I covered this before in part but I'm not really a fan of third party URL shortener type services.
It's hard for a user to know where any particular link goes.
There *is* a way for a computer to dereference the link to figure out where it goes (I'm not sure if this makes requests or not to the server after a link service's server, I haven't looked into the technical details of it, I know such tools exist though), but a user would not only have to know about that tool, they would also have to manually put the URL into the tool to figure out where the link goes. That's not very user friendly.
Also, links appear to drift over time. One possible cause of this is the link expiring. That can theoretically be a security risk where a user encounters an old link and it points somewhere unexpected. Even without that case though, it's not a good experience for users.
A short URL also doesn't really add value. I have never seen a situation where someone has a shortened URL and I think "gee, this short URL is a great idea, I always have a bit of irritation as I can't immediately figure out where on earth the thing goes.
These things might also constitute a #privacy risk...
What I was originally thinking of covering also touches on "think of the children" nonsense, because surprise surprise, this is a point of quite a bit of nonsense.
If not, then maybe I can get back to covering what I was originally thinking of covering.
"I am going to go full QAnon because I don't like #AI. That'll show it." is not the "win" someone thinks it is.
I think that as far as Microsoft is concerned, any "AI" tool should ideally be fully local, and also opt-in (from the user's point of view).
I am told that there are people who do the same thing but with a higher level of personal "AI" ethics, yes, although it seems strange to go full QAnon in any case.
To be fair, there are a few which aren't as bad. One spoke out in opposition to the chat control, for instance, although there are still quite a few which are pretty bad.
Also, quite a few of these groups have stranger motivations. They might be religious extremists (some would call them cults), or they might be associated with these culture warriors in government (quite literally how they get funded).
Perhaps, someone wants to get revenge for some personal incident. There are quite a few of those.
A person from a "save the children" group is unlikely to lean towards liberty because they want to basically have an excuse to punish someone without due process and without worrying about pesky things like basic fundamental rights.
They're kind of optimized for that. That's what they get paid for.
So, when they open their mouths, and say some crap, it's not really meaningful and they're probably going to put a lot of emphasis on the bad or negative hypotheticals.
Virtually every article of QAlexandra's appears to involve her bitching about "AI" in some way so her motivation here is really not that mysterious.
The premise that a "bad person might like something" is fundamentally flawed and very dangerous and I can't really allow her to make this kind of argument just because she doesn't like one particular kind of content.
What is Alexandra bitching about now (a grifter of a minor journo).
So, if I get this straight, she is mad about so-called "photorealistic" "AI" imagery of "children" (not porn though) because she finds the fantasies of the viewers to be upsetting...? (Even the most "scandalous" ones she can produce appear to be pretty clear fantasies, frankly.) Ugh. She even cites someone from a "save the children" outfit who is best buds with an odious far right figure with a bizarre fascination with sex abuse rituals in schools. Then, there is another from another "save the children" outfit offering up his hot takes (working hard to "join the dots", it's what he's paid to do).
There are also strong QAnon type vibes where she "joins the dots" and makes things up about it, even trying to conflate it with people who post borderline child porn, or are otherwise up to no good without any real line of argumentation. One of the dots is that one viewer happens to post actual photographs (not porn).
What is really striking is the actual absence of an actual argument past "them and us".
Alexandra would be best served actually looking at the ethics in question of where it comes from, perhaps a critique of the actual technology itself (if anything), rather than trying really hard to push this whole thought police angle / Q shit. That would require a shred of intellectual honesty though.
At the end of the day, it winds up feeling like a lot of nothing. It's hard to believe Alexandra is making the world one iota better. It's a grift which is squeezed hard to produce clicks and views. That is what she is all about.
Software Engineer. Psy / Tech / Sex Science Enthusiast. Controversial?
Free Expression. Human rights / Civil Liberties. Anime. Liberal.