Funny how the "frequently asked questions" for the #StackOverflow#OpenAI thing does not list the question "How do I opt out of this?" (nor the answer to it).
The fediverse won’t succeed at putting up a #Stackoverflow substitute and that’s a problem?
Just an impression: All the pieces seem to be there. But what’s required is a team, with devs, PMs and coordinators, dedicated to making a particular place in the #fediverse .
That’s resources and decently sized financial and organisational demands, especially to get a critical mass of users.
Is the fediverse up to that challenge? If not, is it an issue worth addressing?
I guess the new plugin system is capable for those features but unfortunately I have to reject. I already have some hobby projects in mind but I don’t even have time for them because of my job.
Amen. Same problem here. But feel free to hit me up if you find someone who wants to do it. I wouldnt mind helping with design stuff since that meeds different skills than coding.
Zawsze, ale to zawsze jak wchodzi z finansowaniem VC (Vencure Capital) to serwisy, nawet zakładane przez zaufane osoby ze społeczności dają d... wróć, dają ciała...
Czy można wiedzę IT zbieraną przez społeczność od 2008 roku sprzedać, nie będąc jej właścicielem?
Jak jest się białym chłopem z krzemowej doliny, to pewnie, że można :/
Not all things are meant to last forever. Their impact was HUGE to developer space. It made programming so much easier and the model worked for over a decade plus! An incredible place to go learn and find answers when you ran into some most ridiculous problems at work.
Now, their traffic has been dying. They didn't jump to AI, they tried to resist it. But developers left them, and have been leaving them. What are they supposed to do? lay down and die?
It's hard to imagine #StackOverflow made their decision without considering the fate #Twitter and #Reddit suffered. That they willingly chose to burn the remaining goodwill they had with their users is bewildering.
Like many other technologists, I gave my time and expertise for free to #StackOverflow because the content was licensed CC-BY-SA - meaning that it was a public good. It brought me joy to help people figure out why their #ASR code wasn't working, or assist with a #CUDA bug.
Now that a deal has been struck with #OpenAI to scrape all the questions and answers in Stack Overflow, to train #GenerativeAI models, like #LLMs, without attribution to authors (as required under the CC-BY-SA license under which Stack Overflow content is licensed), to be sold back to us (the SA clause requires derivative works to be shared under the same license), I have issued a Data Deletion request to Stack Overflow to disassociate my username from my Stack Overflow username, and am closing my account, just like I did with Reddit, Inc.
The data I helped create is going to be bundled in an #LLM and sold back to me.
In a single move, Stack Overflow has alienated its community - which is also its main source of competitive advantage, in exchange for token lucre.
Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow's former instantiation, used to fulfill a psychological contract - help others out when you can, for the expectation that others may in turn assist you in the future. Now it's not an exchange, it's #enshittification.
Programmers now join artists and copywriters, whose works have been snaffled up to create #GenAI solutions.
The silver lining I see is that once OpenAI creates LLMs that generate code - like Microsoft has done with Copilot on GitHub - where will they go to get help with the bugs that the generative AI models introduce, particularly, given the recent GitClear report, of the "downward pressure on code quality" caused by these tools?
While this is just one more example of #enshittification, it's also a salient lesson for #DevRel folks - if your community is your source of advantage, don't upset them.
I feel your disappointment, but it's best to find a non-commercial community, and there's reason to put effort into making them; it seems Mastodon is a good place to start looking.
When stripped bare, #Stackoverflow is a profit-making software company that runs a website encouraging people to improve its product for free. The strategy of these companies seems to be to take over public-interest websites and pretend it's business as usual. However, whilst they are paying lip service to the altruism, they want to increase profits and market share. This is exemplified in their self-serving PR statement about attribution from back in February: https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/02/29/defining-socially-responsible-ai-how-we-select-api-partners/
In that statement, they use the word power a lot. That's what's really important to them.
Strong agree. A lot of Elinor Ostrom's work around governance of the commons - where we get the phrase "tragedy of the commons" - relied on mechanisms of co-operation between institutions.
