Heads-up for anyone who doesn't want their posts scraped and handed over to an LLM.

[yvandasilva@hachyderm.io]

@xri @dalias
Random guess:
To sell to others

[dexternemrod@troet.cafe]

@dalias
@dalias
Because of this insult:
https://alpaca.gold/@seldo/116286295716964968 I wanted to report the account. Turns out, the person is the admin of the server. So I blocked alpaca.gold for my account.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@YvanDaSilva @xri Kinda, but I think the point is kinda to be able to dismiss people's opinions as whatever the slop-extruder claims is the "summary" of them, but pretend you considered them.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@dexternemrod You can still report, just not forward the report to him. Then your admins can act on it and block the instance for everyone.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@YvanDaSilva @xri Like, if you have techbro brain and someone in your replies says something insightful in a way you haven't heard before, it has a chance of breaking thru and making you reconsider things.

But if you get it "summarized" by replacing it with a blend of the closest commonly-repeated stuff from your corpus, you're gonna interpret it as "oh yeah, just more of the same complaints I've already dismissed".

It's basically "turning your audience into yes-men as a service", which sounds like his peers would love it.

[yvandasilva@hachyderm.io]

@dalias @xri 100%

[backfromthedud@mas.to]

@dalias They want to be blocked? Happy to oblige!

[gcvsa@mstdn.plus]

@dalias I recommend a #FediBlock of all this slimeball's accounts and his alpaca.gold instance. He's got accounts on Bluesky and Threads, as well, so make sure you add those.

[missinformation@chaos.social]

@dalias @dexternemrod i blocked the entire domain

[missinformation@chaos.social]

@dalias vielleicht auch was für @ordnung

[dexternemrod@troet.cafe]

@dalias
That's new to me. Thank you!

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@dexternemrod A lot of folks don't understand how reporting works on fedi. When you report a post/account, you're reporting it to the moderation staff for *your own instance*, regardless of where the account you're reporting lives. Your mods can then block the account from appearing to anyone on your instance, limit it so it only shows up to ppl looking for it (kinda like a shadowban), or just keep track of the report for making future moderation decisions about the user or the instance they came from.

You can also choose to forward the report (anonymized to protect you from retaliation if the remote admins are aligned with the abuse, but even then they can sometimes guess) to the reported account's instance and/or the instances of anyone else included in the post's @'s. This might get them banned from their own instance if the instance owner doesn't approve of what they're doing, and it might help other instances block them if their instance doesn't act.

[dragonfrog@mastodon.sdf.org]

@dalias To be clear - what he says there is actually incorrect. The bot logs in as whoever is using it, so you'd have to somehow know who *every* current and future user of the bot is, and block *all* of them.

[elithebearded@fed.qaz.red]

@dalias

Since the host name is the name of the app, maybe an instance block of alpaca.gold is better rather than a user block

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116290410049114192

@MHowell @dexternemrod There is no technical measure to prevent folks who can read what you write from being able to copy it. This is fundamental to how DRM is so ridiculous.

This is not about technical measures but delivering consequences for antisocial behaviors.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116289558240910154

@MHowell @dexternemrod See also:

[ck0@tech.lgbt]

@lumi @dalias He also doesn't understand what legislation is too. This is against GPDR.

[keengrasp@layer8.space]

@khm @YvanDaSilva @dalias

exactly this. Everything about being human, filed under "tedium," and the only thing we can consider "not tedium" is Number Go Up.

[natty@astolfo.social]

@dalias@hachyderm.io that sounds like "blocking" here means not appearing on someone else's feed

The Mastodon API is publicly available and blocking the author of the app or the instance won't do anything

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116289558240910154

@natty In the case of this app, it scrapes from its user's feed, so if you block its user, you will not be in the feed it scrapes.

These techbros want us to believe their "it's silly to have norms if the machine can't enforce them" bullshit. Here, whatever blocking we can do is a statement of our disapproval of their attempts to bypass our consent and reduce the damage, not a surrender of our standing to demand they stop doing things that technical measures fundamentally can't stop.