from the information-wants-to-be-[clothing]-free dept.
Github is banning copies of 'deepfakes' porn app DeepNude
GitHub is banning code from DeepNude, the app that used AI to create fake nude pictures of women. Motherboard, which first reported on DeepNude last month, confirmed that the Microsoft-owned software development platform won't allow DeepNude projects. GitHub told Motherboard that the code violated its rules against "sexually obscene content," and it's removed multiple repositories, including one that was officially run by DeepNude's creator.
DeepNude was originally a paid app that created nonconsensual nude pictures of women using technology similar to AI "deepfakes." The development team shut it down after Motherboard's report, saying that "the probability that people will misuse it is too high." However, as we noted last week, copies of the app were still accessible online — including on GitHub.
Late that week, the DeepNude team followed suit by uploading the core algorithm (but not the actual app interface) to the platform. "The reverse engineering of the app was already on GitHub. It no longer makes sense to hide the source code," wrote the team on a now-deleted page. "DeepNude uses an interesting method to solve a typical AI problem, so it could be useful for researchers and developers working in other fields such as fashion, cinema, and visual effects."
Also at The Register, Vice, and Fossbytes.
Previously: "Deep Nude" App Removed By Developers After Brouhaha
Related: AI-Generated Fake Celebrity Porn Craze "Blowing Up" on Reddit
Discord Takes Down "Deepfakes" Channel, Citing Policy Against "Revenge Porn"
My Struggle With Deepfakes
Deep Fakes Advance to Only Needing a Single Two Dimensional Photograph
Related Stories
Fake celebrity porn is blowing up on Reddit, thanks to artificial intelligence.
Back in December, the unsavory hobby of a Reddit user by the name of deepfakes became a new centerpiece of artificial intelligence debate, specifically around the newfound ability to face-swap celebrities and porn stars. Using software, deepfakes was able to take the face of famous actresses and swap them with those of porn actresses, letting him live out a fantasy of watching famous people have sex. Now, just two months later, easy-to-use applications have sprouted up with the ability to perform this real-time editing with even more ease, according to Motherboard, which also first reported about deepfakes late last year.
Thanks to AI training techniques like machine learning, scores of photographs can be fed into an algorithm that creates convincing human masks to replace the faces of anyone on video, all by using lookalike data and letting the software train itself to improve over time. In this case, users are putting famous actresses into existing adult films. According to deepfakes, this required some extensive computer science know-how. But Motherboard reports that one user in the burgeoning community of pornographic celebrity face swapping has created a user-friendly app that basically anyone can use.
The same technique can be used for non-pornographic purposes, such as inserting Nicolas Cage's face into classic movies. One user also "outperformed" the Princess Leia scene at the end of Disney's Rogue One (you be the judge, original footage is at the top of the GIF).
The machines are learning.
The messaging platform Discord has taken down a channel that was being used to share and spread AI-edited pornographic videos:
Last year, a Reddit user known as "deepfakes" used machine learning to digitally edit the faces of celebrities into pornographic videos, and a new app has made the process much easier to create and spread the videos online. on Friday, chat service Discord shut down a user-created group that was spreading the videos, citing their policy against revenge porn.
Discord is a free chat platform that caters to gamers, and has a poor track record when it comes to dealing with abuse and toxic communities. After it was contacted by Business Insider, the company took down the chat group, named "deepfakes."
Discord is a Skype/TeamSpeak/Slack alternative. Here are some /r/deepfakes discussions about the Discord problem.
One take is that there is no recourse for "victims" of AI-generated porn, at least in the U.S.:
People Can Put Your Face on Porn—and the Law Can't Help You
To many vulnerable people on the internet, especially women, this looks a whole lot like the end times. "I share your sense of doom," Mary Anne Franks, who teaches First Amendment and technology law at the University of Miami Law School, and also serves as the tech and legislative policy advisor for the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. "I think it is going to be that bad."
Previously: AI-Generated Fake Celebrity Porn Craze "Blowing Up" on Reddit
There has been some controversy over Deepfakes, a process of substituting faces in video. Almost immediately, it was used for pornography. While celebrities were generally unamused, porn stars were alarmed by the further commodification of their rôle. The algorithm is widely available and several web sites removed objectionable examples. You know something is controversial when porn sites remove it. Reddit was central for Deepfakes/FakeApp tech support and took drastic action to remove discussion after it started to become synonymous with fictitious revenge porn and other variants of anti-social practices.
I found a good description of the deepfakes algorithm. It runs via a standard neural network library but requires considerable processing power on specific GPUs. I will describe the video input (with face to be removed) as the source and the face to be replaced as the target. The neural network is trained with the target face only. The source is distorted and the neural network is trained to approximate reference images of the target. When the neural network is given the source, it has been trained to "undistort" the source to target.
[Continues...]
Currently to get a realistic Deep Fake, shots from multiple angles are needed. Russian researchers have now taken this a step further, generating realistic video sequences based off a single photo.
Researchers trained the algorithm to understand facial features' general shapes and how they behave relative to each other, and then to apply that information to still images. The result was a realistic video sequence of new facial expressions from a single frame.
As a demonstration, they provide details and synthesized video sequences of historical figures such as Albert Einstein and Salvador Dali, as well as sequences based on paintings such as the Mona Lisa.
