Midjourney bans all Stability AI employees over alleged data scraping(theverge.com)
theverge.com
Midjourney bans all Stability AI employees over alleged data scraping
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/11/24097495/midjourney-bans-stability-ai-employees-data-theft-outage
9 comments
So they're complaining about scraping taking down MJ. I don't understand the allegations... if they're scraping things from Discord that wouldn't bring down MidJourney. The only way you'd bring down MJ would be to... use their service too much? Am I missing something?
Yeah the claims made are highly suspicious and come across as paranoid to me. If they’re saying the Midjourney discord server is being scraped - well yeah, even if it’s against your ToS, it’s so trivial to do as long as you’re invited to that server that they should just assume their competitors will and not rely on that as a competitive advantage.
And I guess that’s what it ultimately feels like - they don’t have a competitive advantage operating in the open so they’d rather whine about it than get to work making stuff.
And I guess that’s what it ultimately feels like - they don’t have a competitive advantage operating in the open so they’d rather whine about it than get to work making stuff.
Maybe they just shut down to prevent further scraping and didn't communicate that well.
Odd. There are a ton of of MJ datasets they seem fine with. I have a hard time believing the irony of banning scraping would be lost on them, unless it really took down their backend somehow. Oh well
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Is this legal, seems anticompetitive to me? It feels a lot like tool companies requiring you to sign a contract not to build tools with it.
Quite ironic for calling illegal to do what the entire business is founded upon.
And if it's a paid account (not multiple bot-created free accounts), they should have some rate limiting in place. That smeels like bad API architecture. Like basics architecture.
And if it's a paid account (not multiple bot-created free accounts), they should have some rate limiting in place. That smeels like bad API architecture. Like basics architecture.
The year is 2024: companies that used scraping to build its products are now trying to legislate scraping as an illegal act
This is nothing new. Google built an entire business on scraping and indexing content, and then aggressively blocks anyone from scraping that index.
If you think about it, it's kind of weird that there is no official API for Google search. They've got one for all their other products.
If you think about it, it's kind of weird that there is no official API for Google search. They've got one for all their other products.
The Google Search API was one of the first big Web 2.0 examples of an API. Basically every big colorful "how to do APIs" or "learn JavaScript" book in Barnes and Nobles used the Google Search API as their main example of what an API was and how useful it was until 2011 or so, when Google started turning it down.
Google: if your website is full of ads, we'll downrank you. >:(
Also Google: we automatically enabled vignette interstitials on your website. :)
Also Google: we automatically enabled vignette interstitials on your website. :)
Google: if your website is slow to load we'll downrank you
Also Google: builds tool that claims you load a bunch of JS & CSS from their ad network, thus making your own website slow
Also Google: builds tool that claims you load a bunch of JS & CSS from their ad network, thus making your own website slow
Now I'm curious how many tech companies actively used questionable practices to build their foundation, then lobbied to make those practices illegal to mitigate competition. I've a feeling this is so common that they don't even see the irony in it anymore.
All of them. It’s no coincidence Facebook is leading the charge to regulate social media, AI, and other technology usage.
Regulation is a nice “free”* moat once you’ve made it.
*lobbying costs aside
Regulation is a nice “free”* moat once you’ve made it.
*lobbying costs aside
Don't you remember the open letter for getting current AI devs to halt under some false premise while the true reasoning was to give time for the late starters to catch up?
These people have no morals, and if social media were to suddenly disappear, I think the planet and all that live on it would be better for it
These people have no morals, and if social media were to suddenly disappear, I think the planet and all that live on it would be better for it
"Lyft joins Uber in fight for stronger taxi regulations"
Waiting for The Onion to write it. Or the NY Times; both are just as likely.
Waiting for The Onion to write it. Or the NY Times; both are just as likely.
I read The PayPal Wars and it was wild to me how the author goes back and forth between complaining about how much regulation sucks and talking about how great it was that could take advantage of regulation in their fight about eBay.
That's what FTX was attempting to do with regard to cryptocurrency
If only they could have stolen billions instead, it would have been so much simpler
Irony is something made out of metal in the VC money fueled world of make it useful then make it expensive.
All of them. Building a value moat and rolling up the ladder 101.
To be fair, they didn't say that what Stability AI did was illegal, just that they didn't like it and were banning the people involved from their service.
But the training data isn't important!
Your sarcasm is valid on its own, but here the issue is more towards DoS rather than copying of the content.
Which companies?
Maybe they should have just not thrown such a slow pitch over the plate with running the whole thing on discord in the open.
I am not sure what they expected to happen.
I am not sure what they expected to happen.
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It is good to see mid journey take a meaningful stance against web scraping
Not sure if this is sarcastic, but quite literally every single piece of art that Midjourney, DALL-E, etc. have been trained on was scraped without the copyright owner's consent.
If anything, it's the epitome of hypocrisy.
If anything, it's the epitome of hypocrisy.
Your parent was clearly being sarcastic. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Watching Adobe come out of this shitshow victorious: priceless.
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moonsu(2)