A lot of people are talking about the privacy aspect (like you mention in your post) a lot better than me, so I wanted to share the main issue I’ve had with ChatGPT. It’s an idiot. It can’t follow basic instructions and will just repeat the mistake over and over again when you point it out. It’s uninspired and uncreative and will spit out lame, great value brand names like “The Shadow Nexus”, “The Cybercenter”, “The Datahaven”. I used to be able make it give good names when giving it example names but doesn’t work anymore. I’m writing cyberpunk fic, and I needed help with a hacker group name, and it came up with the Binary Syndicate which is pretty good. Now it comes up with “Hacker Squad”, “The Hacker Elite”, “The Hackers”. I don’t want it to write an entire book for me, but sometimes I need help with scene that require more technical knowledge than I have. It’s prose was really good when you fine tune it a little. Now it’s flat, bland, and boring. I asked it to write a scene about someone defusing a bomb and it basically was a two sentence scene that explained nothing on how he defused it. I asked it to make it longer and explain how he defused it and it saw “He opens the case and utilizes a technique known as ‘wire tracing’. He traces the wire and cuts it and the bomb is defused. The hacker is so relieved.” See how flat that is? How mechanical? I use Claude for creative writing but it’s not much better.

Claude is so censored that writing anything that sounds even nonoscopically criminal it freaks the hell out and lectures you about being ethical. For instances it wouldn’t help me write a scene about a digital forensic analyst at the FBI wiping a computer (because it encourages harm). So you can only imagine how it reacted when I asked it for help writing about my vigilante hacker character and my archeologist posing as a crime lord smuggler secretly dismantling black market trades in the middle east. You have to jailbreak it (which is a little bit less hard than hacking the Pentagon!) and eventually it goes all love guru on you and starts monologuing about light and darkness and writing inspiring uplifting tales blah blah blah.

Honestly, what I’m saying is that ChatGPT is pretty dumbed down, but I’ve heard of a lot of people who’ve noticed no difference. You could be one of them. If you’re using it for creative writing, use Claude and good luck with the prompt engineering attempting to jailbreak it.

Yeah, for me it was just on step too far. I was trying to ask questions on a board about a niche topic for my book and I was deleted. I messaged the mods and they told I was leeching off of them for free buzz and I wouldn’t get approved. Meanwhile I posted on another board about the same topic and everyone was super friendly and was really excited a normie was asking questions. I realized that over my time on reddit, I’ve developed this massive anxiety about posting. Most of these subreddits I frequented have hundreds of rules, and dozens of sub rules under each.

So I’d inevitably get deleted and harassed by the mods because of things like, having the tags on the wrong side of the title, posting more than 3 times in a week, including the three dots thing (…) somewhere in my post, or my favorite, referring to the users as ‘the hive mind’. That last one got me banned from several subs by this power mod. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve spent all night trying to get approved to no avail (I’m very persistent when I need information). Just to when I finally arrange all of the words to be in the right order for the tyrants to approve me. Just to get downvoted into oblivion and people spamming me with all manners of insults and treating me like an idiot. Fuck spez and fuck reddit.

Phew! Sorry, didn’t mean to dump that on you. Like I said, today was the last straw for me. Anxiety is dropping, finally.

I just went on twitter today and saw the change. X? What is that man’s obsession with the letter X? Half of his kids are named X-something, his newest scheme is called x.ai or something? I swear to god he’s an android or something.

Looks like the assholes are coming out of the woodwork. That’s gonna happen when a bunch of new users come. What a geekezoid amiright?

I was think about it when I was writing it XD.

Okay that’s fair, you bring up good points. I’m actually glad there are counter to my points. Thanks 👍.

Nah, reading this no this hack is personal. They hacked this site months ago and now they’re coming in here looking the heroes of the story? No, they were ignored. The hackers got pissed and now they’re using this as an opportunity to get back at reddit. So what, they got maybe a terabyte of decompressed data at most, and they want 4 million dollars? This feels like some script kiddies utilizing a bad situation after getting ignored, not a professional op.

I wonder if u/spez ordered this hack so he can back off and save face. Of course I don’t know the context but that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Smart homes sound good in concept and I’d love to have one if there weren’t so many risks. But an entire home that can be controlled via computers just sounds like an opsec nightmare. Obviously there’s the plus that your average technologically illiterate granny isn’t going to be using these so it will most likely have strong security systems. But hackers love a challenge.

And a whole neighborhood? A systemwide attack could happen disrupting entire swaths of a city’s residential zone. Imagine showers suddenly spraying boiling water, targeted attacks on epileptic individuals with flashing lights, temperatures dropping to below freezing or up to dangerous levels of heat or lightbulbs overloading sending broken glass everywhere, speakers bursting eardrums.

Not to mention more subtle dangers of such voice activation systems being accessed by malicious actors, or more likely, corporate concerns. Someone gangstalked or targeted by powerful people who could just court order one of these smart home companies to hand over the data and they probably will without fuss.