The authors are aware of the potential downsides of their technology and address this:
We realize that our technology can have a negative use for the so-called "deepfake" videos. However, it is important to realize, that Hollywood has been making fake videos (aka "special effects") for a century, and deep networks with similar capabilities have been available for the past several years (see links in the paper). Our work (and quite a few parallel works) will lead to the democratization of the certain special effects technologies. And the democratization of the technologies has always had negative effects. Democratizing sound editing tools lead to the rise of pranksters and fake audios, democratizing video recording lead to the appearance of footage taken without consent. In each of the past cases, the net effect of democratization on the World has been positive, and mechanisms for stemming the negative effects have been developed. We believe that the case of neural avatar technology will be no different. Our belief is supported by the ongoing development of tools for fake video detection and face spoof detection alongside with the ongoing shift for privacy and data security in major IT companies.
While it works with as few as one frame to learn from, the technology benefits in accuracy and 'identity preservation' from having multiple frames available. This becomes obvious when observing the synthesized Mona Lisa sequences, which, while accurate to the original, appear to be essentially three different individuals to the human eye watching them.
Journal Reference: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08233v1
Related Coverage
Most Deepfake Videos Have One Glaring Flaw: A Lack of Blinking
My Struggle With Deepfakes
Discord Takes Down "Deepfakes" Channel, Citing Policy Against "Revenge Porn"
AI-Generated Fake Celebrity Porn Craze "Blowing Up" on Reddit
As Fake Videos Become More Realistic, Seeing Shouldn't Always be Believing
Katyanna Quach over at El Reg is reporting on the removal of the DeepNude Web and desktop apps from the developers' website. DeepNude is an application that takes photos of clothed women (apparently, the app does not function properly with photos of males -- there's a shocker!), digitally removes clothing and adds realistic looking naughty bits.
From the article:
A machine-learning-powered perv super-tool that automagically removed clothes from women in photos to make them appear naked has been torn offline by its makers.
The shamefaced creators of the $50 Windows and Linux desktop app DeepNude claimed they were overwhelmed by demand from internet creeps: the developers' servers apparently buckled under a stampede of downloads, their buggy software generated more crash reports than they could deal with, and this all came amid a firestorm of social media outrage.
[...] Basement dwellers and trolls could feed it snaps of celebrities, colleagues, ex-girlfriends, and anyone else who takes their fancy, and have the software guess, somewhat badly, what they look like underneath their clothes, keeping their faces intact. These bogus nudes are perfect for distributing around the 'net to humiliate victims.
Unsolicited nudes detected and deleted by AI
Software that can detect and delete unsolicited penis pictures sent via private messages on Twitter is being developed by researchers in Seattle. The project was started after developer Kelsey Bressler was sent an unsolicited nude photo by a man. She is now helping a friend refine an artificial intelligence system that can detect the unwanted penis pictures and delete them before they are ever seen.
She said social networks could do more to protect users from cyber-flashing. "When you receive a photo unsolicited it feels disrespectful and violating," Ms Bressler told the BBC. "It's the virtual equivalent of flashing someone in the street. You're not giving them a chance to consent, you are forcing the image on them, and that is never OK."
To test and train the artificial intelligence system, Ms Bressler and her team set up a Twitter inbox where men were invited to "send nudes for science". So many volunteered their nude photos that the team has had to close the inbox.
Related: "Deep Nude" App Removed By Developers After Brouhaha
GitHub Censors "Sexually Obscene" DeepNude Code
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:07AM (72 children)
I've been having discussions about this since this morning. On the surface banning the DeepNude forks from Github makes sense and from the corporate perspective for Github it's nearly required. I don't think anyone wants people to be able to make fake revenge porn or fake blackmail videos which was often cited to me as the reason to kill this thing off. And I certainly can't disagree that I don't want fake revenge porn or fake blackmail videos.
Unfortunately banning this software does not make the problem go away. It at best delays the issue until the technology is so common it's baked right into Adobe Premiere as a general purpose core feature instead of being some kind of specific tit replacer. During this period of delay the people who actually hold the technology can produce all the fakes they want including blackmail and fabrication of evidence. This is not good.
There is only one solution to this rising problem of fake video: accept that no video is reliable any more. Until everyone learns that the revenge porn video they see on Facebook could be an utter fake the vast majority of people will fall victim to believing it. As a nice side effect of everyone being wary of revenge porn you get the bonus that no blackmail video works anymore. That is an improvement.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:13AM (29 children)
It it the only purpose this software can be used for?
(I really don't know, so just asking maybe somebody here knows)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:15AM (7 children)
Being able to make porn movies of celebrities without having to actually include the celebrity seems like the most obvious use for something like this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:38AM (6 children)
So, the adult entertainment industry should be able and likely be interested in hosting the software, isn't it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:59AM (5 children)
That was my first thought.
An industry with somewhat flexible morals, and who are early adopters of technology. It seems tailor-made for them.
I'm sure there would be lots of money in Theresa May porn. (For example).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:16AM (4 children)
Ewww.
