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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 17h

After catching up on the latest drama I am inclined to agree

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 18h

This is a shame but a totally understandable decision.

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Silvia "CosmicTailz" @cosmictailz.bsky.social · Nov 20

this was funnier in my head

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 18h

I support the "bluesky needs a dedicated comm team/pr person" push not out of hate, but because that just feels like general tech/business wisdom?

I don't do customer facing jobs for a reason, and I always salute the side of the company that has to🫡 I'm always on thin ice just working with clients

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dame @dame.is · 19h

new @anisota.net eclosion this week finally — i’m grossing around $300/mo via my creative projects currently thanks to folks like you 🤍

i’m starting work on the 6 different physical zines that will be going out to @anisota.net moth members and above

if you like my work/art, consider joining:

anisota for Bluesky & ATProto

a new, experimental way to use social media

anisota.net

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 20h

By the way, I've always wondered... is "mechanical turk" an offensive term? I know it from the literal definition and the ways its used in tech, but it seems like it could be offensive...? I guess I should do some research on this before using the term in the future...

haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 20h

bsky.app/profile/raha... this exactly. It's not an exaggeration...if anything it's an understatement. There is unfortunately limited reporting on this because these aren't stats that get reported...(an entire issue in itself) but if you're adjacent to the "industry" you *know* ....

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

And I just want to reiterate this ( from a thread deep in replies). I started doing this work before any of these tools existed. The number of my contemporaries in the field who have died by suicide is NOT A SMALL NUMBER. The work is incredibly traumatizing.

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

As someone who was doing that human review of images before even PhotoDNA existed, I can testify that the amount of human suffering automated image classification prevents is MASSIVE. Like, I am the best case scenario of the human cost of that work and I still have lifelong consequences from it.

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

Following up a bit on the "but how do we know Hive/Bluesky isn't lying when they say they don't train generative AI on images submitted to their moderation machine learning models": here's the page for Hive's image generation models: thehive.ai/apis/image-g...

Image Generation APIs to generate unique digital images with text prompts | Hive

Generate images using text prompts

thehive.ai

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

Extremely relevant numbers! (And this is *low traffic* by modern standards.)

hailey @hailey.at · 1d

an interesting note re: scaling image moderation. in the past 24 hours:

at least 500 thousand images in posts (not considering # of images, just if an image was in the post)
86 thousand avatars
500 thousand url thumbnails
58 thousand videos.

that's a lot to moderate!

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 22h

I worked such "mechanical turk" jobs in my past; people take moderation for granted now. It is trauma-inducing. Machine learning and so-called "AI" for moderation is genuinely a good thing unless you like making poor people traumatized & suicidal.

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 1d

That is exactly what it means in this context. People have just had their minds fried by the internet ragemachine and no longer know how to read.....😩

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 1d

This is going around again and it is not true. Like every site on the internet, Bluesky uses machine learning to do a first-pass approximation of image classification to detect and label content. They have repeatedly confirmed outside services do not use Bluesky user data to train their models.

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 1d

I don't know how to break it to people that if you want a big public social media site with no ML-based moderation/accessibility tools, then you have to vocally support returning to outsourced manual moderation (trauma-inducing sweatshop labor from a poor country)...

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 1d

I feel like I need to create a *taps the sign* meme along the lines of "if you support the fight against CSAM/CSAE you need to accept that machine learning scanning tools are a vital part of social media"

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David Buchanan @retr0.id · 2d

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

In a constant battle with my colleagues over open protocols, and it feels like I tap the "it's ~2 years old" card entirely too often in my defense of at protocol......but it genuinely feels like a required reminder for every "my dad is more decentralized than your dad" conversation.

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dame @dame.is · 2d

still thinking about how insanely trigger-happy some bsky users are with calling people transphobic, racist, etc

if that’s always your immediate reaction to someone merely having an opinion you don’t like, ur doing a disservice to the cause and should be embarrassed

boy who cried wolf phenomenon

dame @dame.is · 7d

having people think you are transphobic just because you liked a post that says “waffles” is one of the most Bluesky things ever

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you for the clarification! Yeah I was struggling to whittle my reply down to 300 characters and realized afterwards that omitting the appview out of the appview+relay explanation messed up the answer a bit lol

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

Oh yes, that's a much better way of putting it for sure

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

(Apologies for the constant replies, I couldn't remember the bird name of the toolset earlier) Projects under development like @roost.tools' Osprey should help /significantly/ with independent selfhosted platform costs, as security/moderation is usually a major hurdle:
bsky.app/profile/hail...

hailey @hailey.at · 6d

there's some more to do here in the repo to get it where i want, but will probably write a leaflet soon on making moderation work for people that are not Bluesky PBC. hoping that this will be a good step in that direction.

GitHub - bluesky-social/osprey-atproto: A set of packages, UDFs, and rules to use Osprey with ATProto

A set of packages, UDFs, and rules to use Osprey with ATProto - bluesky-social/osprey-atproto

github.com

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 3d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal @signal.org · 5d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

In the current state of things, yes. In the future, possibly not? That also entirely depends on the scope of "independence" one is looking for(this is where it gets far more complicated; there's a lot of "depends" here based on variables that are basically being hammered out now in realtime lol)

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

(I should also clarify by "possible, but not yet expanded/complete" i don't mean it hasn't been programmed into the protocol yet, but that they have not been implemented at large/public scale yet. Most of the difficulty at this point isn't as much the programming but the resources & implementation.)

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

Because of how young the atmosphere is, most of these servers & appviews are still largely dependent on the existing scaffolding set up by bluesky, but they do not necessarily need to be in order to work so the ultimate methods of decentralization are still possible but not yet expanded/complete.

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haobing is typing... @haobing.bsky.social · 2d

Not sure how technical an explanation u want, but the tl;dr of the issue is that PDS like blacksky are–in their current form–still reliant on the relays(part of the pub architecture) run by bluesky. running them this way is not a requirement for the atmosphere, so it could theoretically be changed.

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