The attack surface of a single electronic device is massive, with dozens of different apps and services, each with different system vulnerabilities to exploit that’s already hard enough. But just imagine the attack surface of an entire home! Everything from the LG Flatscreen in your living room, to the temperature control systems, to your Apple Smart Toaster can be hacked to gain access to the rest of the system. If any one of those isn’t completely secure (which of course is a pipe dream) then it could be the gateway to a smart home hacking story on a Defcon panel.

And finally, what’s stopping the company from just updating the software for your smart home and paylocking features like “Uh yeah, you need to pay 12.99$ a month to have your cctv cameras work.” And because all the framework that runs the systems is being hosted in proprietary servers, you can’t do shit. And you can’t host your own servers either. Does this sound familiar because it should?

What the fuck happened with Supernovae?! Is this trolling? How the hell can he not see that he’s selling everyone down the damn river. Meta is not to be trusted! We all left cesspools like Facebook to escape the Zuck. Why in the mf is Supernovae even considering this much less actually doing it? Can someone please tell me he’s just trolling, please?

I used to use Teddit.net and Stealth on F-Droid before the u/spez tomfoolery.

What does FediAct do?

I’m glad you’re having a good time! This place does feel different doesn’t it? In a good way.

Thank you for your feedback, but I disagree. I feel you’re making a lot of assumptions. You’re assuming that OP is a part of a marginalized community which is quite possible but not confirmed, and you are also assuming that I am not a part of one myself, which I am.

I have faced severe discrimination, emotional, and physical abuse simply for being the racial minority in school growing up, both by teachers and students based for the color of my skin. I’m also a member of the LGBTQIA+ community and an open bisexual in a regressive red state. I was literally just told I am unbiblical by my skills coach. I’m super worried about basic things like PDAs with my partner for fears we might be harassed in public. It shouldn’t surprise you that it gets incredibly exhausting just trying to live a normal life, you denying what I see is real - that makes it worse by calling me names.

It is not my opinion that this person is a drama queen because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or political beliefs. I just believe they are very pessimistic and doom and gloom and I’m having a hard time confirming what they’ve said as real. I’m on Kbin a lot and have not ever seen anti-trans posts, or ones that weren’t met with absolute vitriol and down voted into oblivion to be shortly removed by the mods.

In fact if you look at one of these comments, someone had a theory they weren’t actually on Kbin but on another site connected to Kbin? You should go look for that comment I can’t find it so please it with a grain of salt. Many other people are calling out OP for being severely negative and doom and gloom, and also saying that they’ve never seen this type of content before.

And I think being a part of marginalized community or not would have no effect on whether it is seen. Bigots and hateful people want to spread their hate to every knook of the internet they find. And me and many other people (including LGBTQ and few trans folks in the comments) haven’t seen this stuff. Although there is apparently a Lemmygrad instance, so that pro-Russia which sucks. I am not denying it existed but I find it weird that they are seeing all of this bad, hateful stuff when me and other marginalized folk haven’t.

Yes it was rude to call them a drama queen, but I’m not going to apologize for it anymore than I have. It is my opinion that they are. Just like it is yours that I am making bullshit smooth brain comments. I think we should just disagree and go our separate ways.

Yeah, I’m really lost as to what OP is talking about? I’ve been here since the blackouts and have seen nothing like what they’re talking about. The difference between here and Reddit is day and night. I literally saw a post about the former president and people weren’t arguing in some knockdown drag out like they would on literally any other social media platform. If there is any toxicity, which of course it’s ridiculous to say that there’s none, then it be must be rare because I have seen downright amazing interactions and honest and constructive discussions on Lemmy and Kbin. I’m sure there might be cracks in the fediverse and I might see them after the honeymoon phase is over but honestly I think the fediverse is the step in the right direction for the internet as a whole.

I’m **really ** wanting to be nice and approach this site differently so please pardon me if I sound rude but OP sounds like a drama queen. We don’t need any of that on this site. I’m glad their gone. People like that are never happy anywhere and just suck the life out of the room like a power vacuum and spit out negative attention right in our faces. They bring it on themselves. Please let me know if I’m off my rocker on this one guys, and gals. I’d love to hear your side of this whole thing but that’s just my general gut feeling.

yeah, I think I’m done here.

Okay, bye! ;)

Cool.

FOSS, Free and Open Source Software.

I like that! I’ve called it the Federated sites before instead of the Fediverse.

Thanks I’ll check this out.

I can’t find information at all on Fennec F-Droid because of the blackouts, could someone tell me more about Fennec F-Droid. First of all, wasn’t it a dead project? I remember it no longer being maintained. Secondly, that it tracks and reports activity in the anti features section. If this is true then should I use something else. I’m really frustrated that I can’t find this info because all I find on searches is reddit links. If anyone can shed some light that would be great! I heard a lot of good things about it and IF it’s safe I’d love to use it.