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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TW
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  • This is why digital media corporations make up convoluted agreements but they don't ever change the little button saying "Buy". If more people realized they are not actually purchasing and getting to own it, they wouldn't spend their money.

    But it's even more revolting that the law and governments validate this obvious false advertising.

  • In-App Purchases are already real-money gaming (and gambling). You can already waste your whole finances on lootbox games chasing a rare reward. The only difference is that you can't officially redeem them for money, it only features all the downsides of gambling. So... it's pretty much the same. The division between gambling for fictional items to gambling for money is so small it might as well not be there.

  • The difference is that as far as fanfic goes you cannot escape the fact that they aren't real, it's static text on a screen, and even people roleplaying are liable to get a "dude wtf" response if they have no notion of what are appropriate expectations and behavior. But an AI will go along with whatever it's told to and try to appear like person doing it. They will validate and reward even the user's wildest expectations.

    If there's people so lost in their fantasies that they will convince themselves they are in love with some scripted basic visual novel character, imagine what AI bots will do to them.

    To be fair I don't think this is downfall of society material, but I think it's a given some people will go absolutely nuts because of them, and it might affect how they treat real human beings around them. The internet has enough unhinged people even when they are capable of interacting with each other. Imagine when we are dealing with people whose main practice of conversation is getting sexted by AI bots they treat like trash?

  • It could help with the symptoms of loneliness, but it might also worsen the root causes, like social isolation and/or personal insecurities. It's only expected that AI chatbots will somewhat reflect the expectations of their users, which might encourage patterns of biased and negative thinking they feed into it.

    If someone sees it as a plaything, there is nothing wrong with that, but it's way too easy for people to take with too far. There's people who do that to static characters and rudimentary dating sims already.

  • Soon?

    They are already driving the gacha game market, spending several billions. Way too many games sell characters to players simply by making a variety of waifus.

    Then we have everyone paying for OnlyFans and erotic art patreons.

    Then we have everyone paying subscriptions for dating apps.

    Really, the more I think about it, was it ever a fringe market? "Porn sells" is a known saying. Playboy magazines used to be an institution.

    This is just a new layer of that.

  • When I defend Threads in the Fediverse is less that I want Meta to be the main Fediverse server, and more that I think this is an opportunity for people stuck on it to see what garbage it is in comparison to instances that put people first, unlike them that focus on money and manipulation.

    Incidentally, maybe this is why their whole Fediverse integration talk never went anywhere.

  • The sensitive social issue of Women's Suffrage?!? This is a historical and settled matter. What, are they going to ban games based on WW2 too?

    There are far more controversial things that they let pass. No, this feels like active political interference, maybe some sort of internal anti-feminist bias.

  • I see what you are saying, but Google is still not bleeding money and YouTube has become very well established already. In fact, for years YouTube contributes to Google's primary revenue source: Advertising. Of course, this is why they are opposed to ad blockers, that much makes perfect sense.

    But I don't see any indication that it's not making ends meet. And I'm not taking an executive's word as proof, much less one from a whole different company. It's expected that they will say whatever make their actions look good, whether or not it's true.

  • Do you realize that right now there are US states trying to make publicly existing as a transgender person prosecutable as an obscene act? Or that there are states where abortion is illegal? I'm assuming you are american but that also applies to other countries. In Russia any public indication that one is LGBT is liable to get one persecuted by law and by bands of raging homophobes.

    At the best of times this attitude "if you have done nothing wrong, you got nothing to hide" is naive. But these days, as the many flaws of the justice system and the raging bigotry of many people are transparent to see and widely commented on, it's downright clueless to say something like this.

  • I wouldn't apply Twitch's situation to YouTube, IF it's even true, because YouTube got a much wider reach and more advertising possibilities than gaming and somewhat related audiences.

    It doesn't seem to me a given that they'd boast about their success either. Because if they hide the situation the way they do, they can do this, turn to the customers saying "Welp, I guess this much is not enough. Gotta put more ads on it and raise prices 🤷". It's easier to placate the users if they are convinced it is inevitable. I imagine you are considering of what investors might think if products are said to be unprofitable, but overall Google/Alphabet still gets tens of billions in clean profits every year.

    Most of all, again, if this is such a money sink that in over a decade they couldn't figure out how to make money of it, why would they still keep at it? Why wouldn't they sell it off or close it? If I assume they are honest about unprofitability, as much as I doubt it, then they must be getting something else from it that is equally valuable as raw money. Maybe it's user data. Maybe it's the social clout of controlling a major media platform. But it has to be worth it to them or they wouldn't be hosting it. It wouldn't make sense.

    But personally I just think they are lying about unprofitability, including Twitch. It's just a convenient excuse for layoffs and price hikes. It's not like they are going to show everyone their full balance sheets.

  • Pretty sure YouTube has already been declared to be profitable. But frankly I'm pretty suspicious of claims of unprofitability for services being run for over a decade. Why would any for-profit company bankroll them if it wasn't worth it? There has to be some creative accounting going on.