Deleting a comment doesn't delete it from reddit's backend, only from public view, so reddit still retains and can track and sell your data. Making multiple accounts (assuming one also takes other steps like using a VPN and clearing cookies and local storage) would make it harder for reddit to connect all your comments and build a profile on you.
That's why people were using extensions to edit their comments to random words instead. Apparently Reddit had no way to un-edit a comment. It's probably been fixed by now though.
Yeah. LLMs are great at convincing people they could be amazing, that they're so close to being amazing, if only they just figure out how to bridge that last gap... But that last gap is fundamentally unbridgeable because of the way LLMs work.
It's a very effectively designed human trap, in this and other ways.
Downvotes are cancerous, imo. It encourages petty fighting (great for "engagement" metrics) and discourages good faith contributors.
Even upvotes can be an issue. Oh, you wrote your comment the day after the post went up? Too late! Nobody's looking anymore, no upvotes for you. No replies either. You feel your effort has reached nobody and you have wasted your time, so you stop bothering to put in effort.
I think the generality of it pushes topics into "old and inactive" way too fast.
Also, reddit's moderation is terrible. Just look at how long hate subreddits have tended to last even after they started hitting r/all regularly. People who are worth talking to don't tend to hang out anywhere that starts to feel like little nazi camp. Subreddits are separated to an extent, which does help, but that only goes so far.
I think the visual design also discourages longer "wall of text" responses in a way that traditional forums often don't. Lots of things (especially anything nuanced) can't be said in a tweet.
I do think the size that comes from centralization is part of it too. "Communities" feel less community, and posts/discussions are abandoned too fast and almost never revisited (exceptions are posts that come up as the #1 google search result for a tech problem).
The default and r/all subreddits are the worst by miles, though.
But city subreddits and any kind of recommendation thread have been much shittier lately because of the bots and the chatgpt copypasters.
Little forums also have a lot more character in their visual design than reddit, and they tend to allow more customization for individual users too. It's easier to recognize a person behind a regular commenter if they have a big pfp image or a goofy signature.
People have been having these discussions since 1980 at least. I'm not going to bother rehashing the issue endlessly in shortform internet comments, but this paper exists if you're really interested in the subject.
If just "being involved" in the "creative process" is enough to be called an artist, then by that measure that includes the guys that are simply involved by having the money to patron the process. Maybe it also includes the guy delivering the pizza.
Tell that to Kane Parsons (The Backrooms). Or anyone who owns a smartphone. I'd rather watch a million youtube skits where all the actors are played by one person in different wigs than any attempt at passing off AI generated video as big budget special effects.
The animated movie Flow won an Oscar, and that was made by a very small team and entirely in Blender.
Fanvids and AMVs made by clever sampling and splicing have been a thing for a very long time, too.
There are also a lot of games that exclusively use free or self-made assets.
Money allows access to better tools and bigger teams. But replacing artist jobs with AI doesn't seem like a great way for artists to get money (or time to focus on art, for that matter).
Generative AI, especially for video, also keeps getting more expensive, as AI companys' bills finally come due.
A photograph is distinct from a painting. The camera does things a paintbrush cannot, even if given infinite time. (And vice versa, a camera cannot make a painting.)
What can generative AI do that can't be done, and done better, otherwise? Nothing.
It's not an attempt to replace or add an artistic medium; it's an attempt to replace the artist. It doesn't open new avenues of expression, and it has negative journalistic value too.
People who "make AI art" are not making art, nor making anything else. They are commissioning images/videos/text from a bot, just as people commission art from humans. The amount of praise/admiration this deserves is zero.
I agree with your sentiment, though I'd argue that a camera also can't do anything that a dedicated enough painter can't also do, just with a lot more labor involved. Especially if you only look at it from the result perspective (even though that's only one part of the art, that's unfortunately the only part that counts for many people)
The unfortunate truth for art is that gen AI will stay, and they will take work from artists, just like photography did from painters. There will be a niche for it at some point, and until it finds that niche people will fight over it.
Sure. But the political party in question has an explicit goal of rounding up and "deporting" all immigrants and all the children of immigrants (including those who grew up in Sweden and are citizens).
Besides being reprehensible, that kind of mass trafficking requires mass surveillance. It simply can't be done without it.
This kind of surveillance is antithetical to what Mullvad promises.
There of course could be a "privacy for me and my customers, but not for thee" thing in their minds.
But I don't trust that CEO whatsoever, and I don't trust the rest of Mullvad's leadership either because their response to the backlash was mealy mouthed "everyone is entitled to their opinion, let's all be civil" minimization schlock. They didn't give a fuck; they just wanted the PR problem to go away.
Mullvad's VPN service might continue to be trustworthy, but... I have other options. And it could be enshittified over time, just like so many other things. At least one CEO has a motivation to enable mass surveillance.
I'm also just not going to knowingly put money into the hands of someone I know will use it for evil, if and when I have a choice, which in this case I do.