But yeah, to each their own (way to float their boat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:10AM (3 children)
All fun and games, until I came across the live action vid that appeared to be the head of janrinock on the torso of the Buzzard, with the ass of takyon, and mrpg's legs, having carnal knowledge of a durian fruit with the head of Sean Hannity on it. Used all the brain bleach in house, have ordered a tanker more of it. May not be enough. The HORROR! The HORROR.
(If you do not make DeepNude your friend, it is a formidable enemy. Like a diamond bullet through you mind. Or what's left of your mind.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:38AM (2 children)
Dear hunter, just stay out of Russian roulette.
A common full metal jacket will drive you mindless and with a thousand-yards-stare all the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:20AM (1 child)
You have just conflated at least three Vietnam war movies, where Americans try to deal with their major malfunction. DeepFake? Black Mirror, "Men Under Fire". Got's Runaway1956 in it, I swear!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:25PM
Nope. Fictional reality.
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:15AM (11 children)
The DeepPrude fork will be used to de-nude nude images by adding clothing.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:21AM
The DeepPrude fork will be used to de-nude nude images by adding clothing.
No, it would turn the images into that of children. Prudes are ok with that.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:46AM
It's the War on Biology. It's like the War on Drugs, but only against hormones, the 100% natural drugs produced 100% naturally. Sweat is so vulgar.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:17AM (3 children)
And the DeepFood fork will allow you to color-correct Natalie Portman to any skin tone, and cover her in the hot breakfast cereal of your choice.
Wow, taking something prurient and having the tools and infrastructure to obtain, remix, and redistribute it in whatever way your weirdo kid brain thinks. I'm legitimately amazed at what it's like to be living in the future.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:35AM (2 children)
Take that a step further. Add a "black" setting to your Netflix account to autocorrect skin tones to the darker end of the spectrum.
See the possibilities! No need to hire black actors in white roles anymore. PC? Who cares. Just get the best actor for the role. Run a filter for the target audience.
Could we do this with race? Take an English movie, say Mr Bean. Deepfake over it to make the actors skin tones and features Asian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @04:10PM
"best actor for the role"
identity politics is your schtick obviously, the entertainment industry goes with the biggest name they can land
you anti-pc nuts have really been sensitized anything darker than wonder bread
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday July 13 2019, @07:42AM
To pick a couple of the worst examples, the uncanny [youtu.be] valley [youtu.be] would still be a problem, but hopefully you can work around it at some level with anything better than amateur-grade acting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:33AM (1 child)
Reminds me of an old episode of the TV series Night Court, involving some supposed "princess" from an exotic tropical island where nudity was normal and socially accepted. There were all of these jokes in the episode about how her culture apparently fetishized wearing clothing, with some character remarking he was "dressing you with my eyes..." and another character spontaneously donning an overcoat to titillate that fetish.
While silly (and definitely non-PC by today's standards), that episode really made an impact on my younger self decades ago, as it made me aware of how social conventions can be relative, including the deeply-ingrained American prudish (and simultaneously fetishized) attitude toward naked bodies. Since then, it often amazes me how worried American culture is about nudity and its supposed corrupting influence, which simultaneously drives fetishes and crap exactly like this DeepNude thing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:25AM
Conservative religion: propping up the value of the Porn industry since 1604.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:26AM
and the DeepBurka mode to make movies and porn halal for muslim men
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:38AM (1 child)
Muslims already do this to photographs of western women to cover up their skin.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:19AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_Room_(photograph)#Alteration_in_Hasidic_newspapers [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:18AM (7 children)
The DeepNude software was made for the very specific use case of putting a head you want to see on another body you want to see. I don't think it had a "make revenge porn" button on it but it sure scared the shit out of people that it would happen. Even the original software authors didn't want to be involved with it anymore.
It's not that the software itself is not with out technical merit: they point out it uses a novel approach to solve AI problems people could learn from.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:40AM (6 children)
And that technical merit can be demonstrated in contexts not related with nudity? Or is the nudity component essential?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:05AM (4 children)
The original software author's statement claims the technology would fit in well for all video use cases. I don't know how the technology works maybe the NN was trained specifically on nipples or something. But it sounds like at least the engine is useful for non tit related things.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:22AM (3 children)
There are also navels, and other parts, slightly lower..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:56AM (1 child)
Knees?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @02:55PM
Ankles.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:06AM
I don't have a foot fetish
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:00AM
It has been. They demonstrated using actual Carrie Fisher's head in one of the recent Star Wars films (better than the official movie).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:21AM
It could be used to decorate people's faces with cat features.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:44AM (40 children)
You''re missing the important aspect. Banning it from GitHub does nothing at all to make it less available in a world where anyyone can set up a git or web server in mere moments. All it does is signal virtue.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:02AM (3 children)
I thought I covered that pretty well with
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:26AM (2 children)
Close but not quite, thus my response. It doesn't even delay it at best. It is an utter null op.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:09AM (1 child)
I suppose you are right: at best a nop. In practice the Streisand effect because now it's in the news again.
So Github gets to make the problem worse while letting out PR saying they are making it better.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:26AM
Hadn't thought of that. Good catch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:26AM (4 children)
And so...?
Microsoft/GitHub are free to signal whatever the fuck they want, isn't it?
