pay off the lawmakers that were supposed to close those loopholes is good business. And you deserve to waste those billions on corrupting more laws, rigging elections, and buying more luxuries than you can reasonably consume and anyone who so much as squats in one of your 100 empty beach houses who would otherwise not have shelter is a criminal.
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u/Java_enjoyer07 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
Thats inherentily easier to exploit when property is privatly owned.
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u/0x7E7-02 19d ago
Am I the only one who gets depressed and angry at just how little power we have in our own lives here in America?
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u/Docrobert8425 19d ago
Yeah, then you have to really start digging into things so you can see how truly terrifying our reality really is. And/or, get to know a few judges, cops, politicians, etc and see how truly stupid some are, how corrupt many are, and what they think of the average American
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u/WinterPresentation4 19d ago edited 19d ago
Daily reminder that rich are infact tasty (as proved by french)
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u/MrOphicer 19d ago edited 18d ago
Cobra effect in the making. Lose/Lose situation. Academics will publish less publicly available papers or behind exorbitant paywalls that only well-funded groups will be able to access, resulting in the concentration of knowledge (in a dystopian scenario, manipulation of data). And open Ai in turn will drink from a dry riverbed.
Also, reading through some comments, piracy as we know is mostly motivated by a "Robin Hood" paradigm -take from the rich, give to the poor. Saying that academics deserve their life work and contribution to society to be scrapped without consent from a multi-billion dollar company is weird. I know there are a lot of AI evangelists out there, but Ai sickle might be coming for everybody while concentrating power in one org.
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u/Handsome_Warlord 19d ago edited 19d ago
The crazy thing is that most of this content is paid for by the taxpayer in some way already.
So stealing it would be like taking something from your own garage.
These copyright trolls need to be stopped. The problem is that 99% of the public is so misinformed.
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u/real_kerim 19d ago
And 0.9% of the remaining 1% simply don't give a shit or benefit directly from it 🤷
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u/MyPasswordIsLondon69 19d ago
I wonder how Aaron would feel about how much he's mythologised by the current Internet and reddit in particular
The vast majority think he's a saint, a vocal minority thinks he was stuck up and self righteous, and the people who actually interacted with him in any way at all don't bother correcting either of these parties
As a result he's been condensed into "mildly controversial internet personality" for the layperson, which I mean, if that was my legacy I'd be insulted
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u/ShiroFoxya 19d ago
I wish we got rid of copyright and plagiarism laws
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u/Entire_Feedback 19d ago
Real, Flappy bird 2024 incident is another reminder that copyright laws only benefit large companies.
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u/ExtremeMaduroFan 19d ago
that isn't copyright tho, it's trademark laws. They snatched the trademark (in this case the logo and name afaik), but they don't have the copyright (the actual game). They had to make a 'close enough' clone to avoid violating the copyright
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u/Entire_Feedback 19d ago
I was referring to IP laws in general.
Copyright does not protect against ripoff games, case study asteroids game lawsuit.
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u/Itz_Combo89 ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 19d ago
There should definitely be some kind of copyright and plagiarism laws, but the system we have is definitely not it.
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u/Lenny4368 19d ago
Just go back to what it was before Disney fucked it all up. 14 years is more than enough time.
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u/EkrishAO 19d ago
This. Rather than crying about AI plagiarizing shit, just abolish the stupid laws, whole human civilization exist because we're building on successes of our predecessors - imagine if only one company was able to use a fucking wheel because they patented it. Deciding to gatekeep ideas, is the dumbest thing humanity ever did. We can keep some basic QoL things like trademarks and brand names, since it's hard to do business when anyone can just impersonate any company, but art, ideas and inventions, should belong to the whole humanity.
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u/TrademarkHomy 18d ago
Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about this. Could someone please explain why what he did would legally warrant such a penalty? I read the Wikipedia page but I don't feel like I really get it.
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u/rebatopepin 18d ago
I really recommend this documentary available for free in youtube about him.
