Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.
Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point
People talking about pixelfed are missing a key point: Cara is super easy to find and join. You go, type your email or login with your google account and that’s it. You don’t even have to remember a password. Nobody wants to find a server, apply to join, hope to get accepted, then somehow find all other artists like you.
Also, it looks good. Like, really good. That’s a thing that grab the attention of artists.
This right here. I tried to join Mastodon today.
Download the most recommended app, Moshidon
Open app and get asked which instance i want to join. There are no suggestions.
Do a search for instances and pick one, go to the website and register with email and password. Requires email confirmation. Still waiting on the email confirmation link, 4 hrs later and 2 resends.
Literally haven’t been able to sign up yet.
Even if it had worked, the workflow would have been to change back to the app, type out the instance then re-login.
I’m not sure how anyone expects anyone other than the most hardcore to sign up for these services. Maybe that’s the point but if the point is to grow the user sign up process to significant overall
Biggest problems I have had with Mastodon are the fact that:
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The app I wanted to use didn’t even recognize the instance I signed up for and…
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I had to wait nearly a month and a half before being able to actuallyuse my account and access Mastodon because I joined an instance where they review people signing up or something similar.
I definitely see the appeal of a find the site, sign up, and you’re done services over the fediverse join an instance and pray service.
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If you just used the Official app, they have a simplified sign-up procedure. Dug your own grave there.
Thats not fair, since everyone says the main app suck and you’ll have a better experience with Moshidon. This is true if you’re already there, but the comment makes it clear that it still lacks for newbies.
Never heard of Moshidon, so clearly not everyone. Why would anyone try to register via a non-official app first (especially for a procedure like signin-up) is beyond me. Some apps are better than others, but always start with the official one and then, if it lacks something, look for something else. This applies not only for mastodon, but for everything. Basic stuff…
I use the official app, is not incredible but do his job.
btw. just use the official (or the web site) x sign in, is not like you can’t use the credentials elsewhere.
Actually, it’s not that bad
They’re just gonna have to leave whenever Cara makes some dumb decision. It’s the capitalist app cycle.
Hopefully in a couple of cycles’ time, we’ll be ready for them
Whether it’s “capitalist” or not doesn’t matter. You could have government owned/created apps that make dumb decisions as well.
At least with capitalism you have the option to go somewhere else when a dumb decision is made.
Most capitalist apps dont allow you to fork the code.
Lemmy, for example, is not owned by anyone and can altered if the main lemmy devs did something dumb.
Of course you already know this, its why you are here. You fled capitalism (Reddit) like the rest of us.
No one flees capitalism. Stop talking like a Marxist. It’s not possible to have communism in any guise without it collapsing. Exchanging goods and services for money incentives people to produce more. What you’re talking about is corporate greed
Ever heard of open source?
When capitalists say nobody would work under communism, they really mean that capitalists would never work under communism.
I think you’re confusing the word “corporate” with “capitalism”, they are not the same.
Fuck a buncha Google SSO though. Hopefully that’s not the only option
It’s not
Aside from that, people spamming about Pixelfed are missing the point that this is also a deviantart alternative. The landing page showing tons of art you might be interested in is great.
Also Pixelfed would straight up share their images to other servers that might allow web scraping bots which is part of the reason they made this website.
A decentralized system with cryptographic identities wouldn’t even require that. All these rituals about “dragging your mouse around for 2 minutes” and overloaded UIs, like in Retroshare and Freenet, were simply aimed at people who felt more comfortable, not less, seeing them.
Needs sybil attack protection.
A few solutions:
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Federated identity services. Like old Skype had identity service as its only centralized part, one can make the same thing, but federated. Would require registration and finding one just like the comment I was answering to complains.
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F2F and trust elements - people can trust each other via QR codes or something, with 1 trusted peer beating any number of untrusted peers.
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Reputation system elements (like Kad network has), which is not enough a protection, but makes them more expensive.
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It’s still a centralized system
That’s the thing, nobody cares. Its even better to bê centralised because there’s someone you can sue for damages if that’s the case.
Well that’s just not true
These people should create an instance on Pixelfed, a libre alternative to Instagram.