The responsibility is to their stakeholders, not to a titty-lover amateur fisherman that gets his decennial high when trying to censor 'Dick niggers' with Perl Regex-es on an obscure forum? (large grin wink)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:29AM (3 children)
Strawman much? I didn't address ethics, I addressed effectiveness.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:40AM (2 children)
Which one?
What do you think I intended as the point of my post? (hint: mocking you wasn't)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:33AM (1 child)
Probably just to say "dick niggers" with an arguably valid reason. If so, I retract any objection and tip my hat to a job well done.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:18PM
LOL
That too, but it was secondary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by http on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:31AM (30 children)
You say "virtue signal" like it's a bad thing.
Github sees that this is 100% Horrible Shit Waiting To Happen and says, "we're not OK with being associated with this". No, they can't necessarily stop it on their own, but at least they're aware that continuing to host it makes them a small, but non-zero, part of the problem. I guess you have a problem with that, for what reason I don't know.
Not that it matters, a future host can just generate a press conference with Nat Friedman yelling "I'ma gonna hump you on the photocopier, Satya! Yeeha!"
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:43AM (25 children)
The question for the opensource community of "do we need to concern ourselves with how the technology we create is used" has been discussed ad nauseum for as long as I've been a part of it. The consensus for a very long time was: don't worry about it. People do what people do. I agree with this: technology is generally neutral and the way it is used itself is the problem. Does Linus loose sleep at night because evil people doing evil things are using his kernel to hurt people? Someone is somewhere for sure. I see that Github hosts SQLite which as a fun fact was created to help kill people with missiles but also works really well as a database for your phone app.
So when Github gets their panties in a bunch over what someone might do with DeepNude forks it seems contrary to my entire opensource experience. Github does purport to be pro opensource doesn't it?
I'm not surprised that Github doesn't want to be associated with it but I think we can call them out for not being opensource like here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:56AM (5 children)
Really poor analogy. Linus didn't design the Linux kernel to harm people, nor is it a tool whose primary applications are likely to be nefarious.
The developers in this case realized what they had created, how its primary applications are likely to be bad 99.99% of the time, and they did want to disclaim any association with it.
This isn't some generic image manipulation application. It's specifically designed to make people appear nude when they aren't. Given that large numbers of people are sensitive about their bodies and don't want to appear nude without their permission, it seems most times this application is used, it will run afoul of the subjects' wishes in the images.
Is there no such application that you'd find offensive enough that a developer should "lose sleep over it"? Again, this application's target is very specific. If someone created an application to insert someone's image into old film footage, that might be interesting (and more akin to your Linus analogy). If, instead, someone created an application that is SOLELY designed to dress a person up in a Nazi uniform and make it appear as if they were in old film footage in the concentration camps in WWII beating and killing Jews, I think we might rightly ask what the application is for and whether it is something we want to support. And I'd certainly hope that Linus would lose sleep at night if he were directly involved in creating an app like that.
To me, this has nothing to do with "open source." Open source is about freedom to see code, often to modify said code freely, etc. Debates about usage of applications and their ethics may sometimes be related, but they seem to be a quite different issue. Whether a torrent client is open source is a completely separate issue from legal and moral aspects of how torrents should be used.
(And note: I share the concern that removing this software from common repositories is only in some sense delaying the inevitable. But I can completely understand Github's stance here.)
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:32AM (4 children)
I've been saying that this is special purpose software made for the exact use case of putting a head you want to see on another body you want to see. That part is not lost on me.
I think the primary use case would be watching the porn yourself. Only a very small fraction of people will ever share that. This isn't very much different from cutting pictures out of playboys to match up with heads off other photographs. It's not a thing I do but if someone does that in their home I don't care. I also don't care if someone watches a DeepFake in their own house. That doesn't harm anyone except possibly the individual themselves depending on how you feel about pornography. The software has been convicted of being obscene itself because some people might do some obscene stuff with it.
The very special use case software here has an ML engine with usages beyond tit replacement. We are losing value here - hopefully someone will make use of it from an archive somewhere else if that value is high.
I can't think of one no. I'm sure it exists but when I see stuff I don't agree with I usually just move my eyes away from it.
Even that doesn't bug me. I wouldn't be a part of making it because that's not my style and I find no redeeming qualities at all with it. Would I ban it from something I hosted? I'm not sure. Probably not of my own volition. Depending on how much I like money I might cave to financial pressure like Github did if I needed to. I would call that financial interests corrupting opensource though.
I also thought removing weboob from Debian was an epic waste of energy on Debian's part. The people advocating for it's removal acted like the software itself was some kind of burden on the Debian project and they cited needing to prep it for release as a waste of time because the software is gross and just doesn't belong here. That's a false concern though: packages are maintained by the package maintainer that volunteers and no one can make a debian dev do anything. If a package has open bugs before the release can be made the package is not included. It cost the Debian project more energy to discuss removing it than it took to just leave it.
I don't really understand this recent censorship push in opensource.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:57PM (3 children)
It is basically the same reason that bigoted conservatives don't like being called Nazis or even just alt-right. This same weird stance you have with open source is quite similar to the free speech zealots. Nuance and context don't matter to such people and thus reality appesrs very strange to them.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:15PM (2 children)
If your definition of Nazi only requires a person to be bigoted they might not like the utter abuse of the word and not the labeling of themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @04:39PM (1 child)
Look at you, white knight of the neo-nazis. Milo is that you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @07:59AM
WW2 is over and She Lost.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:58AM (16 children)
How come?
