You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. I think between everyone's code getting trained on, even if it's AGPLv3 or something similarly restrictive, and generally everything public on the internet getting "trained" and "transformed" to basically launder it via "AI", I can absolutely see why someone rational would want to share a whole lot less, anywhere, in an open fashion, regardless of where it's hosted.
I'd honestly rather see and think more about how to segment communities locally, and go back to the "fragmented" way things once were. It's easier to want to share with other real people than inadvertently working for free to enrich companies.
I've reached the same conclusion.
All data is just bits. Numbers. Once it's out there, trying to control their spread and use is just delusional. People should just stop sharing things publicly. Even things like AGPLv3 are proving to be ineffective against their exploitation.
I really didn't expect to live in this "copyright for me, not for thee" world. The same corporations that compare us mere mortals to high seas pirates when we infringe their copyrights are now getting caught shamelessly AI laundering the copyrights of others on an industrial scale.
It's so demoralizing. I feel like giving up and just going private. Problem is I also want to share the things I made. To talk about my projects with real people. Programming is lonely enough as it is. Without sharing I'm not sure what the point even is. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do from now on. I just know I don't want to end up working for free to enrich trillion dollar corporations.
Maybe I can carve myself a niche if I can find an audience, and maybe turn that into something kind of reward-shaped, but that's not happening without me feeding the machine. And almost certainly I won't succeed, and I'll just make it harder for myself and everyone like me to succeed in the future.
It seems the only thing to do is do it anyway and try to be unique enough to make it work. And somehow just be fine with pulling up the ladder behind you.
I'm opposed to advertising and don't want to inflict it on others. So I don't generally advertise my work on sites like this one, I just participate in threads about it whenever I see them.
Somehow people found my projects and posted them here. Just woke up one day and saw I had one sponsor. Not gonna lie, I'm still amazed about it. Not even close to providing for my family despite an incredibly favorable exchange rate, so I can't work full time on my projects. It's still the only thing that gives me hope right now. Really thankful to that person.
> And somehow just be fine with pulling up the ladder behind you.
Do you really think it will come to that? I mean, this AI situation has got to come to a head at some point. We can't have these corporations defending copyright and simultaneously pretending it doesn't exist while exploiting software developers. One of those things has got to go away.