I think it would be great for new social things like this to just speak ActivityPub. They can build up their own user experience and culture while joining a larger network. I don’t have a problem with the software itself being non-free if the protocols are and they commit to supporting account migration.
Pixelfed already does support the image import from Instagram.
Mastodon doesn’t seem to support any import from Twitter/X.
I’m assuming account migration from the main social media platforms to be an important feature.
But I don’t think supporting ALL social media is realistic unless they all follow the same norms. Which I really doubt.
ActivityPub supports alsoKnownAs and movedTo so that users can migrate their social graphs to a different server or software. Of course that doesn’t work for migrating from networks that don’t support ActivityPub.
Content import is a separate issue, but I can imagine it being helpful as well.
ActivityPub supports alsoKnownAs and movedTo so that users can migrate their social graphs to a different server or software.
The annoying thing with ActivityPub is that your username/handle is tightly coupled to a particular server, and moving server requires you to change your handle. Everywhere you’ve mentioned/documented your old handle is now out of date.
Bluesky handles this a lot better. If you own a domain, you can use it with any Bluesky server by creating a TXT record for validation. Your username is the domain name - if you own
example.com, you can be@example.comon Bluesky, without having to self-host it. If you move server, you don’t have to change your username. Currently there’s just one main Bluesky server but they plan to introduce federation at some point, and their protocol is already mostly designed for it.And the losing server has to cooperate, which is why I mentioned the commitment to support migrating away.
ATProto/Bluesky has some interesting ideas, and I’m interested to see how that develops as third parties start supporting the protocol. For a new service launching now, I think ActivityPub is the more important protocol to support, but it’s presumably possible to support both.
This would be a good approach to improve growth of the community.
Does the ActivityPub protocol support copyright for user content? E.g. an artist releases some picture and they explicitly prompt a license. Each client should accept that they are obligated to prompt this license when using the content… Something like this
Don’t focus on specific apps or you will start all over again from the beginning when every new piece of anti-libre software, malware, appears.
People chose Cara because they identify with the art aspect of this social network. They don’t care if it’s anti-libre. They probably don’t even know what it means.
The purpose of a federated instance like Pixelfed is to be a blank state. You can do anything with it. Any niche. Art in this case.
The issue here is to bring these people to Pixelfed and make them feel at home within their niche.
They don’t care if it’s anti-libre.
And that’s why keep getting abused again and again. So, this is what we must target. Unless we like wasting all of our time just to restart when the next malware arrives because they don’t see the difference, see it’s anti-libre.
Yes and no, you and me both value software freedom so we both understand that.
Education is obviously part of the process.
But I think most people don’t really care if libre or not. Libre or anti-libre is mostly tech jargon for non-tech people.
They just want to be part of their own communities and be where the party is.
Does libre just mean “free?” The way I have been seeing it used in context, I assumed it was a platform of some kind. This thread made me not so sure of that.
Libre means free as in freedom rather than free as in cost. A service that costs money to use, but communicates using open protocols, gives you full control over your data, and allows you to easily migrate to competitors and self-hosted solutions might be described as “libre”.
Libre is free and open
Libre is open, but not necessarily no cost.
It’s not illegal to charge for a derived product.
most people don’t really care if libre or not. Libre or anti-libre is mostly tech jargon for non-tech people.
Yes, that’s the problem to solve.
They just want to be part of their own communities and be where the party is.
Which they can’t when their software keeps abusing them, anti-libre software. So, we connect the effect to this root cause.
Libre/anti-libre is one of the problem to solve.
Cara seems to be working for them and for now.
For how long? I don’t know.
Another problem is related to the instance creation, management and promotion.
From my understanding, only tech people can do that, there aren’t many companies providing those services and it’s not something average users are interested in.
And then that growth promptly blew its budget because it’s using expensive cloud AI services from Vercel and it has no means of monetization whatsoever to bring money in.
People can do whatever they want, of course. But they have to pay for the resources they consume while doing that, and it seems Cara didn’t really consider that aspect of this.
Well, now’s a great time to let them know about Pixelfed, although explosive growth like this will be a strain on any website.
I get the sense that a federated image hosting/sharing system would be counter to their goals, that being to lock away their art from AI trainers. An AI trainer could just federate with them and they’d be sending their images over on a silver platter.
