this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Blocking AI crawlers on the fediverse (fedia.io)
submitted 9 months ago by cecep@fedia.io to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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Given how Reddit now makes money by selling its data to AI companies, I was wondering how the situation is for the fediverse. Typically you can block AI crawlers using robot.txt (Verge reported about it recently: https://www.theverge.com/24067997/robots-txt-ai-text-file-web-crawlers-spiders). But this only works per domain/server, and the fediverse is about many different servers interacting with each other.

So if my kbin/lemmy or Mastodon server blocks OpenAI's crawler via robot.txt, what does that even mean when people on other servers that don't block this crawler are boosting me on Mastodon, or if I reply to their posts. I suspect unless all the servers I interact with block the same AI crawlers, I cannot prevent my posts from being used as AI training data?

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[–] vamp07@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I don’t object to my content being used for training. I do object to Reddit profiting from that data. It’s the reason I basically don’t participate on Reddit anymore. Anything I post in the fediverse I am aware I am offering it up for free to be crawled and used as seen fit as long as it is not monetized without my consent. I don’t consider model training to be monetization.

[–] cecep@fedia.io 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Fair reason for not participating in Reddit. I would argue though that while model training is not monetization per se, with this "AI as a platform" rationale promoted by OpenAI, Google and others, there is very direct link between model training and monetization. Monetization without your consent - especially when these companies refuse to reveal the sources of their training data. Wouldn't be surprised if GPT-4 or Gemini have been trained on your Fediverse posts, or will be in the near future

[–] vamp07@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

Agreed but it bugs me that I need to pay Reddit to not see ads and on top of that they get paid for the content we produce. The fediverse is a better model.