One of the key challenges I see here is that corporations like OpenAI now have a lot more power than even groups of institutions - lawmakers, governments, civil society. We've seen that recently with the way Meta has influenced government policy around paying to share content from commercial news agencies.
There's also a paradox here - an increased production of work in the Commons is good for OpenAI - because it provides them with more data. However, the way in which the Commons is used - to create for-profit products like #GPT, serves as a constraint on people donating creative material to the commons.
Initially I was sad about #StackOverflow's collapse, not so much because I've contributed a lot to it (and as a #Wikipedian, I've already resigned myself to big tech trying to sell my own words back to me), but because I learned a lot of programming and statistics from it; it gave me focused answers to specific problems. It already bothered me that my students were turning to AI for that purpose, and now what I was telling them to use instead is turning into AI slop... (1/2)
... (2/2) But thinking about it, it was actually a pretty crappy way to learn, making me much slower to see the big picture. I only used SO because I couldn't get formal training in those areas. When I got to the point where I could read books on stats and programming instead, I got a lot better a lot faster.
So I guess now I'll double down on encouraging students to focus on fundamental concepts and the ability to formulate the right questions to ask of high quality sources.
Jak se tak koukám na tu taškařici se #StackOverflow, tak nakonec to dopadne tak, že se bude LLM používat víc než předtím, protože do Stack Overflow se přestane přispívat. 🙂
I když reálně si myslím, že to bude jen bouře ve sklenici vody. Pár ideologů SO přestane používat, drtivá většina ho bude používat dál.
@michal Jj, bude to mít stejný průběh jako u Redditu. To byl taky hrozný shitstorm. Nakonec jen velmi malá část uživatelů přešla na Lemmy a zbytek se s novými podmínkami srovnal.
À quel point c’est hypocrite et incohérent de demander la suppression de son compte et données de #StackOverflow, tout en continuant d’aller y consulter les contributions qui y subsisteront ? Je demande pour un amis.
Logged in to Stack Overflow for the first time in 10 years to check exactly what have I left there.. Now, since the few answers I've given are CC-BY, so they must attribute them to me, if I make a GDPR data subject request for them to delete all my data, logic dictates that whatever they think about text as personal data, they must delete the answers, because they can't attribute them to me as a deleted account. Right? #stackoverflow
@pnorman
Every license contains clauses stipulating the conditions under which it can be revoked. Some argue that letting an LLM "copy" content without attribution is such a violation. Some argue otherwise. Clearly we're in some kind of gray area..
As we all know by now, Stack Overflow has alienated their primary contributors by letting OpenAI train on SO's (CC-protected) content, and forcefully preventing countermeasures. Therefore, SO content will likely become worse and even more outdated as time goes on.
So, time to migrate. What's the preferred open source, community-run alternative to SO for everyone to migrate to? Here's one list of alternative software to run such sites:
Does #StackOverflow understand the GDPR? I will try out to delete my stuff and see if they will allow it or not. Because if not, they are in violation of my european rights to my data.
Also they sent me an email reprimanding me for deleting stuff 😂
> 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.
@luca@swaldman@amyworrall@konstantin Yep this is what I'm thinking! So you can do a DMCA takedown as they're breaking your copyright by failing to meet the terms of the license.
This Stack Overflow/OpenAI news is an absolute disaster and a dark day in the history of online communities.
It's hard to read this as anything other than Stack Overflow being desperate for cash. Reports are already surfacing about how badly they handled it, and I expect that will only worsen.
Poor member and moderator communications, answers from dead members being automatically included in the agreement, no opt-in for a share of revenue generated through the agreement, no way to opt-out, penalizing members who try to remove their answers through the tools provided by the site, and a real lack of info in general.
I know there are good community folks working at SO. I feel for them and what they are being subjected to by their leadership engaging in this grisly business.
@SynAck@marta You can't "carve out" stuff out of EU law. That's not how it works here.
I can (and will) file a delete request for all my data and they have a certain time-frame to comply.
They could just "rewrite" my answers and keep them under another name. But they can't just keep my data. If someone would file a complaint that they think the data is still there, the EU could start an investigation.
#StackOverflow mods pretending they don't know why people are removing/defacing their answers are the most pathetic lifeform on the Internet right now.