Of course, any site that’s visible to humans is also visible to AIs in training, so it’s not really any worse than their current arrangement. But I don’t think they want to hear that either.
Oh no… Are they running it entirely on serverless functions? What a disaster. I’m surprised the website is still up, is the owner not worried about going bankrupt?
And now they’re asking for donations. I don’t know how that’ll work out, though
To get abused again by yet more anti-libre software, malware. Some people never learn.
Tell them this:
🚩 Anti-libre software, Cara, bans us from removing malicious source code. We don’t have time to waste your life repeating the same failure.
They might ask:
What is anti-libre? We don’t control. It controls us.
And:
How do we know? It fails to include a libre software license file, like the AGPL.
Say this instead:
open sourcelibre software (‘open source’ is created to subvert libre software)closedanti-libre (closed implies open, see above)We are the product.(paid stuff abuses too) With anti-libre software, we are no the user, we are used.I really appreciate your super stark pro libre software attitude. I want to support you here. You should know that the approach you are taking is ultra abrasive and would probably cause more harm than help.
People would just associate libre software with militant weirdos, if all they saw where your posts.
If you want to make meaningful change I strongly recommend taking a softer less abrasive approach.
We want libre software to be connected with safety, friendliness and personal autonomy, not militarism, chanted phrases, and dogma.
Even on Lemmy the ultra pro libre software social network (relative to non federated networks) your current approach is off putting. I want you to succeed and I think a different approach may be better.
Just my two cents.
People try that and we still get news like this but your feedback is welcome.
Every time you call a product “malware” with absolutely no facts to back it up, you make yourself (and the movement) look idiotic. Please just stop.
Please, stop making yourself look gullible. You have absolutely no proof it’s safe but we know this anti-libre software bans us from removing malicious source code.
Dude you are the one making yourself look dumb. And you still make absolutely no sense, “removing malicious source code”? Removing it from what? Your comments make no sense.
Dude you are the one making yourself look dumb. And you still make absolutely no sense, “removing malicious source code”? Removing it from what? Your comments make no sense.
What do you mean by this?:
Cara, bans us from removing malicious source code
Is there obviously malicious source code? Is there a policy that specifically says we can’t remove any source code? Is this even open source?
‘Open source’ is created to subvert libre software. The ban alone is a 🚩🚩🚩 red flag.
Waht is “libre software”? this is a totally new term to me and searching for it has turned up nothing.
You understand that search results are different for different people, right? I’ve been a dev for… an embarrassingly long time, I’ve never heard “libreware” outside of specifically the libreoffice suite. Sorry I’m not as in-tune with the slang as you are or whatever.
Maybe yours does.
What ban?
They’re using loaded language to say that without access to the source code and the ability to modify it, Cara could start behaving in a way you don’t like and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
Meta uses loaded language to hijack our computing.
Source, or did they include an AGPL, libre software license?
What does copyright law have to do with a ban on removing malicious code?
What do you think bans it? Copyright law, unless they include, for example, a libre software license.
From Cara:
We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation
Okay I wanted to talk real quick about this aspect. Lot’s of folks want AI to require things only held in copyright. And fine, let’s just run with that for sake of brevity. Disney owns everything. If you stick AI to only models which the person holds copyright, only Disney will generate AI for the near future.
I’m just going to tell you. The biggest players out there are the one who stand to profit the most from regulation of AI. And likely, they’ll be the one’s tasked by Congress to write drafts of the regulation.
In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily
And the thing is, is Photoshop even “human-made art”? I mean that was the debate back in the 90s, when a ton of airbrush artist lost their jobs. And a large amount of Photoshop that was done, was so bad back then we had the whole Ralph Lauren, Filippa Hamilton thing go down.
So I don’t disagree with safe from AI places. But the justification of Cara’s existence, is literally every argument that was leveled at Photoshop back in the 90s by airbrush artist who were looking to protect their jobs and failed because they focused way too heavily on being anti-Photoshop that the times changed without them. When they could have started learning Photoshop and kept having a job.