I mean:
1. "don't worry about it. People do what people do."
2. GitHub/MS is people
should follow into "Don't worry about it. GitHub/MS does what GitHub/MS does".
Go find another place for your code if you believe in what you developed and that's that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:36AM (15 children)
The push for censorship is a new phenomenon in open source. That's why it seems contrary.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:10AM (14 children)
You will have to demonstrate in an acceptable manner that this is a push for censorship for me to accept that's a valid reason to worry.
Does the fact that I refused to use any Linux distro with a systemd init means I'm trying to censor systemd or I'm engaging in a "censorship of open source"?
All I'm saying is: 'No systemd on my computers" - how's this different from GitHub saying "No DeepNude on our computers?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:23AM (5 children)
Well, for starters, they've positioned themselves as an open hosting provider. If you'd positioned yourself as an any-init-system-goes place, and then banned systemd, your point would have some validity.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:35AM (4 children)
I can't blame you for not reading the Acceptable use [github.com] section** beforehand, neither do I, but doing it would have stopped you short from thinking "GitHub == open hosting provider" or, indeed, that an "open hosting provider" refrain from imposing any limits.
---
** or, is it "sexion" in the context?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:16AM (3 children)
None of the restrictions in the AUP would appear to apply in this case. Code of academic interest was posted in a repo. That is not obscene. Well, it shouldn't be. Heaven knows there's a backlash against science among many in the upper echelons...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:37AM (2 children)
Are you sure? Speaking for myself, I'd like a citation.
All I could find: the origin of TFA is actually Motherboard/Vice [vice.com] (the others just cite that one).
They say
Unfortunately, that and the rest of TFA say nothing on the line of "there were deleted repos that didn't have any other content except code of academic interest ".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:51AM (1 child)
When I read a sentence like that it leaves the impression that the github repo was being used to store images of pornography not a collection of words and symbols that can produce pornographic content. So lets see what M-W thinks of obscene:
disgusting to the senses
I don't think that one quite cuts it though I think 'disgusting to mind' would work.
abhorrent to morality or virtue; specifically : designed to incite to lust or depravity
Now we are starting to get pretty damn warm.
containing or being language regarded as taboo in polite usage
Ring that bell!
repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles
Another bingo here.
so excessive as to be offensive
Really depends on who you are for that one I think. In fact all of that really depends on who you are, your moral code, and the culture you were brought up in. But it's Github's show, they get to decide what is and is not obscene, and there is no appeal. That's that.
I still think it's contrary to opensource principles.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:07AM
But I don't see GitHub as ever making a promise to uphold opensource principles above anything else.
It's a commercial entity, their foremost duty is to their shareholders.
Whenever expectations are not met, one will need to critically examine both sides. It may be a failure to deliver to what was agreed is expected, but it well may be a case of overinflated expectations based on unsubstantiated assumptions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:39AM (7 children)
I doubt severely that I can find any acceptable way to demonstrate to you that there is a push for censorship.
Lets go check the definitions of censorship that I already provided to you because your existing definition was absolutely wrong.
So the answer is no. Do us a favor and go shout at people who say systemd is good, go deface systemd websites by removing the content and replacing it with SysV init documentation in tandem with shell documentation, and hack Debian and yank it out of the repos. Then you would be censoring.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:47AM (6 children)
I have a hard time imagining MS did shout about "DeepNude" or defaced any other websites related to DeepNude, etc...
It simply denied those projects to use GitHub as a collaboration platform, nothing more.
Since GitHub is privately owned by MS and comes with conditions attached for using it [github.com], MS was not even abusing its position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:08AM (5 children)
No, that's what you have to do if you want to be a censor. You asked if you were censoring if you don't use systemd. I said no then provided an example of what it takes for you to censor systemd: you interrupt the delivery of information related to it. Github doesn't have to go shouting at people because they can delete the project and interrupt the delivery of information related to DeepNude.
If you take a poster off a wall because you don't agree with it you are censoring. If you don't use systemd because it sucks you just have good taste.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:20AM (4 children)
:) (on the "good taste")
Seriously though, if I take a poster off my wall. I'm just exercising my right as the owner of the wall to let/deny the people use my wall the way I see fit. Even more so when I informed everyone in advance [github.com] this may happen.
The fact this interrupts one point from which your information flows towards others? Yes, it happens, but that is secondary to my right as an owner of the wall. It doesn't make it censorship, because I'm only taking a single poster and I'm not stopping you to place posters on other walls and neither I'm taking down the posters from other walls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:33AM (3 children)
This entire discussion reminds me of when conservatives absolutely freak out with the terms positive and negative liberty because their chosen form of liberty is labeled as "negative" so fuck those guys they are making judgement about my politics!
Do you think that censorship is bad?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @07:44AM (2 children)
I think the common sense should push many people in a common-sense type of self-censoring grafted on a "live and let live" attitude.
In the older days, these were called something like "respect" and "the traditions of the place". Rules that were not laws, but social conventions that made the community work with less frictions.
