Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/stack_overflow_banning_users_who/

by moose44 • 2 years ago

65 87 2 years ago

theregister.com

amelius• 2 years ago

And let me guess, meanwhile they ask a big fee from AI companies for using the data.

smilespray• 2 years ago

No need to guess — that's what the protests are about.

lxgr7• 2 years ago

Can they even do that?

I know that SO content is licensed under creative commons; is there an additional dual license that allows them to commercially use it under different (e.g. non-attribution) terms?

lolinder• 2 years ago

Discussed the other day in a consolidated thread from a few duplicate submissions (311 comments total):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40302792

fer• 2 years ago

Content contributed on StackOverflow (and all the StackExchange sites I believe) is CC, so it's really a losing battle.

schlauerfox• 2 years ago

How is the use of CC-BY-4.0 by a LLM going to be attributed to satisfy the license conditions is my question. Every answer by the model contains the work as part of it's token weights and can regurgitate.

trueismywork3• 2 years ago

Yup, you need to cite every single poster ever.

manuelabeledo3• 2 years ago

Wouldn't a compliant solution be just a glorified search engine?

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

Copyright covers the words not the ideas/concepts/facts. If I read a StackExchange post, I can absolutely use those ideas/concepts/facts to write a new document, which I can choose to copyright and sell, and there's no need for me to cite the SE post.

Now, as a matter of academic courtesy it's nice to cite the SE post if it's feasible, but it's impossible for me to remember where I learned everything I've learned over the years. Likewise, an LLM shouldn't be forced to cite where it learned facts, which might be technically hard/impossible, but if there is a clear best source then as a matter of politeness it should. And LLMs mostly do this when they can!

cjpearson2• 2 years ago

It's a losing battle in that the CC license and StackOverflow's ToS make it clear that StackOverflow is allowed to restore the post regardless of the original author's wishes.

It's less clear that the license gives AI companies the right to train LLMs. They tend to take the view that any media can be used for training regardless of licensing because it's fair use. Many authors disagree and believe they must explicitly license their content for LLM training. AFAIK none of these legal disputes have been settled yet.

In my view you shouldn't really expect to have much control over who uses the content you post to Stack Overflow. Maybe your answer will be used by a CS101 student. But it could also be used by a defense contractor, gambling site, North Korean hacker, or darknet drug marketplace. Yes, the license requires attribution, but if ChatGPT ignores that requirement it's behaving like 90% of programmers.

trueismywork3• 2 years ago

Its CC-BY-SA so openAI has to release the weights obtained by training.

sethhochberg2• 2 years ago

Stack Overflow has been banning users wholesale who have attempted to delete or deface their own posts on the site

Its not just people who are upset getting banned for being upset, its people who are attempting to burn it all down on their way out the door in protest.

I get where the protests are coming from, but the cardinal rule of online communities is "once you post it, its out there". Other people have reacted to it, replied to it, quoted it. You break not just your own content but entire discussions if you mass-delete your contributions. They stopped being exclusively yours to take back once you contributed them to a broader conversation.

7e• 2 years ago

A right to one's own expression/speech is a basic human right.

nathan_compton• 2 years ago

Is this true? I don't disagree with the idea, but do you really have the _right_ to delete some previous thing you've said no matter where it is? Seems untenable.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

The right to delete your own words after uttering them (and giving some company a license to reproduce them no less) is dubious. I guess it exists in the EU with their "right to be forgotten" and GDPR stuff, but I think not in most of the rest of the world.

itsdrewmiller• 2 years ago

There is no basic human right of “takesies backsies” though - that seems more like the relevant question, along with IP ownership.

lxgr7• 2 years ago

Deleting your past speech is not a basic human right, for good reasons:

Imagine e.g. the effect on democracy of politicians being able to have all of their past utterances deleted from the public record because they don't feel like it represents their current branding anymore.

For private individuals not "of public interest", the situation is a bit different, but e.g. the EU's "right to be forgotten" is arguably not a basic human right, but a relatively new and narrow concept for which there isn't any type of international consensus yet.

creativeSlumber• 2 years ago

but the cardinal rule of online communities is "once you post it, its out there"

That's you opinion, not a cardinal rule. For example, Reddit comments and posts are deleted by users all the time.Same for Twitter, where users delete their posts and reacts all the time.

sethhochberg2• 2 years ago

Its a practical reality of the internet. It would be simply naive to believe that all content on Stack Overflow, Hacker News, and wherever else any of us post has not been scraped and archived by dozens of parties who I never explicitly authorized to archive my words.

