I'm trying to de-Google, and that means finally getting off of Gmail. I need a new email address for shopping/corporate spam. Where should I park all the emails I get about coupons, shipping updates, new product features, policy changes, etc.?

Considerations:

-I don't want to just give all my shopping data to another big AI company. (So, not Outlook/Microslop.) I don't want a provider that will sell my data to third parties, either. These emails don't need top-level privacy protection, but random third parties don't need to know whether I buy cheap or expensive shoes.

-I'd like to use email aliases for different companies so I can figure out who's the leak if I start getting emails from an unexpected source. (Although maybe that can be a separate service from the email provider?)

-I don't care what country the email provider is based in. I don't care if the CIA can theoretically find out what shoes I buy, I just don't want businesses giving me higher "personalized" prices because of those shoes.

-I'd prefer to stick with a free email provider if possible, but maybe that's not compatible with the first point, IDK.

Suggestions, please!

Basically the title. If someone can point me to a list of Lemmy and/or Piefed instances, that would be great! I’m looking for instances that forbid training AI on posts, use some kind of technology that makes AI training harder, or have at least promised to never train AI on users’ posts themselves. Or if you’re on an instance that has taken a stance like that, I’d love to hear about it.

Hey anti-AI writers and creative people! Does anyone have advice for dealing with the knowledge that generative AI will probably be trained on any creative work you share outside of a tiny, offline community?

I used to write a lot, but I've been struggling to find the motivation to write anything real for a while. I start to get excited thinking about a writing project, and then I remember that whatever I share will most likely be used to build technology that I believe is actively harmful to humanity, and all my motivation drains away.

Several large chunks of my past writing have definitely been sucked into LLMs (multiple long stories about that, not getting into them here). I expect that something similar will eventually happen again if I share my writing in the future. I've been looking into ways to prevent LLM training on text, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing that works well without severely limiting the reach of your writing.

I read and write partially to connect with other people. I'm not a best-selling author or trying to become one, but I want to connect with strangers and isolated people I'll never meet in real life again, like I did with my past blogs and stories that were later sucked into LLM training. There's something depressing about severely limiting the potential human reach of my writing (or any other kind of creative work) just to prevent nonconsensual scrapers and book scanners from getting it. That seems like another way of letting the AI industry win. I want to write and share with humans anyway, because those fuckers shouldn't get to steal my own or anyone else's joy, but I'm struggling to find my old motivation.

Does anyone have advice for dealing with this issue? Something that's not just "accept that other people's actions are out of your control" or "that just comes with the territory nowadays" or "everything in life has risks?" I love writing. I've really tried to come around to the "that just comes with the territory nowadays" mindset, but that hasn't gotten rid of the demotivation. Most of the "writing motivation" advice I've found assumes that lack of motivation is rooted in fear of failure, setbacks, getting stuck in the middle of a project, working on the wrong project, etc. I need advice from people who understand this particular problem.

I know there are tools that supposedly make it harder for AI to be trained on your images. But what about text or code? Is there any way to share things outside of a small group while minimizing the risk that some fucker will scrape them or otherwise use them for building an LLM?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm not a tech/IT person and am very early in my privacy journey.

I was going to install a web clipper browser extension that works with a notes app I'm trying out, but the installation page says it isn't actively monitored for security by the organization behind my browser. The extension requires access to your data for all websites. However, the page also says that they don't share data with any third party and don't have access to this data themselves. What level of privacy risk am I taking on with this extension?

Right now, I have a mess of bookmarks, open tabs, and things saved haphazardly in different apps. I want a system where I can organize it all and also keep it reasonably private. Open to all suggestions, whether that's an app or a tool or a personal trick or some completely different way of interacting with the internet.

Looking for a non-Google-based way to identify things from photos, like the species of a tree I’m looking at or the purpose of an object I’m not familiar with

Hi, I’m looking for a Google Docs alternative that will show how my drafts change every few minutes. I want to be able to show my writing process (i.e., show that my work isn’t AI-generated.) Either no AI features or the ability to turn them off/remove them from your screen. Ideally I’d like something that works for collaborating on projects, but that’s less important. Any recs?

A lot of us here hate AI because of how it was built: training data gathered without the creators' explicit, opt-in consent, data centers that negatively affect communities' access to clean water and energy, a technology design that is inherently prone to hallucinations, etc. At least, those are the main reasons why I hate it.

I think I might actually want to support an AI project if I thought it was being done right. Maybe we could get more people away from exploitative models if there was a non-exploitative alternative.

So what would it take to build AI ethically, in your opinion? And do you know of anyone trying to build AI without these issues?