I feel sometimes we (as humanity) are losing more than we are gaining by breaking them and letting them behind us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:29AM (1 child)
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. What conventions are changing? Is the community the opensource community?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:48PM
Self-censoring in everyday life. Called 'civilized behaviour' otherwise. Dependent on good proportion on the values of people that make your social circle (open source included, if one is involved in open source)
The values/behaviour of the people around.
---
Look, i was trying to answer between the lines to your
Now, to put it bluntly, the brief answer is 'Yes, I think censorship is bad, but I also think there are things much worse than censorship, even in so-called civilized world'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:23AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:04PM
Death and violence are ok and good.
Nudity and sex are not.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:35AM
The complete uselessness was of removing it was my point. If they feel the need to make meaningless and ineffective gestures, they're free to do so. I'm not going to give them any virtue points for a worthless gesture though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)
Github should ban image processing software like photoshop that could be used to alter images.
Github should ban tools that could be used to commit copyright infringement.
Github should ban tools that could be used for
penetration testinghacking.Because all of that is "bad stuff".
Home Depot should ban tools that could be used to hurt someone, such as hammers and screwdrivers. They should also ban tools used for burglary such as crowbars.
We must put an end to the bad ways in which tools can be used!
Think of the children!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:58PM
Home Depot or if you are on a budget even Harbor Freight has all the tools and auxiliary supplies you need inside it to make your own AR-15! In fact go look at drill presses on homedepot.com and you'll find people talking about it in the reviews. How do you make an AR-15 using a hardware store? Youtube will help you.
Given how much Youtube hates guns I'm amazed they allow this kind of content to exist on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:52PM
they are just cowardly whores like all big corps. fuck them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:23AM
Marlo Thomas dealt with this issue on a TV sitcom [wikipedia.org] in the late 1960s.
Back then, it was still images manipulated for print magazines, but the reach was just as wide as a viral video achieves today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:43AM (10 children)
GitHub doesn't define itself as a platform of free speech, does it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:18AM (8 children)
Not that I've heard and I doubt Microsoft would buy a company where their hands are tied in terms of who they can kick out. I'm not sure if you are wondering if this is censorship or if this censorship is something to be concerned about.
The banning of the DeepNude forks is undoubtedly censorship. Github not being a free speech platform just means that the censorship isn't two faced on their part.
On the topic of being worthy of concern I'm not personally going to change any of my behavior or do something like boycott Github. I do think it's really odd though that this software was labeled as "obscene" and deemed worthy of being removed when the Github ToS itself says that not all sexually oriented content is itself obscene. The repo, afaik, also did not have any sexual content in it. The obscene label is pretty weird.
I also think it's weird that when a software exploit is found the right thing to do is bundle it up into metasploit so anyone who wants to can run ./hack-that --host=some.poor.slob but in the case of deepfakes it's time to pretend it doesn't exist.
I've got much bigger issues with Github like their technical support being utter garbage on the Enterprise product.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:34AM (6 children)
I'm just raising my brow to the term 'censor', it doesn't seem so to me.
Because the guys that want to "speak DeepNude" are still free to promote their speech by any other means outside GitHub - including self-hosting.
I disagree. If you want a term closer in meaning, "deplatforming" springs to mind. But not even that seems appropriate (github doesn't offer "pay per ad-view" - yet).
Same.
After the "Responsible disclosure" self-imposed silence, I would find it weird not to bundle it in metasploit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:58AM (5 children)
It sounds like your definition of censorship includes a government component but that is not necessary. M-W defines censorship as the institution, system, or practice of censoring which is itself to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable and supress sense 2 being to keep from public knowledge: such as to keep secret; to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of;
Wikipedia says Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations.
How is Github banning DeepNude because they don't want to be associated with it because it is inconvenient for them not censorship?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:05AM
Not at all.
Since GitHub/MS cannot keep DeepNude from public knowledge (in the sense 2 of suppress), it follows that GitHub/MS - want it or not - cannot censor.
The very same way as me - as a private person in the eyes of law - saying "I don't want to do business with you for reasons the current law allow me to refuse such a relation" is equally not censorship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:27AM (3 children)
It's not censorship because they're not *banning* anything. They are making an individual choice not to host specific software.
Let's say you own a store and some supplier comes in and requests that you stock their product line. The markup on the product is excellent and you can be sure it will be a popular product. Boo-yah! Let's do this thing!
Except the product is something, that while legal, will most certainly cause outrage and negative publicity for you and your store.
Do you still stock the product, even though it will cause your customers and neighbors to shun you and your store? What will be your reasoning either way? If you do stock such a product, you'll make some money, but you may lose your business altogether because of the outrage, complaints and boycotts. If you don't, the supplier can still go to another store and get them to stock their product.
But if you don't, by your logic, you're censoring aren't you? So what you're saying is that it's preferable to lose your livelihood rather than act as one of several, or many, distribution points for such a product. Is that correct?
Github's actions don't affect anyone else's ability to host or distribute the product (in this case, the Deep Nude software), so they aren't censoring it. They're just refusing to support that particular product.
As such, this isn't censorship. It's a private entity making a decision as to whether or not to support a particular product (in this case, code).
If, however, Github was the *only* source for this software, you might have an argument for censorship. Even then, it's wouldn't be illegal, or necessarily unethical, for Github to do so.