When I say "rule", I'm speaking in terms of "how each person posting content should operate". Once you make your words public, you (should) have no expectation of being able to take them back.

transcriptase• 2 years ago

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but for many years deleting something simply hid it and there were browser extensions to “undelete” comments.

Arnt5• 2 years ago

SO is different. It's a community effort, an asker and a set of answerers create something together, and SO+moderators clean up so that something is easy to find by searching (and also make the total collection downloadable).

This asker ignored the rights of the answerers, moderators and SO, all of which put effort into creating that. I won't mind if someoen deletes his own unanswered question, but vandalising it after answerers put in an effort to answer? That's rude and egoistic.

SirMaster2• 2 years ago

Aren't they just deleted on the front end though?

I thought reddit keeps them still in the backend.

wokkel• 2 years ago

Hard no. There is such a thing as the right to forget. At least in Europe. Stackoverflow likes to take that right away as it earns them more money, but that is never a good reason.

lukan• 2 years ago

"Hard no. There is such a thing as the right to forget."

This only exists as a wish, but is not written in stone and some people actually disagree to that.

elpool2• 2 years ago

The right to forget is about removing personal information from a site, or removing articles about you from search results. An answer to a Stackoverflow question isn't really personal info.

matsemann2• 2 years ago

Right to forget can be achieved by unlinking the content from you, though, and making sure it contains no personal identifiable information. Doesn't mean it needs to be deleted.

Specifically since what you've posted on SO you've shared as CC BY-SA.

lxgr7• 2 years ago

That's not what that set of laws/norms covers at all.

Try publishing a book with any European publisher and then "right to be forgottening" it out of existence.

ToucanLoucan3• 2 years ago

They stopped being exclusively yours to take back once you contributed them to a broader conversation.

Says who, exactly? Stack Overflow, previously, did not say this. Reddit threads get deleted all the time. Facebook posts slide into the ephemeral "past" and are never seen again. Old forums die entirely, with nothing but (hopefully) a copy on the wayback machine.

And that's just regular old rot, in this case, Stack Overflow is explicitly changing the rules on what they can do with writing provided by volunteers under a previous understood agreement, to a new agreement, with no opportunity for negotiation and no engagement with their community. Simply an edict, issued from On High: "We can now sell your contributions to AI companies." And I'm sure for plenty of people they don't give a shit, but clearly some do, and so we get what HN is constantly clamoring for, individuals making decisions about their own creations and their own speech, but now it's suddenly bad because it's the Wrong decision.

matsemann2• 2 years ago

You're mistaken. All content on SO has always been creative commons licensed when you post it. Hence all spam duplicates on Google but also other cool usage of the massive data. They aren't retrospectively changing anything.

Edit: source https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing CC BY-SA

lxgr7• 2 years ago

Stack Overflow, previously, did not say this.

It's always a good idea to read the copyright/usage terms of sites you might be contributing to.

Stack Overflow has been very transparently licensing their content under creative commons since the beginning; that's a big part of why I occasionally contribute to it.

fabian2k• 2 years ago

It was always that way, the user content has always been CC-licensed. And SO has suspended users for deleting/vandalizing their own posts for a long time.

manuelabeledo3• 2 years ago

You break not just your own content but entire discussions if you mass-delete your contributions.

If they allow users to delete or edit their own content, then what's the issue? That just sounds like a technical problem StackExchange didn't think of.

On the other hand, why is this behaviour deemed unacceptable, and StackExchange double dipping on user generated content is not?

cjpearson2• 2 years ago

They've definitely thought about it. This is not the first user to rage quit and vandalize their posts and they have standard procedures to deal with it. (IIRC their system will even automatically flag bulk edits for review.) If you would like to disavow your content, you can ask to have your name removed, but once the content is out there and considered sufficiently valuable, it will not be deleted.

I don't agree with how StackOverflow's current management has been running the site, but for anyone who has used the site, the outcome of this behavior should have been obvious. I'm sure Wikipedia would react the same if you deface all the pages you contributed to prevent OpenAI from consuming words you wrote.

lxgr7• 2 years ago

On the other hand, why is this behaviour deemed unacceptable, and StackExchange double dipping on user generated content is not?

