Here's an interesting thing to ask - if local LLMs were going to break control of Facebook on the world and on social networks, why are they spending mountains of cash to *make them*?
Facebook is evil, Mike, not stupid.
#AIBullshit
I can't edit posts because even the magic of LLMs can't make the stewards of the "future of the open web" manage their platform better, but to expand on this:
Facebook makes Llama.
Facebook contributes to LLMs. What are you fucking talking about, "this will wrest control"
#AIBullshit
I can't stop Mike or professional devs from jumping headfirst into this cesspool. But for them to try and push this on developers who have the most freedom, and to LIE to them and tell them that programming today is inaccessible and that they need fucking Claude..
It's one thing if you're gonna pitch this to professional software devs. But for you to do hype pieces targeting *beginners*? Critters who haven't yet descended into the hell that is professional software? To compare this to "View Source"? It feels fucking predatory.
I'm angry about this because you're also doing the kind of AI boosterism I hate most - going after hobby devs, new devs, creatives developing a voice. And you are telling them to use a tech that will fry their fucking brains.
Chain a millstone around your own neck, but leave them the fuck alone.
You are the Susan Collins of the tech world. You have so many concerns about the party, but at the end of the day, you vote with them. You are not offering meaningful opposition. You are hiding behind fantasy to ignore reality.
That's my nuanced take on things.
You don't just get to say that you're different. None of your actions are different. The communities you're a part of aren't throwing out the slop peddlers. OpenAI isn't scared of you, OpenAI likes the narrative you're peddling. Facebook is You are, like it or not, complicit.
Here is the reality: people like Mike Masnick sell a theoretical future that they hope will exist, as an excuse to take no culpability for the horrible present and *likely* future that they are contributing to.
You don't points for that, Mike.
What user agency is this? What do you know about consent? What do you know about community?
The ATProto devs are laughing about how much their "community" will hate this. But ATProto will be the future that keeps this from going evil?
"But ATProto can fix-" FUCK. YOU.
I go off of this site for 3 days and I come back and the devs and leadership are all promoting "agentic" feeds.
How do I opt my posts out of this?
Let me guess: I can't, because of your fucking decentralized bullshit.
"But I hate the slop too" - fuck you, what are you doing about it? You're promoting the exact same companies pushing this. You don't get to draw an arbitrary line in the sand around your usage, you are part of an ecosystem. You get judged by the company you keep.
The tech that is destroying forums, destroying trust, making more and more communities close doors: fewer open registrations, less reliable documentation, that is drowning open source with slop - and you think that's freeing? You never understood what made the web great.
Community has always been the thing that made the Internet great. Community that teaches. Community that shares.
You are doing PR fluff pieces (no, your milquetoast critiques don't count as substantive conversations) - PR fluff pieces for the tech regime that is ruining that.
As clearly as I can state this: I have no moral respect for this position, and I think that Mike is contributing free propaganda for a technofascist regime; one that regularly pushes broken systems under the promise that if you squint hard enough, their chains are actually freedom.
And that maybe the only reason you're promoting local LLMs is because the *expectation* of FUTURE progress allows you to contribute TODAY both finances and hype to companies explicitly propping up fascist systems without feeling like you're doing something immoral?
is it because deep down you know that if you waited to start fucking with these things until after the local LLMs became competitive alternatives, you'd be waiting for a long time? Is that the reason you use Claude/Gemini? Because this is NOT something you're actually willing to bet on?
If you can't make a commitment to use ONLY local LLMs and to completely boycott hosted models, then you don't get to tell me that local LLMs are going to solve the problems.
The local stuff will get better? Why don't you avoid LLMs until local models do get better, if they're improving so fast?
Also not for nothing, but I am sick and tired of AI slop boosters (and I'm not going to be nice about this however much Mike *says* he hates slop, your *actions* are boosting slop) - but I'm sick and tired of the slop AI boosters pointing at local LLMs as a solution. They ALL use *hosted* LLMs!
The reason why the Internet used to feel more free (and why there was a culture of "View Source") was not technological - it was because the early Internet had communities of critters that taught each other and cared about each other.
AI is destroying that. This is fucking nonsense.
#AIBullshit
Hello, latest update from a reliable source in Brazil itself. We can't trust a #Fkn thing these days with all this #AIBullshit that #America has unleashed on us.
Yes, the face is completely different and doesn't match the character anymore, but also can I point out that the filter *got rid of all the fog*!?
We went from "overcast foggy drizzle with a sense of dread" to "12:00 noon with spring showers."
#AIBullshit
So much of these conversations in the tech world boil down to reducing any kind of debate about morality, practicality, or even long-term utility all down to "well we want that to go well of course, but only in the context of us doing everything we were going to do anyway."
He'll concede that all of that is bad, but none of that is as important to him as whether or not he *likes using the tool*.
If he likes the tool, then not using it is off the table entirely.
And I'm supposed to pretend that's adding nuance to the debate. It's not!
To a programmer like Paul, if he likes using agents - whether they're helpful to the economy, to the average programmer, whether we know if they're de-skilling him, whether we know the effects on energy, society, power, or their role in fascism and surveillance..
And even their reframing towards ethics is designed to flatten debate, to flatten discourse about the effect of these models.
They say that they want better discussion, but they don't. They're fucking obsessed with reducing all of it down to "can it build a React website?"
It's impossible to fully disengage from unethical systems. But somepony actively going out of their way to argue that the system *should be used*, and actively arguing against the critters who are saying they want to disengage from it - I think it's fair to say that suggests some things.
I think that a lot of programmers have convinced themselves that if they *say* they have concerns about the moral implications of using these models, then that means they're good. They don't have to do anything about those concerns, they don't have to stop using Claude. Just be unhappy about it.