This is what Github seeks to avoid [xkcd.com] with their actions. And I can't say I blame them.
Note that I'm all for freedom of expression. Even expression that I personally find objectionable. At the same time, you won't see me using my time, money and resources to host expression I find objectionable. Because I don't run a site/store/space for anyone's expression but my own.
And even then that's pretty much limited to a single cat photo (RIP, Enrico, I miss you!), which is my choice. As it is Github's.
If you don't like Github's choices in this (or others) matter, you have many options as to how you can deal with it. I suggest you consider those options.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:53AM (2 children)
If that product was a Bible, The Book of Satan, Pornography, or other forms of human expression, yes you are censoring them. It's in the definition just a little bit above in this thread.
Github censored DeepNude forks. It's not complicated. Censorship happens. Censorship happens all the time. The only place where censorship is illegal in the United States is when the Government does it or you are committing a hate crime using it and then the hate crime is illegal not the censorship. People can censor. People do censor.
Dear god you need a jump to conclusions mat. I already said I understand why Github did this, I consider it a corruption of open source, I'm not going to change my behavior regarding github, and that github's shitty enterprise support is a much bigger problem than any censorship they've done. If I was going to stop using Github it would be because their enterprise support is that bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)
Maybe stop playing the victim every time someone disagrees with you. Your ridiculously stubborn approach is why people are starting to just call you a nazi, etc. Personally I think you're a troll playing at being a centrist in order to create gotcha traps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @08:01AM
You're calling him a Nazi because Trump has amplified your mental illness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 12 2019, @01:53AM
I'm far from an expert on this but I suspect the truly "obscene" aspect is that this software enables people to make fake nudes of people without their consent. There does seem to be an ethical or moral line that is being crossed there. Just my opinion.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:35AM
Trying to bring some utility out of the enormous amount of dead horse beating that has happened over what is and is not censorship. I'll start again with the dictionary definition, the opening paragraph of Wikipedia, and then I'll provide references to more reading material from other sites while quoting part of them.
Meriam-Webster:
Definition of censorship
1a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
Definition of censor (Entry 2 of 2)
transitive verb
: to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable
Definition of suppress
: to keep from public knowledge: such as
a : to keep secret
b : to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of suppress the test results
Wikipedia: Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by a government,[5] private institutions, and corporations.
National Coalition Against Censorship [ncac.org]
Not all forms of censorship are illegal. When private individuals agitate to eliminate TV programs they dislike, or threaten to boycott the companies that support those programs with advertising dollars, they are certainly trying to censor artistic expression and interfere with the free speech of others. But their actions are perfectly legal; in fact, their protests are protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Encyclopedia Britanica [britannica.com]
Nevertheless, the private ownership of news media in the United States has itself resulted in a kind of censorship, according to some critics. Because nearly all major news companies in the country are owned by large corporations, and because those companies derive the bulk of their income from paid advertisements by other large corporations, they have tended, in the view of critics, to disregard viewpoints that are broadly critical of corporate influence in the political life of the country or that stray too far from a conventional political discourse that is unthreatening to economic elites.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:55AM (9 children)
Already dealt with this in two other threads so wanna go off the wall, stir things up. Kinda interesting that all this interest in fake video popped up about a year ago, about the time those really in the loop knew at least one of two big dumps of important people doing horrible things were likely. So suddenly video evidence isn't trustworthy. How convenient.
1. The Weiner Laptop with the infamous folder supposedly named "Life Insurance."
2. The Epstein rearrest was certainly predictable a year ago. Everybody knew what his game was, at least those who were paying attention. And the police seized large numbers of CD-ROMs with the names of people on them. Blackmail. Extortion. Foreign intelligence agent. Connect the dots.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:25AM (8 children)
There was a pretty clear path of constant innovation starting with static images leading up to the technology that works on full motion video. I find it hard to believe that the technology was created just as part of a disinformation campaign because the technology was created piecemeal over time leading right up to it.
Are you thinking they created the DeepNude software specifically as part of the campaign? Fake video itself was going to happen anyway so they certainly didn't create the problem.
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:23AM (5 children)
Yeah, trying to think out of the box here. Once you see enough examples you realize pretty much everything in the "standard history" is bullcrap. So did these networks exist in government labs earlier (doing what?) and were pushed out before anybody had any idea how dangerous they were, because somebody's jimmies were seriously rustled, or was it just one big coinkeydink it started hitting the mass media almost exactly when the whole "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory (hint: Epstein's Lolita Express and Pedo Island are cornerstones of the theory) exploded onto 4chan.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:41AM (3 children)
Aint that the truth! But I honestly have no idea what you are talking about aside from this obviously involves Hillary. I basically give zero fucks about Hillary but if you feel like elucidating about this I will read it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:11AM (2 children)
Oh it is far bigger than the Clintons. The more fringe parts of the theory get really nuts but the generally agreed core is, reduced to the short attention span version is:
There is a Cabal running the world (choose your secret society(s), all of em are tossed around as theories by various camps, yes all the way to fucking Grays.) and they do vile stuff. Human sacrifice, ritual child rape, stuff so vile one hesitates to even repeat it. 4chan got an imagination, yo. Part of the game is anybody who is anybody has to get initiated into the thing by doing something so vile they are forever damned, would go to prison for several lifetimes, etc. if discovered, etc. And starting sometime in the 20th Century they began filming it for blackmail to ensure nobody ever talked. Guys like Epstein were central, they had the Pedo Island with the spooky Temple building and stuff, all wired for video. And you can't have a world spanning conspiracy without some Rothchilds and such sprinkled in. Pizzagate was the initial discovery of part of that network centered around the Clintons, Podestas, Comet Ping Pong and Pizza, the "Spirit Cooking" witch chick, importing children from Haiti under cover of the Clinton Foundation, etc. But the theory quickly expanded as the autists kept digging. Then Q showed up and began dropping bread crumbs to guide the digging. Supposedly Q represents a "conspiracy of light" aimed at stopping the evil. There is enough material for several blockbuster movies filled with stuff so out there the craziest screenwriter would go "nah, nobody would buy this crap" but it keeps growing on, now, 8chan.