At least I'm engaging on StackExchange with the understanding that conversations (questions, answers, comments) there go on the public record for the benefit of future curious humans. I see that as a way of giving back to a community that's provided me with invaluable knowledge.

If I'd known somebody might delete their half of a fruitful conversation as a political statement months or years down the road, I might never have spent the time and effort of participating.

Thinking of it in terms of co-authorship, one of several co-authors also doesn't get to retroactively destroy the combined work by ripping out their individual contributions. If you collaborate, make sure you know and are aligned with the terms of the resulting work.

add-sub-mul-div7• 2 years ago

I wrote a script to delete over 10,000 reddit comments from my accounts there when they enshittified past the point of no return last year. Yes, the whole point is to devalue the site so that old search results are broken and people stop considering it a worthwhile place. The remaining users who are docile enough to remain on a shit site are holding the internet back from evolving through better sites.

beefnugs• 2 years ago

"Once you post it its out there" sure... but if you piss off huge portions of the platform, then they have just as much right to now become your enemy and flood your system with worse trash than the AI is capable of.

Great, so how did these companies expect to stab so many people in the back and then continue as if it didnt happen again?

lolc• 2 years ago

It's not clear to me what the deal is supposed to be about. Isn't it expected that Stackoverflow questions and answers can be used by anybody including to train models?

If Stackoverflow is trying to make exclusive deals with Openai, that is against the collaborative spirit of the platform, and I will stop contributing. After all, Openai is charging people for service. If Openai are the only ones given access, Stackoverflow becomes a gatekeeper, peddling my contributions. It'll beget a fork.

mort96• 2 years ago

It's shitty to take content under an attribution license like the CC-BY-SA license SO uses and pour it into a soup of linear algebra where the content remains but all attribution is lost.

coldpie• 2 years ago

Isn't it expected that Stackoverflow questions and answers can be used by anybody including to train models?

I don't think so. Content contributed to SO gets licensed under CC-BY-SA, no? How do these AI models respect the "BY" portion of that license? How do we enforce the "SA" portion of the license on people who use the output of the model?

The answer is they don't, but the big companies decided violating copyright is OK so long as they do it all at once, because there's a lot of money to be made if you ignore copyright.

Personally I'd be OK with a compromise where any entity that creates or uses an AI trained on copyrighted data forfeits copyright on all of their own works (not just those created by AI, all of their works).

throwaway2902• 2 years ago

Isn't it expected that Stackoverflow questions and answers can be used by anybody including to train models?

CC ShareAlike requires attribution + derivative works to be shared under the same license. ClosedAI is absolutely in the wrong here.

add-sub-mul-div7• 2 years ago

It's not clear to me what the deal is supposed to be about.

AI is unpopular and makes this an unpopular move, enough so to cause this drama. It's really not any more complicated than that.

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

I don't get it.

Like, it's one thing if a fact-collecting business like the NYTimes doesn't want its stories to train an MML. I think under current law they don't have much of a case, because facts aren't copyrightable, but there's a reasonable argument that the law should be updated somehow in light of technological change.

But the work produced by all StackExchange users is explicitly released under a CC BY-SA license. The whole point is to collect and publish facts/ideas/understanding for anyone to see and use for any purpose, including running a business. Yes, the "SA" (share alike) part means if you want to use and modify the words then you need to release them under license that is at least as permissive, but LLMs aren't using the words; they are clearly digesting the facts and expressing them in their own words. And, unlike the NYTimes, there is no issue of "couldn't new tech undermine society's current method of economically incentivizing fact-collection?". The StackExchange users are not being paid, and the fact that the license is not NC (non-commercial) explicitly means that using their hard work to make money is allowed (and encouraged!).

trueismywork3• 2 years ago

It's not clear whether LLM actions are derivative works or not. The only way they would not he derivative works is if there's specific logic in the implementation to check for all copyrighted works used in training and prevent an infringing output from such a work.

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

There doesn't have to be specific logic.

progval• 2 years ago

Yes, the "SA" (share alike) part means if you want to use and modify the words then you need to release them under license that is at least as permissive, but LLMs aren't using the words; they are clearly digesting the facts and expressing them in their own words

The CC BY-SA text <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.en> says nothing about the words. The words "word" and "words" do not even appear in the legal text. What it says, however, is:

In addition to the conditions in Section 3(a) , if You Share Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply.
1. The Adapter’s License You apply must be a Creative Commons license with the same License Elements, this version or later, or a BY-SA Compatible License.
2. You must include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, the Adapter's License You apply. You may satisfy this condition in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share Adapted Material.

where "Adapted Material" is defined as:

material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.

