ben ,
@ben@m.benui.ca avatar

Stack Overflow announced that they are partnering with OpenAI, so I tried to delete my highest-rated answers.

Stack Overflow does not let you delete questions that have accepted answers and many upvotes because it would remove knowledge from the community.

So instead I changed my highest-rated answers to a protest message.

Within an hour mods had changed the questions back and suspended my account for 7 days.

Diff view of a stack overflow question showing it being changed from the original text to a protest message, then being changed back again by a mod. Protest text reads: Why does OpenAI get to profit from our work? I have removed this question in protest of Stack Overflow's decision to partner with OpenAI. This move steals the labour of everyone who contributed to Stack Overflow with no way to opt-out. OpenAI has a history of flooding the web with inaccurate information and have explicitly stated that they will never pay creators for their work.

Email from Stack Overflow. Text reads: Hello, We're writing in reference to your Stack Overflow account: https://stackoverflow.com/users/392350/benui You have recently removed or defaced content from your posts. Please note that once you post a question or answer to this site, those posts become part of the collective efforts of others who have also contributed to that content. Posts that are potentially useful to others should not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances. Even if the post is no longer useful to the original author, that information is still beneficial to others who may run into similar problems in the future - this is the underlying philosophy of Stack Exchange. Extensive deletions take a lot of effort to repair; please read "I’ve thought better of my question; can I delete it?" for possible alternatives. Because of the amount of disruption these incidents can cause, we have placed your account on hold for 7 days while we reach out to you to avoid any further misunderstandings. Once this matter has been resolved, your reputation score will be restored and your account will resume as normal. We sincerely hope this is just a misunderstanding, but we understand that you may have an exceptional reason to remove this content. If so, let us know by replying to this message. Regards, Stack Overflow Moderation Team
ALT
  • Reply
    • + NanoBookReview, kuba, mastodonmigration, epidiah +1 More
    ryanvgates ,

    @ben Does anyone have recommended alternatives to StackOverflow? Particularly ones that respect their users right to their own data

    arcaege ,
    @arcaege@mastodon.social avatar

    @ben GDPR request it is then...

    soop ,
    @soop@wetdry.world avatar

    @ben can you get them into legal trouble for this

    toor ,
    @toor@citydweller.social avatar

    @ben We all told you so. All of you. But you all dumped usenet news, public forums and other systems for fancy commercial ones. You all ran to Discord instead of continuing IRC. You all went to Reddit. You all went to Stack Exchange. Oh it was so "convenient".

    Now we have the fediverse. And what do people do? Signing up for Bluesky and Threads.

    tg9541 ,
    @tg9541@mas.to avatar

    @ben Obviously we all gave up the right to the content that we created the very moment we joined Stack Overflow (or perhaps later when we "accepted" a change of their conditions).

    Everyone should have noticed that some of us were herded into a "beauty contest", akin to the wares at a slave market in the 19th century ( is similar).

    Those in the "community" who were motivated by mutual help were scammed.

    The best option is to leave, and starve them of fresh content.

    starlight ,
    @starlight@beppo.online avatar

    @ben jeez this sucks... I remember thinking it was cool that stack overflow banned LLM generated content on the site. i guess openAI threw enough money at them to make them do the stupidest 180.

    corycarson ,
    @corycarson@gnu.gl avatar

    @ben

    Im-doing-my-part.jpg

    Because of the amount of disruption these incidents can cause, we have placed your account on hold for 7 days while we reach out to you to avoid any further misunderstandings. Once this matter has been resolved, your reputation score will be restored and your account will resume as normal.
    ALT
  • Reply
    • Kierkegaanks ,
    @Kierkegaanks@beige.party avatar

    @ben can you gdpr or dmca them?

    alper ,
    @alper@rls.social avatar

    @ben Don’t delete your answers. Poison them.

    ben OP ,
    @ben@m.benui.ca avatar

    I'm requesting that my questions and answers be permanently deleted under GDPR.

    ben OP ,
    @ben@m.benui.ca avatar

    It's just a reminder that anything you post on any of these platforms can and will be used for profit. It's just a matter of time until all your messages on Discord, Twitter etc. are scraped, fed into a model and sold back to you.

    ben OP ,
    @ben@m.benui.ca avatar

    Thank you for the replies. As someone pointed out, anything posted on Stack Overflow is covered by CC BY-SA 4.0.

    Under this license all usage must attribute the author and must have a similar license. Neither of which OpenAI fulfills.

    Screenshot from Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license with the following text: Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

    Screenshot of Stack Overflow's license page. Text reads: What is the license for the content I post? As noted in the Stack Exchange Terms of Service and in the footer of every page, all publicly accessible user contributions are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license as follows: Content contributed before 2011-04-08 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.5. Content contributed from 2011-04-08 up to but not including 2018-05-02 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 3.0. Content contributed on or after 2018-05-02 (UTC) is distributed under the terms of CC BY-SA 4.0. The license applicable for each Question and Answer revision is available on the post timeline. See this post for more information. Please read the terms of service and the full legal text of the license carefully for more details on how your content can be used and for how you can use publicly accessible content contributed to the site by other users.
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + claudius
    ben OP ,
    @ben@m.benui.ca avatar

    Also that CC claims that training an AI on data is "fair use". So fuck Creative Commons I guess.
    https://creativecommons.org/2023/02/17/fair-use-training-generative-ai/

    Stealcase ,
    @Stealcase@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

    @ben Yes, they suck HARD.
    "Fair Use" is the only way they could argue that people could train on things using their licenses, because:

    • All CC BY requires attribution.
    • CC BY-NC is not okay to use commercially.
    • CC BY-ND means No Derivatives.

    CC0 is the only theoretically sound material to train AI on without licensing.

    They get funding from google, so it makes sense they're singing this tune.

    Great article here:
    https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2024-01-12/column-copyright-is-the-biggest-threat-to-the-ai-industry-but-its-not-going-down-without-a-fight

    fredbrooker ,
    @fredbrooker@witter.cz avatar

    @ben OpenAI are thieves - everybody knows - just jail 'em

    caycedo ,
    @caycedo@oye.social avatar

    @ben Does that mean we should comment our code giving credit to the user who helped us? Credit to the questioner and the answerer? What if that exact code snippet that works for me, were also shared by other users in different contexts? What if I had to changed it? Does this license prevents them from using the content to train an LLM model? Could that be solved by posting a page with all user names and giving us all credit?

    Apparently this is just a rant of questions, but it is not.

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