Maven, a new social network backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, found itself in a controversy today when it imported a huge amount of posts and profiles from the Fediverse, and then ran AI analysis to alter the content.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    Looks like it.

    In addition to pulling in posts, the import process seems to be running AI sentiment analysis to add tags and relational data after content reaches Maven’s servers. This is a core part of Maven’s product: instead of follows or likes, a model trains itself on its own data in an attempt to surface unique content algorithmically.

    But of course, that news doesn’t give the reader those lovely rage endorphins or draw clicks.

    This is the Fediverse, having the content we post get spread around to other servers is the whole point of all this. Is this a face-eating leopard situation? People are genuinely surprised and upset that the stuff we post here is ending up being shown in other places?

    There is one thing I see here that raises my eyebrows:

    Even more shocking is the revelation that somehow, even private DMs from Mastodon were mirrored on their public site and searchable. How this is even possible is beyond me, as DM’s are ostensibly only between two parties, and the message itself was sent from two hackers.town users.

    But that sounds to me like a hackers.town problem, it shouldn’t be sending out private DMs to begin with.