Thread

1. tolerance · 1789588420 · focus · HN ↗

   > Then came a threat. An account with a much larger following DM'd her and told her to take down the sign, or they would post about it to their local artist community. The person offered to help her find an artist to pay to make a new sign, or else they would post about it.

   > They gave her a day to "think about it."

   When this is sort of behavior that the "good guys" advance then it's hard not to expect a "bad guy" with money to show up on the scene and thwart it.

   1. ratelimitsteve · 1789588666 · focus · HN ↗

      why is talking about this with their community a threat?

      1. jrflowers · 1789589828 · focus · HN ↗

         It literally is not. You can maybe phrase it to sort of sound like a threat but “I’m going to share your public ad” is never a threat. It’s like if you angrily yell “I’m going to come to a complete stop at this upcoming stop sign!” in a threatening voice and then do that, it wasn’t a threat. Great. That’s what the sign is for. That’s what everyone wants you to do.

         1. F3nd0 · 1789591331 · focus · HN ↗

            Saying you’ll do something that’ll harm someone (or, more precisely in this instance, their business) can reasonably be called a threat (in the broad sense of the word), though not necessarily the unfair kind of threat most people imagine when they say ‘threat’.

            You can threaten someone with ceasing to be a customer if they don’t change their business practices, and that’s perfectly fine. Sharing publicly available information is generally not a problem, either. But in this case, the author of the message is coming off as very insincere, setting deadlines, and trying to strike up deals, which comes off as unreasonable and makes one wonder if they really are simply going to share publicly available information, or if they’re going to give undue focus over them being ‘uncooperative’. If they did not want their message to come off as a threat, this was very far from an ideal way to write it.

            1. jrflowers · 1789603949 · focus · HN ↗

               Can you quote the words in the article where somebody said that the business was or would be hurt

               Because if not that would mean that this is an article about a threat that somebody imagined in their head

               1. F3nd0 · 1789659270 · focus · HN ↗

                  I think it’s pretty evident that letting ‘other artists’ (or ‘the community’) know implies hurting the business (since they are likely to disappreciate the use of AI, the way many other people have).

                  1. jrflowers · 1789688444 · focus · HN ↗

                     Hurt the business in what way specifically?

                     All we’ve got to go off is a screenshot of a vaguely weird DM. Seeing as the article didn’t mention any type of harm at all, what is the evident harm here?

                     This is an article on a news website about how somebody got a dm lol, there was never any threat, they would’ve written about it if there was

                     1. F3nd0 · 1789778497 · focus · HN ↗

                        The very fact they are giving her an ultimatum/deadline holds that implication. At the very least, it would be likely to further the backlash and upset even more people (who oppose this use of AI). Whether they had anything else in mind is not clear, but it’s clear that it was nothing good, otherwise she would have no reason to give in to their demands and the entire captured conversation would be utterly absurd and pointless.

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