 Discovered this morning that Maven https://heymaven.com (a social media startup who's CEO is ex OpenAI "Ken Stanley: leading the Open-Endedness Team at OpenAI") is mass importing public posts from the #fediverse with no links back to the original and no way to delete them. It seems there is no Opt-out or Opt-in mechanism at all. It also has posts from #Bluesky pulled in via @bsky.brid.gy that are also not linked back to the original. Here's an example: https://app.heymaven.com/profile/66927   61 comments
@liaizon oh interesting. So the actual selling point is that they've divorced the posts from the person. Lovely.  "We experimented for a bit with uploading some high quality resources that could help spark discussion but we decided to stop that for now. The article is 3 years old but maven the platform is only a few months old :)" -COO Blas Moros  This is despicable. I suppose it is also an opportunity for you write whatever you want about Ken Stanley and have it published on his own site, then screenshot it. "Excited to see Ken Stanley announce heymaven.com will be livestreaming the third annual Sex Tourism and Tax Avoidance Conference for American Christians. It is sponsored by Lobbyists for Lowering The Age of Consent and Lockheed Martin, expect more details to follow soon!" What are they going to do, ban you?   @liaizon @bsky.brid.gy Whoa, it is actively retagging and relating posts. @bfdi And that, in turn, led me to find this post there - https://app.heymaven.com/discover/49680 where someone is pointing out that the numbering system can also be used to mine account info. And then down here in the comments, he also mentions that if you know who someone is, you can find their unpublished draft posts too https://app.heymaven.com/discover/55373 They say further down they've fixed this, but man that is not good. @DrakkenZero @liaizon @bsky.brid.gy the drafts thing sounds like an issue on the fedi software side though, no? mastodon & co have to be flawed for that info to be available @emllnd @liaizon @bsky.brid.gy It's drafts from within Maven, because it's also it's own platform and not just something parasiting off the Fediverse with a one-way no-back-link import. So, if you were a Maven user that was drafting for-Maven posts, until they fixed it other people could see whatever you had written whether you'd chosen to publish it or not, just by digging around in the number system. @liaizon @bsky.brid.gy searched my name and I found a toot from you as well on this weird app @treefrogie84 1.12 million fediverse posts scraped by AI startup Maven founded by ex OpenAI lead... confirmation by Maven CTO Jimmy Secretan https://app.heymaven.com/discover/1190743   @djsundog what the FUCK they scraped from inside the fedi with a login? we don't expose posts anywhere but they got ours @t54r4n1 I'd laugh so hard as you took your fedi followers out to the nicest dinner the twin cities have to offer after the settlement check came through hahaha @t54r4n1 I have a feeling they set up a fedi server specifically to get around authorized fetch issues @liaizon fwiw, authorized fetch is only going to stop another signed activitypub request if you have the domain suspended or operate on an allow list. Any legitimate AP request that is signed will go through otherwise. I feel like they are pulling from mastodon.social's API streaming endpoint. So posts that end up on m.s' federated timeline are going to end up on there so now that Jimmy jumped in thread and I had a quick look at his masto.soc profile, it looks like they are indeed implementing activitypub - https://mastodon.social/@jsecretan/with_replies - so, defederating from maven.ly should help; looks like they're currently using staging.maven.ly (see test account https://staging.maven.ly/mastodon/actor/1 )but blocking the TLD is deffo the move imho  @liaizon @djsundog @t54r4n1 authorized fetch isn't meant to block a fedi server from federating. It's only when you blocked a server that authorized fetch comes into action. Some details here: https://hub.sunny.garden/2023/06/28/what-does-authorized_fetch-actually-do/ @djsundog @t54r4n1 I just searched for my name. It's there. 😒 @nexusofprivacy had you heard of maven?  @bhawthorne you have to click the "try web app" button next to the play store app buttons to get sent to https://app.heymaven.com/discover which then has a search box at the top   @liaizon this post says that replies federate back. They seem to be an activityPub server. Probably limited like threads.net. but a legit actor, not scraping @shadowwwind they currently seem to be one way. and they don't link back to the original post, so I would still consider it scraping even if they are using AP to do it... @liaizon according to him comments do federate back. And the linking thing might just be, that they didn't set that up yet. In the search all mastodon accounts that I saw at least had the whole Webfinger in their name. UPDATE: Looks like its a bit more complex (isn't it always) @liaizon @bsky.brid.gy wait, I may be wrong, but I remember seeing Rochko including someone on the Mastodon board or something (I don't remember the details) who was or is a proponent of LLMs. Is this, um, sanctioned? Can someone confirm, please? @liaizon oh, my bad. So now what do we do, lock our accounts, will that be any help? @liaizon  A guy who used to work for a company that commits blatant content theft is once again committing blatant content theft. And, bafflingly, getting away scot-free. I guess because Fedi users don't have million-dollar legal departments.  Thank you for sharing. I found my shadow profile on maven, too, spanning 5/17/24 - 6/8/24, but not every one. They've stripped hashtags from the bottom of my posts. Image AltText seems to be missing or inaccessible there. And, they add their own imprecise tags. I wonder if hashtags in the body of a post would stop them, get stripped – bastardizing the content, or simply be ignored? What about Emojis? I'll throw a hashtag into today's post and see if it turns up there in a few days.  Looks like I'm in there, and somehow they scooped up a "Mentioned people only" post????? |
Gregory's Server
Thanks to @emsquared for posting about it under the #ActivityPub hashtag which is how I discovered it...