2mo ago

Mastodon updates terms of service to ban AI model training on user data

www.neowin.net

28 comments

Mastodon dot SOCIAL did, the big public instance. Mastodon the software doesn't have these restrictions.
- It wouldn't even make sense for the Mastodon software to have such a restriction... The article title is misleading.
AI scrapers:
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.
- I'm wondering, is it possible to include that restriction in public license for the software mastodon?
  
  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.
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?
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.
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).
- 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.
  
  Exactly this, you can only stop scrapers that play by the rules.
  Each one of those books powering GPT had like protection on them already.
- blocking scrapers is very easy
  The entirety of the internet disagrees.
- and said that the instance would be cutting ties/not federating with Threads,
  Can you please show exactly there this was said?
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?
It is better than nothing even if it is hard to enforce.
Well done Mastodon.social.
Even if it may do much, it's still better than not doing it.
W
Terms of Service are a joke and not legally binding. This is just a useless feel good motion.
I don't mind training AI to give everyone smarter answers. It just seems the more civic, community minded, thing to do. BUT, what I want is a % of the revenue they make selling my metadata, and a list of who they sold it to.

28 comments