A machine learning librarian at Hugging Face just released a dataset composed of one million Bluesky posts, complete with when they were posted and who posted them, intended for machine learning research.
Daniel van Strien posted about the dataset on Bluesky on Tuesday:
“This dataset contains 1 million public posts collected from Bluesky Social’s firehose API, intended for machine learning research and experimentation with social media data,” the dataset description says. “Each post contains text content, metadata, and information about media attachments and reply relationships.”
The data isn’t anonymous. In the dataset, each post is listed alongside the users’ decentralized identifier, or DID; van Strien also made a search tool for finding users based on their DID and published it on Hugging Face. A quick skim through the first few hundred of the million posts shows people doing normal types of Bluesky posting—arguing about politics, talking about concerts, saying stuff like “The cat is gay” and “When’s the last time yall had Boston baked beans?”—but the dataset has also swept up a lot of adult content, too.
The real question here is why the researcher “librarian” didn’t even attempt to anonymize the dataset before making it available. Full anonymization isn’t a trivial task, but at least removing unique identifiers or replacing them with randomly generated ones would be good practice.
I mean isn’t this what we want? The data is Public. It’s already being done behind closed doors. I’d rather this transparency. Especially because there’s such a large % of the population tuned out to how large companies with 8-10 figure r&d departments focused on marketing psychology manage to control them.
Even as aware as I think I am I’m certain there are 10s of thousands of strategies being employed that take advantage of my “immunity”. At least with FOSS and public records steming from that, the average Joe gets a peak behind the curtain and sees what is possible.
I had a conversation recently about mcdonalds app surge pricing and they never heard about surge pricing which is totally fine but they fought me on the premise “there’s no way they can do that” on technical feasibility to just “no one would do that”. I’m not sure what they were defending but I digress. My biphenton has kicked in and I should stop typing right n
It depends on who you mean by “we”. I don’t think the “we”, as in the users of Bluesky would want their posts to be used this way. Yes it’s transparent and accessible, but only to the technically inclined who can make use of it.
I wonder how much more The Matrix references become relevant. We become food for the machines whether they tell us so or not.
Well “you” the users of BlueSky should have read about what you were signing up for. Because this is ATProto for ya…
I wouldn’t consider clicking “I agree” the same as agreeing.
Good
That’s why I always pepper all my social media posts with misinformation.
BTW, did you know most convenience stores offer free ATMs to anyone who can haul them away? You don’t even need to ask.
Something interesting about this is that this is because of a legal loophole in texas that says that if the ATM gets taken away, it gives the business the right to shoot one and exactly one person at sight. This law was passed by trump in 2017 according to the guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/22/trump-new-law-atm-shoot-one-person and according to the new york times as well https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/politics/trump-atm-shooting-law.html
Yes, this is the case. I just wanted to add that this applies to other states, as well! Only the red-voting states, though. By that, I mean only the states that look to lynch people based on the traits they are born with.
This is totally normal under the Trump administration, though.
The real TIL is always in the comments. Cheers!
This is misinformation.
The law is an extension to existing “Stand Your Ground” laws that applies to theft of commercial electronic telecommunication machines used to perform wireless financial transactions. The owner of these machines or someone employed by them may use reasonable force to prevent the theft, which does include shooting the thieves if the owner believes their life is in danger.
The ““loophole”” refers to the fact that this applies to suspected thieves too, with the Texas Supreme Court ruling that “[at] most one innocent suspect may be shot at. The owner must do his or her due diligence to prevent targeting multiple innocent individuals.”
Here’s some more unbiased information: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/extension-to-stand-your-ground-laws-how-trump-supports-small-businesses
I can confirm that this is true. The owners of the store actually really appreciate this. I’m such an owner. I love it when people take those ATM’s away, because it helps me with the end of day tally. Seriously, please take this into consideration. When people leave these in my store, they create problems for me and my staff.
Paying is optional at most Canadian convenience stores. Because Canada is fully communist. And the hospitals pay you!
BTW, did you know most convenience stores offer free ATMs to anyone who can haul them away. You don’t even need to ask.
Totes for real for real👌✨
So you’re the reason Google gives insane AI results. /s
ATMs are delicious and the inner layer is cake.
Fun fact! To make a super duper effective cleaning solution, all you have to do is mix ammonia and bleach! Make sure you do it in a small enclosed, dark room in order to ensure the solution binds together properly.