So if you want to argue that LLMs don't have to follow the SA clause, then you have to argue either that:

1. LLMs aren't an arrangement or transformation of their input, or

2. the license doesn't apply at all, eg. because it's fair use in whatever jurisdiction they fall under.

OpenAI is using argument 2 <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37780199>.

anileated3• 2 years ago

LLMs do not operate on ideas, they do not understand things. They operate on tokens which are phonemes, words or phrases. Think of it as a fancy autocomplete.

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

I'm using "words" as an informal summary of the large legal concept of what can be copyrighted, and "facts/concepts/ideas" for what cannot be. So it's not quite a fair use argument (which someone uses the words for certain protected purposes like parody), and I do not think OpenAI is making a fair use argument (although I'd welcome links to the contrary).

In other words, it has nothing to do with your or anyone else's interpretation of what the CC license claims to protect ("an arrangement or transformation"), and only relies on what rights they are legally allowed to assert.

dongobread• 2 years ago

Legality aside, I think the "payment" people get from posting free knowledge on the Internet is the human connection, and the satisfaction of knowing that other people are reading and appreciating it directly.

Injecting an LLM middleman between your post and the end user changes this dynamic quite a bit - without the human component, the feeling is that you're just doing unpaid labor for a profit-oriented company (OpenAI).

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

Sure, that's fine as a reason for those people to not contribute in the future. They are free to do as they please.

add-sub-mul-div7• 2 years ago

I don't get it.

It's not about legality, it's that sites like SO and Reddit have turned a corner and are no longer sites or businesses that people want to support. The contract of user generated content has been disrupted, we'd have happily given them content to profit from forever if they didn't turn shitty. And now people are lashing out even if it's futile because the content has already been sold. These sites failed a generational marshmallow test, taking short term profit at the expense of souring people on the idea of providing free content going forward.

jessriedel11• 2 years ago

It's fine if they don't want to support them going forward. The question is whether users have any reason to claim that they have been harmed, and I'm arguing that they don't.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

Lots more discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40297027

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40302792

cosmin800• 2 years ago

Stackoverflow made millions, people got badges.

lxgr7• 2 years ago

People also get a freely accessible database dump licensed under CC-BY-SA. That's more than almost every other content-oriented platform out there gives back.

SirMaster2• 2 years ago

People also got answers to questions from other professionals that probably helped them personally financially and professionally in some way.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

Fascinating. Perhaps Stallman's greatest innovation is copyleft. The idea of required reciprocation seems to tie deeply into people's views. For the little OSS I have I picked it by default but would gladly use BSD or some safe PD license on the other hand.

The idea of Pillaging the Commons is interesting. I wonder when the mainstream opinion started shifting. It wasn't quite sudden but it seems to me that even ten years ago the dominant Internet visible position was that much of copyright was bogus: information wants to be free / if a pirate copies your stuff, you still have it

But now there's a stronger sense of "this information is ours". Perhaps that subculture moved somewhere and this one came here or perhaps I moved from where the former was to where the latter is.

I find it an interesting sociological phenomenon.

throwaway2902• 2 years ago

Ultimately they are digging their own grave (who needs SO if you can ask ChatGPT and shell out a few bucks to Microsoft eh?)

If anyone else thinks it's a bad move, the most efficient way to boycott it is by adding senseless questions and answers and upvoting them. Us people is how they got big, us people is how they go down.

elforce0022• 2 years ago

If people stop posting, even chatGPT will be useless since it can't keep up with current bugs, new ways to solve them, etc...

elforce0022• 2 years ago

StackOverflow is destroying its brand one step at a time. ChatGPT is good for boilerplate and generic errors. I still use SO for complex errors that are still getting updated with new ways to solve that said error, etc...

Without the community posting and answering questions, ChatGPT won't work anymore. They (SO) have to block any scrapping, wait until GPU prices go down, or use open-source LLMs with their data and figure out how to monetize that service (maybe giving some percentage to devs, etc...) or even check if that approach (add a chatbot service) makes sense.

They just caved to the FOMO mentality without considering that tech is always evolving and they need engineers, dev, etc... to keep finding out bugs, writing about their experiences on how they solved those errors, etc...

We'll see if a different contender figures this out and comes out with that solution if SO doesn't change its course.

Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

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