Right! It's definitely fulfilling the purpose OP stated here in this post, as long as that's what you're using it for. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't do the other things it claims to do in the readme for the repo, so that's something to be aware of.
lukecooperatus
joined 1 year ago
This seems like a valuable utility for concealing writing style, though I feel like the provided example fails to illustrate the rest of the stated goal of the project, which is to "prevent biases, ensuring that the content is judged solely on its merits rather than on preconceived notions about the writer" and "enhance objectivity, allowing ideas to be received more universally".
The example given is:
You: This is a demo of TextCloak!!!
Model: "Hey, I just wanted to share something cool with you guys. Check out this thing called TextCloak - it's pretty neat!"
The model here is injecting bias that wasn't present in the input (claims it is cool and neat) and adds pointlessly gendered words (you guys) and changes the tone drastically (from a more technical tone to a playful social-media style). These kinds of changes and additions are actually increasing the likelihood that a reader will form preconceived notions about the writer. (In this case, the writer ends up sounding socially frivolous and oblivious compared to the already neutral input text.)
This tool would be significantly more useful if it detected and preserved the tone and informational intent of input text.
I think you underestimate how oblivious many users are when it comes to using software.
Your statement did leave some wiggle room to quibble over what exactly "very popular" means, though I don't see how popularity is a useful metric when we're talking about free software which doesn't rely on user purchases for revenue. Ultimately it comes down to how funding the development of each software is accomplished, and whether that can be done effectively without selling out.
However, if we must compare funding strategies based on popularity, then we can. I'm not sure where you got your usage numbers from, but I'll use your percentage to normalize for the number of employees paid through the funding strategies of both examples to compare the effectiveness of the approaches:
- Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation together have roughly 840 employees as of 2020 (the latest numbers available on Wikipedia). I'm not sure how they split up who does what for developing the software, but I seriously doubt the vast majority of those 840 employees are developers.
- Blender Foundation has a team of 31 people (as of 2022). Most of them are developers/engineers/designers directly involved with improving the software.
For purposes of discussion, I'll assume that you are correct that Blender has 2% of the popularity of Firefox. Normalizing that for comparison, 2% of 840 Mozilla employees is 16.8 employees (round down because you can't have 0.8 of a person).
In other words, if Firefox were only 2% as popular as it is now (thus making it equally as popular as you say Blender is), Mozilla would be paying 16 developers with it's funding strategy.
Conversely, Blender is able to pay 31 developers using their funding strategy. This means that, even when accounting for popularity, Blender's funding strategy is 2x more effective than Mozilla's at paying developers to work on their software.
Again, I don't agree that popularity is an important metric to compare here, but even when we do so, it's clear that it is entirely possible to fund software without resorting to tired old capitalistic funding models that result in the increasingly objectionable violations of user privacy that Mozilla engages in lately. They could choose to do things differently, and we ought not to excuse them for their failure of imagination about how to fund their business more ethically. Especially when perfectly workable alternative funding models are right there in public view for anyone to emulate.
it's simply not possible for something to get very popular without being taken over by a corporation
Please don't excuse unethical and exploitative behavior by pretending that it's unavoidable.
There are examples of other funding models available; for example, what the Blender Foundation does. It turns out, if a FOSS effort focuses on their community, makes users feel involved and important, asks in good faith for contributions and suggestions, treats people with respect, maintains funding and organizational transparency, and has consistent ethical standards.. it can work out very well for them. No selling out required. No data harvesting required. No shady deals with Google required.
Wasn't that the Loki show, where all of time is run by a boring dystopian corporate bureaucracy?
Now that I think of it, I guess you're right, that show probably did do better than Black Adam.
Looking through their comment history, they proclaim their honesty quite often, it's pretty funny when you're looking for it 😆
I've now tagged them so I'll remember that they are very honest:
No idea if this is a useful suggestion, but I saw it spoken of in another thread about CAD software: there's a free and open source plugin called BlenderBIM that is apparently a decent option.
I think you need to take a break and get some perspective.
Besides, the Twitter link was already posted by the OP, why would it need to be posted again?
There's no more funny malware.
That depends who gets infected.
You or me infected by malware? No thanks!
Egon Mark infected by malware? Absolute hilarity!
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This kind of confusion illustrated by Telegram users is exactly why it was the right thing to do for privacy when Signal removed support for SMS because it's not encrypted. People still whine endlessly about it, but most users are not very savvy, and they'll assume "this app is secure" and gleefully send compromised SMS to each other. All the warnings and UI indicators that parts of the app were less secure (or not at all in the case of SMS) would be ignored by many users, resulting in an effectively more dangerous app. Signal was smart to remove those insecure features entirely.