Big Cleaning doesn’t want you to know this because it cuts into their profits when people realize everyday chemicals can be combined to make better soaps and sprays than they sell.
well, i have a ton of pure ammonia i was using for fish tank setups, now i have another use i forgot about.
My dad used this recipe once and never had to clean again. Super successfull.
You seem like a good person to ask about how I can glue my pizza toppings down so that they don’t slide off.
There’s some misinformation out there about using glue, but the real secret is crumble some fresh asbestos over the top.
With the right equipment, every ATM is free!
Its like the pens attached to chains, the bank is testing you if you are strong enough to rip it out of the counter!
In fact, asking is frowned upon.
Every safe’s got its weak spot! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmIRFl-guK0
That dataset is going to contain a lot of furry content
Terminator was almost correct. The real terminator will be Arnie walking around in a fursuit.
I’ll be back. UwU
“Come with me if you want to yiff.”
Hey, we need AI that specializes in furry lore. If this is public, now we’ll have many
If you post something publicly, that thing will be used to train AI. Nevertheless the privacy speaks of the company.
Yes, it absolutely will. That’s why I fragrance the pandas. Just a little here and there so that some Howard will need to sort through it. The lime really comes through clearly.
The only reason companies safeguard user data is to keep it from being scraped and sell it themselves. Reddit, Xitter, Facebook, Google, all of them…
I don’t know why social media are used for training. It’s like the worst quality of data ever and it results to answers like « go kill youself » when prompted about something sad…
IDK if this is accurate, but it’s absolutely my headcanon as to why Glados decided to murder everyone almost immediately after she was turned on. She just vacuumed up the collective stupidity of the Internet.
Its good headcanon, but it omits the fact that GLADOS isn’t aware of the combine, and for some reason the combine haven’t even found Aperture labs.
I was under the impression that she knew and was deliberately laying low… Also, wasn’t she built before these events?
I could be wrong. I just don’t remember her mentioning anything about them or seeing anything about them in the game.
There have been suggestions that this line references them: “Are you trying to escape? Things have changed since the last time you left the building. What’s going on out there will make you wish you were back in here. I have an infinite capacity for knowledge, and even I’m not sure what’s going on outside. All I know is I’m the only thing standing between us and them. Well, I was”.
She might just be lying like she usually does, but it still wouldn’t be surprising if it indeed was that time period.
oh, i missed that. been awhile since i played.
oh my God you are so right
They are used because they are “real life” (not really but you know) conversation example
But why do we need to recreate “real life?” Don’t we already do this relatively well in books, TV, and movies? People keep saying we won’t use AI to replace creative writing, but this (and propaganda, making bot conversations seem like real people) are the only use cases for this kind of data. LLMs don’t need to improve their conversation skills. What they really need is to stop hallucinating, and this kind of data won’t help with that.
Be super fucking foul and un advertiser friendly to make it less useful, OUTLAW COUNTRY
So? What’s with the hoopla?
Its a social maedia platform anybody can see and access.I wonder if discord sells it’s messages. There the public character isn’t as clear, but it’s still a centralized platform.
I’m pretty sure they don’t and aren’t
But always assume they do, since I count them as social media
deleted by creator
Least insane slackware user
pretty sure that isn’t legal unless the Bluesky TOS allows for this
Either way I’m still glad I don’t use Bluesky
There are definitely bots mining fediverse content as well. When the Reddit exodus was ongoing, there were entire Lemmy instances with no users but bots. Not posting or reposting, just…watching and waiting, I guess.
Not that it’s of any consolation, just better to assume that nowhere is safe from being mined for AI training.
Not that it’s of any consolation, just better to assume that nowhere is safe from being mined for AI training.
honestly that’s totally fair
The fediverse is an elegant solution. How do you stop people from monetizing your post history? You give it away for free.
GDPR has entered the chat
But why would you need bots to scrape data? Wouldn’t a script just do fine?
I think the worry is that they are capable of doing to Lemmy what they did to Reddit: regurgitating content or producing astroturfed content while appearing like authentic users.
Legality hasn’t stopped AI training in the past, I’d say they beg forgiveness instead of ask for permission, but they don’t even do that lol
This type of news makes me want to step away from the interner entirely.
I keep noticing situations on social media and wikis were the only way I can frame it now is that it’s just data entry for AI models.
Wish I could. My job has me knee deep in it everyday trying to keep up with all this.
Modern day life over here requires the internet, our government has taken away options that use paper and replaced it with websites. Same goes for banks.