Up until now it was just a conspiracy theory with a lot of smoke here and there but no visible fire. Qanon kept promising big things but nothing ever actually happened, no big reveals, etc. Easy enough to dismiss as just a LARP on the chans, keeps the autism occupied and out of trouble at least.
And now the Epstein part is probably true. Enough smoke around the Weiner laptop to guess it is probably a "nuke half the Democratic Party and a good chunk of the Republicans" event if it ever got to WikiLeaks. And somebody really wants to discredit the idea of video evidence. Is all of it true? Not possible since some of the theories contradict other parts, but a creeping feeling grows that more of it than is safe for sanity might be. Long time readers will remember me saying quite a way back that the best explanation for Prog behavior is to assume the mother of all Devil cults got spun up at Harvard a long time ago. Which would sorta fit, only not pessimistic enough.
Time to focus "thoughts and prayers" on Yellowstone. It could clean this world up. :)
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:49AM (1 child)
So I know 4chan has done some pretty damn good investigations on topics other than secret satanic child abuse cults; those are some quality autists. But how did they come to form any conviction on this topic?
Regarding the pizza joint: didn't a guy head there with guns to check it out and collect the kids from the basement? And when he got there the basement was gone? That's pretty telling don't you think? How connected are these people that they can fill in an entire basement in with very little warning???!!!
In honesty though that part seemed weird to me. Like maybe they aren't correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:11PM
Another group identifying as Anonymous going by @OpDeathEaters [twitter.com] claims Pizzagate/QAnon were invented to hide the true allegations of child rape among ridiculous sounding false ones in order to protect Epstein and whoever was involved with him: 1 [twitter.com] 2 [twitter.com].
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:59AM
Of course you are. And failing miserably, as usual. Fascist box, is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:30AM
You're right that there is a pretty clear development path leading up to deepnude, but that doesn't mean that the media blitz on it is entirely co-incidental.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:29AM
Fake videos started with the first motion pictures in the late 1800s, it might be easier to do today, and harder to detect, but it was not only possible from day 1, it was also practiced.
Before chemical photography, all images were fakes, and understood to be such.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday July 11 2019, @06:30AM
Next, burn all copies of excel. Basically every financial fraud is made by people keeping their calculation on that software. For a glaring example, google 'bank' and remember that usury is a fugly sin.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:52AM (6 children)
The idea of a company that is threatened by open source owing a favorite repository for open source seems troubling.
What was their reasoning for buying Github?
It certainly does not make them any more relevant in open source.
It does provide a measure of control in where things are to be easily found.
Does banning something socially offensive now create a precedent for banning something commercially offensive later?
First, they can't ban it. They only make access more difficult.
Second, it appears the tool made what could be considered art which was offensive.
Seems a likely 1st amendment issue.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:27PM (4 children)
Microsoft acquired Github for the same reasons that Microsoft acquired The Linux Foundation in 2016.
That reason is left as an exercise for the reader.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by J053 on Friday July 12 2019, @02:14AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 12 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
Yes, I am aware of how it was described in all of the industry tirade publications.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by J053 on Monday July 15 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:05PM
I use two layers of tin foil when fashioning my headwear.
Yes, I know that Microsoft joined The Linux Foundation. I still don't believe that Microsoft wouldn't do anything it could to destroy both open source and Linux the first chance it gets. Yes, Microsoft appears to have changed since the Ballmer era. I still don't trust them.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:05PM
I think the answer to that one is a clear and resounding YES!!!!!!! And we can look no further than Youtube over the past couple years for this. The first step was to kick off far right people that are extremely hard for the majority of the population to feel sympathy for to set a precedent that this is ok because no one is going to defend them. It only took about 1.5 years before the left leaning political talk shows on Youtube have started screaming like a stuck pig that Youtube is censoring them now and not the conservatives they wanted censored before. For instance David Pakman is going on a tirade right now about how his show might have to go away because of the absolutely "disgusting" behvaior of Youtube taking recommendations that had his content in it before and handing those over to people like NBC and Fox.
I thought previously Google/Youtube/Alphabet had it out for conservatives and was trying to oppress them. Now I'm pretty sure they just used them as a convenient tool to set precedents so they can turn Youtube into a place where no one says something unless Pepsi deems it inoffensive enough to want to fund advertising on it.