I think AI presents a unique tool for artist to use to become more creative than they have ever been. But I think that some of them are too caught up in how CEOs will eventually use that tool as justification to fire them. And there’s a lot of propensity to blame AI when it’s the CEO’s writing the pink slips, just like the airbrush artists blamed Photoshop, when it was newspapers, the magazines, and so on that were writing the pink slips.
I just feel like a lot of people are about to yet again get caught with their pants down on this. And it’s easy to diss on AI right now, because it’s so early. Just like bad Photoshop back in the 90s led to the funny Snickers ad.
Like I get that people building models from other people’s stuff is bad. No argument there. But, open models, things built from a community of their own images, are things too but that’s all based on the community and people who decide to be in a collaborative effort to provide a community model. And I think folks are getting so hung up on being anti-AI, that it’s going to hurt their long term prospects, just like the airbrush folks who started picking up Photoshop way too late.
There’s not a stopping Disney and the media companies from using AI, they’re going to, and if you enjoy getting a paycheck, having some skill in the thing they use is going to be required. But for regular people to provide a competitor, to fight on equal footing, the everyday person needs access to free tools. Imagine if we had no GIMP, no Kitra, no Inkscape. Imagine if it was just Adobe and nothing else and that was enforced by regulation because only Adobe could be “trusted”.
Good comment. Thanks.
Neat. I like the concept. From a viewing perspective do wish it had some filters and better browsing capacity for finding art, but definitely bookmarkable - glad it’s growing.
What’s keeping this from repeating the same scenario?
Nothing but by now we got used to switching service whenever it gets bad
Then maybe it’s time to switch to a FLOSS federated alternative, like Pixelfed? That way nobody can implement bad changes like this without the community fixing ot forking the code.
Yup I’m already there but it’s hard to get any traction, im posting stuff into the void, its gonna take a while to get the typical Meta users over there :/
I understand but then again it goes in a circle - more content ➡️more users➡️more content
Doesn’t the data disappear once the host decides to cease providing the service? From this perspective I don’t see how a small team or an individual could keep the data for longer compared to a large firm.
I mean avoiding AI images is baked into their mission statement. I guess they could go full asshole and renig on this, but unlike Meta who can piss off a lot of people without affecting their bottom line. If Cara renigs on their whole point of being, a huge chunk of their user base is going to run off. It would likely be suicidal and only good for a quick cash grab exit strategy. I mean, I fully believe almost anything tech should sadly be expected to crumble to enshitification on increasingly shorter arcs. If you are looking for long term quality online services that don’t decay, you are in for lots of dissapointment.
As a European user, do I actively have to opt out or is it opt-out by default?
You have to opt-out. I got an email from meta with a link to the form. Doesn’t seem to matter really what you write. It got approved in less than a minute for me. I think they purposfully made it look like it’s more work than it’s worth.
I have an easy solution for that: I think I’ll just delete my account. I’m not using it anyways.
You actively have to opt-out as far as I know
AFAIK, they only offer the opt-out form in the EU and UK
deleted by creator
Artist published on meta? 😶
Instagram
Ah. Thanks.
Really hoping to zee a surge in demand for “Anti-AI” software/services/community.
Fuck the Hype and the bubble cant pop fast enough
Why not Vero? Which has been around for years and already restricts AI and no advertising.
how does cara compare to pillowfort?
well for starters it sound less stupid
What are the ways that US domains can block AI? I figure pay walls, and captchas, but is there something we can add to robots.txt that has any teeth against AI scraping? I mean would we even know if they obeyed it anyway? How do we set traps and keep this shit out?
Capthchas haven’t worked against serious actors for years and companies could easily pay for a user account. Anything a normal tech illiterate person can do, companies can automate. You sort of have to trust their pinky promise of not scraping content.
Meta is just going to scrub all the Cara content into their AI system anyway. They have no fear because there are no real consequences
If they do, it’s going to be a bad time for them, since Cara has Glaze integration and encourages everyone to use it. https://blog.cara.app/blog/cara-glaze-about
Isn’t this just going to be a battle of AIs?
Train the AI on what glaze does and it’ll eventually be able to deglaze. So glaze gets better and stops it for a bit and then the deglazer gets better and wins again. Repeat forever.
