Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#351

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #217

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comparing rope and an LLM comes across as disingenuous. What makes you feel that? Both are tools, both have a wide array of good and bad uses. Maybe it'd be clearer if you explained why you think the two are incomparable except in cases of disingenuousness? Remember that things are only compared when they are different -- you wouldn't often compare a thing to itself. So, differences don't inherently make things inc…

A rope isn’t going to tell you to make sure you don’t leave it out on your bed so your loved ones can’t stop you from carrying out the suicide it helped talk you in to.

This is a good observation! The LLM can tell you to kill yourself. The rope can actually actually help you do it.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#352

Post by cestith » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

Welcome to discovery. It’s what happens when you get sued.

Meanwhile, OpenAI talking about invading privacy sounds an awful lot like a claim with unclean hands.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#353

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

98codes wrote: post #110

nerdjon wrote: post #17

This screams just as genuine as Google saying anything about Privacy. Both companies are clearly wrong here. There is a small part of me that kinda wants openai to loose this, just so maybe it will be a wake up call to people putting in way too personal of information into these services? Am I too hopeful here that people will learn anything... Fundamentally I agree with what they are saying though, just don't find i…

I got one sentence in and thought to myself, "This is about discovery, isn't it?" And lo, complaints about plaintiffs started before I even had to scroll. If this company hadn't willy-nilly done everything they could to vacuum up the world's data, wherever it may be, however it may have been protected, then maybe they wouldn't be in this predicament.

How do you feel about Google vacuuming up the world's data when they created a search engine? I feel like everybody just ignores this because Google was ostensibly sending traffic to the resulting site. The actual infringement of scraping should be identical between OpenAI and Google. Why is nobody complaining about Google scraping their sites? Is it only because they're getting paid off to not complain?

Everybody acts like this is a moral argument when really it's about whether or not they're getting a piece of the pie.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#354

Post by stackedinserter » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #277

stackedinserter wrote: post #123

WTF with all these comments. Regardless on OpenAI reputation and practices, I don't want NYT or anyone else to see my conversations, I completely agree to OpenAI here.

Agree. Everyone would be singing a different tune if say, Fox News were asking for this.

Yeah, it will be funny to see people turn 180, Fox should do that just for teh lulz.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#355

Post by cestith » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:17 PM UTC

rpdillon wrote: post #336

otterley wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article says nothing of the sort. The court order is to preserve existing logs they already have, not to disable logging, and hand all the logs over the plaintiffs. OpenAI's objections are mainly that 1/there are too many logs (so they're proposing a sample instead) and that 2/there's identifying data in the logs and so they are being "forced" to anonymize the logs at their expense (even though it's what they wa…

This response is misleading. Almost all computer services keep logs for a short period of time, so the court order to retain existing information is quite a bit more powerful than a layman would think. Because a huge amount of data is retained for a short period of time and then rapidly deleted in most web services I've worked on for the past 30 years. This is true in services like Datadog, New Relic, and logging ser…

Well, don’t get yourself sued and you won’t have to perform discovery for the plaintiffs.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#356

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

frm88 wrote: post #314

outside1234 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate them. It is just plain to see they have discovered no scalable business model outside of getting larger and larger amounts of capital from investors to utilize intellectual property from others (either directly in the model aka NYT, or indirectly via web searches) without any rights. It is better for all of us the sooner this fails.

to utilize intellectual property from others (either directly in the model aka NYT, or indirectly via web searches) without any rights ... and put the liability for retrieving said property and hence the culpability for copyright infringement on the enduser: Since the output would only be generated as a result of user inputs known as prompts, it was not the defendants, but the respective user who would be liable for…

But wait, isn't this what we want? This means the models can be very powerful and that people have to use their judgment when they produce output so that they are held accountable for whether or not they produced something that was infringing. Why is that a bad thing?

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#357

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

stevage wrote: post #287

As soon as I see someone claiming a lawsuit against them is "baseless" I'm deeply sceptical about everything that follows.

When I looked for the base of this lawsuit, I was looking for some kind of monetary damage that the New York Times had suffered as a result of open AI's actions, like specific cases where their work has been reproduced or people canceling their subscriptions to the New York Times because of OpenAI's launch. I've done so much reading, and I've still been unable to find anything that articulates this. Do you know of anything that talks about it?

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#358

Post by cestith » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #254

bitpush wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should sell their stuff by mail if they hate open culture so much. Does open culture mean free? Are you willing to work for free? It is perfectly OK to sell goods in exchange for money, which is what NYT is doing. I dont know why you're so upset with it. You cant walk into Apple Store and except to walk away with a free iPhone. Then why are you expecting to "walk" into nytimes' website and walk away with free…

Open means open. Plenty of people make money in the open culture in way less obnoxious ways than NYT. What NYT does is crapping at the place where I am, but building a wall and charging for passage to a place that does stink little bit less. I don't mind them having such place, or even charging for access. What I mind is making mine actively worse. Do whatever you want and charge however much you want. But for the lo…

That sounds like a feature request to Google, not an indictment of the NYT.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#359

Post by tritip » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

A very Musky attempt to win popular support.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#360

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #349

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are 100% right, a rope likely isn't going to tell you anything . There's one of those differences I mentioned which makes comparisons useful. We could probably name a few differences! So, what makes you think comparing the 2 tools is invalid? You just compared them yourself, and I don't think you were being disingenuous.

Just because I used italics to emphasize something one time doesn’t mean you get to talk to me like that. I am not a child and you’re being unnecessarily patronizing. I let it slide in the previous comment and gave you the benefit of the doubt despite what I saw but this comment clearly illustrates how disrespectful you’re being. Have a good rest of your day man

I think you, as you put it, rudely, patronizingly, disrespectfully responded to the wrong post: mine was a polite one about a comparison between 2 tools and your statement that the comparing posters must be acting in bad faith (whereas you, with your differing opinion, are acting in good faith).

I'm not interested in focusing on tone-policing, since it is one of the lowest forms of debate and usually avoids the substance of the matter. So, I'm happy to return to our discussion about the 2 tools anytime you want to review my previous post and respond to the substance of it. If you're not into that, have a nice day comfortable in the knowledge that I've already turned the other cheek.