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Mastodon updates terms of service to ban AI model training on user data (www.neowin.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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[–] 77 points 1 year ago (10 children)

That's a really misleading headline; a Mastodon instance has done this, Mastodon as a whole can't do this because it's free software, it can be used for any purpose.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I'm wondering, is it possible to include that restriction in public license for the software mastodon?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    It wouldn't be a free software licence by the FSF definition (rule zero). Of interest the FSF rejects the original JSON licence because it contains the clause “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” Since Mastodon uses AGPL, it wouldn't be compatible.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    This is why I hope to see rule zero get shit-canned. It's a naive vestige from a time long before we hit late-stage capitalism. Corporate interests have slithered their way into every facet of our lives and we should be working to make software that we write hostile to their practices as much as we can.

    If that means that the organizations that have a stranglehold on Open Source™️ don't like it, so be it. We can follow in the spirit of open source without the naivety or captured interests of organizations that define the arbitrary terms by which we categorize software licenses.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    It just means that the decision comes down to the instance owner not the software developer, which I think is right. Everyone should be able to decide what their computer does, that's important to hold on to.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    this reminds me of the Hippocratic License, which comes with a bunch of modules restricting the use of software based on ethical considerations (for example, there’s a module forbidding the use by police, and another one forbidding the use by any institution on the BDS list)

    i think the FSF, in their eternal and unchallengeable wisdom (/s), also declared that it wasn’t foss

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    This is interesting! I've been exploring this and it seems like a neat little license.

    I'm not a lawyer, but one funny edge case I noticed is that the Extractive Industries module seems like it makes it a breach of license for crystal shops to use your software since you're involved in the sale of minerals.

    I would tend to agree with FSF that it's not FOSS, though. There are so many restrictions on this license and who can use it, based on fairly arbitrary things like "if CBP claims you're doing forced labor" or "you do business in this specific region". It might be more moral, but it's a different approach than FOSS, which is less restrictive than more and prioritizes "Freedom" above everything else. Maybe it's time for a different approach, though?

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