Could this be the reason for the rate limiting? Elon thinks the server usage is scrapers when in reality it's just bad code causing a self DDOS?
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Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#142Also, taking Elon's word at face value for a second... is Twitter really worth scraping for AI training or whatever? Its a hive of misinformation, disinformation and toxicity. Its succinct I guess, but nothing is eloquent or descriptive because of the character limit. And its full of repetitive "filler" information. Who wants that in a foundational LLM dataset? Maybe its OK for finding labeled images... But that stil…
It's useful if you want your LLM to be able to generate tweet-like microblogging text. That does have some value. Or maybe you want to get an aggregate idea of what people are currently talking about in the world, stuff that doesn't rise to the level of capital-n News. There aren't a lot of alternatives for that.
Output formatting or a quick finetune/LORA can do microblogging very easily.
Yeah, lots of general chat is unfortunately stuck in Twitter (or difficult -to-scrape siloed off platforms.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#143I think we're about at the point where the people who predicted chaos at twitter after Elon basically fired most of the experienced engineers have been proven correct. The duct tape is all coming apart at the seams now.
It isn't quite as decisive as a submarine imploding, and ceasing to exist, but it has turned into a brightly burning tirefire.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#144Also, taking Elon's word at face value for a second... is Twitter really worth scraping for AI training or whatever? Its a hive of misinformation, disinformation and toxicity. Its succinct I guess, but nothing is eloquent or descriptive because of the character limit. And its full of repetitive "filler" information. Who wants that in a foundational LLM dataset? Maybe its OK for finding labeled images... But that stil…
The thing that LLMs bring to the table isn't factual knowledge — we already had that, even some AI projects specifically dedicated to that — but rather the ability to correctly interact with natural language.
Twitter is great for examples of that, and the toxicity and disinformation doesn't get in the way.
Conversely, a training set doesn't need to be up to date to be useful for that.
I don't know if anyone really was trying to scrape it (examples of Musk disagreeing with his own engineers come to mind), but I assume it's possible, and given the quality of code ChatGPT spits out I can easily believe a really bad scraper has been produced by someone who thought they could do without hiring a software developer. If so, they might think they can get hot stock tips or forewarning of a pandemic from which emoji people post or something — not really what an LLM is for, but loads of people (even here!) conflate all the different kinds of AI into one thing.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#145One weekend Russia attacks Russia, next weekend Twitter attacks Twitter.
Don't forget when Reddit attacked Reddit two weeks ago.
It is kinda funny if you consider these companies might consider their user data to be useful, especially with recent advances in LLM models. I've been thinking if you just exclude Reddit posts from training youll probably achieve much lower bullshit scores, as that seems to be what most posts on there seem to represent. I think data curation (by sources) could achieve quite a bit.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#146[deleted]
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#147Meanwhile, I can see this very Mastadon post with no login just fine. And the interface is not trying to assault me. It loads quick. ...Seems like a better product than Twitter for a public feed.
On Mastodon simply discussing certain topics will get you banned, and instances that don't ban those users get defederated. I prefer Twitter in the sense that it's more laissez faire in terms of what kinds of speech get you banned.
> On Mastodon simply discussing certain topics will get you banned, and instances that don't ban those users get defederated.
This is why P2P is superior. Federation nodes can be used to strong-arm collective behavior against the will of individual users.
I don't mind being exposed to liberal and conservative thought. I want to consume almost the entire spectrum of human discourse so that I can synthesize ideas for myself and understand more effectively. As long as the signal is reasonably high.
Reddit and fediverse moderators wield absolute power over their fiefdoms. They're intellectual dictatorships. (Not to mention egotistical behaviors some of them have.)
P2P allows the end user to consume what they want, weight discussions how they want, and participate in any number of emergent clusters. It's the real path forward.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Mastodon simply discussing certain topics will get you banned, and instances that don't ban those users get defederated. I prefer Twitter in the sense that it's more laissez faire in terms of what kinds of speech get you banned.
> On ~~Mastodon~~ Twitter simply discussing certain topics will get you banned. Also true.
Yes, that's why I said its more permissive, not that Twitter is fully permissive.
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I read more about this? What topics are banned?
When they say "banned", they mean "if I say grotesquely offensive things, other people will chose not to listen". You know, just like in real life. There are plenty of instances that allow abhorrent content, if that's what you want, but you can't force others to receive it.
In twitter, people can choose not to follow or mute you on individual basis, that's basically what “not listening” means. Banning somebody means preventing other people from listening to them, so it's not the same.
Maybe it works different on Mastodon?
Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
#150[flagged]
He’s the richest man in the world, and a bully narcissist who punches down as a hobby. He’s not the unpopular ugly kid, he’s the one who attacks those kinds of kids. And he certainly doesn’t need you to defend him.
He spent $44 billion to build a platform to attack his own daughter. Beyond just being a bully at that point, IMO.