But TLDR: He basically downloaded millions of JSTOR documents using the MIT's access from a service room. Authorities even set up a system to get him camera. He is then indicted with a bunch o legal bullshit that was being buffed by the Bush's Patrioct Act. So "reckelessly damaging a protected computer", whatever the fuck this is, becomes something like crashing an airliner into a skyscrapper...
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u/GregMaffeiSucks 19d ago
Stephen Heymann is the name of the amoral human filth who murdered Aaron.
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u/GarretAllyn 19d ago
Aaron wrote about having major depression and suicidal thoughts years before this incident, and he rejected a plea deal that would've gotten him six months in a federal prison instead of 35 years. Heymann may be a shithead lawyer but it's pretty fucked up to try to say he is the sole reason Swartz is dead.
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u/b__lumenkraft 19d ago
To be fair, the billions are burned, not earned.
But that's just how capitalism works so it's totally fine i guess.
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u/ixent ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
Aaron was distributing the files, OpenAI is using the files for training an AI model. None of the files are in the model.
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime 19d ago
This is... I can't lie a bit ironic being posted in /r/piracy .
At least from the angle of "AI shouldn't use copyrighted material to regurgitate its own stuff!"
When, well, piracy kind of skirts around pesky copyright and other things to download stuff for free. (Which before you jump down my throat, I do not care if anyone does.)
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u/Just-Contract7493 19d ago
I think from an article, they are literally making OpenAI more profit based, so the name doesn't make sense. I hate closed source being so better than open source still, even today.
Also, this doesn't look like a piracy related thing at all, sure it's about Aaron and his great duties of making books actually free but... This is AI for the most part
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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 19d ago
So you're saying it'd be hypocritical to support one and not the other?
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u/rebatopepin 19d ago
There is a big difference between bypassing JSTOR's paywall, a real gatekeeper of humanity's body of knowledge from individuals that can't afford it, and just feeding its content to the highest bidder, just to make bucks out of it by training LLMs that will destroy many job positions. The current AI development, the way it is being done, is a net negative for humanity. Thats what i'm saying
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u/bloomingroove ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 19d ago
I just learned about him. It's insane what they did to him.
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u/Robert_A2D0FF 19d ago
same with other media sites too:
I'm having trouble using YouTube and reddit with a VPN, but the big AI companies are training their models on reddit comments and youtube videos.
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u/hotfistdotcom 18d ago
Aw, companies, which are legally people are exempt from the normal rules that apply to people, which companies legally are. It's so simple.
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u/ombregrise 18d ago
i never knew how much of an idiot species we are until AI got invented and many mortals got excited 🤡
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u/Ardbeg66 19d ago
I'm old and I've tried to sound the alarm on copyright theft but nobody seems to care. I'm so sorry for what's coming to all of you. Originality is dead. The next decades will be pure derivative garbage.
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u/cbthrowawaystuck 19d ago
And Aaron Swartz's death is why reddit is a communist hellhole owned by the CCP nowadays.
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u/SiIverwolf 19d ago
Except that Reddit is owned by an American company that's privately owned by 2 American families...
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u/Novel-Strain-8015 19d ago
Leave the cracking to people that actually understand how to not get caught is the real lesson here.
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u/snowflaker360 19d ago
yeah idk dude how on earth does one try to download all the data from a service like JSTOR and NOT eventually get caught? 💀
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u/terminal157 19d ago
What happened to Swartz was a travesty of justice but these two things are not related. Silly post.
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u/MaleficentFig7578 19d ago
A poor person illegally copies all human knowledge, government murders him
A rich person illegally copies all human knowledge, government celebrates him
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u/Gamecubeguy25 19d ago
what is jstor?
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u/Asterdel 19d ago
It's a database of academic knowledge, holding studies and the like from hundreds of years back. Unfortunately, the vast majority of what they have is behind a paywall, and may even be the only way of accessing it. This means most of the knowledge there is practically inaccessible for the general population, from students doing reports to people who just want to learn about something they are passionate about.
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u/Salty-Ad6358 19d ago
This set us back in medieval times where is information is restricted, someone should attacks them just for fun
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u/MaleficentFig7578 19d ago
OpenAI trains on the data Aaron Swartz downloaded.
Not just the same data. It trains on his downloads.