Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@Daojoan The life advice stuff is *for* the people who don't get lucky.

@joeinwynnewood @mentallyalex @buttondown @TonyStark See, but if they want someone else to manage and install it for them, and they need even that explained to them, do they really want to host it themselves at all?

Some people will pay lip service to independence and then turn around and make their entire living dependent on a single third-party chain link because it makes their lives more convenient.
We can educate people; that's not even hard... but nobody can make them want to break the chain.

It's the same thing as people who claim joining Mastodon is too complicated. At some point it's just an excuse for resisting change.

@joeinwynnewood @mentallyalex @buttondown @TonyStark It already is packaged into a product and sold, by many companies.

Looks like DreamHost (dreamhost.com) is a good option that's as cheap as $3/mo (but expect more like $15/mo for a proper professional site with email), and they're known for excellent customer service to help out with setup and such, and have a one-click installation.

In addition, WordPress has been around long enough that there's so much documentation online that the LLMs are pretty good at explaining it and troubleshooting.

Honestly, anyone who's tech savvy enough to browse the web should have no problem figuring out how to set this up over a single Saturday afternoon. And there are thousands of prebuilt themes too, so you don't need a professional designer or anything to get started.

@joeinwynnewood @mentallyalex @buttondown @TonyStark I don't like to reinvent the wheel. After a cursory search, it looks like this already exists. Just add the plugin to a WordPress site and hook it up with a WooCommerce account.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/paid-member-subscriptions/

@joeinwynnewood @mentallyalex @buttondown @TonyStark Why not? I mean, of course you'd need to work with a third-party payment gateway, but you should be able to self-host and self-publish private subscriber-only content on your own. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a WordPress plugin that integrated with PayPal or something to do just that. It would take me less than a month to write such a system from scratch.

@artemesia @lauren Don't read the warning label on a power saw? Lose your hand.

Don't read the warning label on an LLM? Lose your law license.

I'm good with both of those. People need to be responsible for their own actions.

@lauren Just tried it myself.

First, you have to agree to the terms, a two page document that, on the second page, has this bit:
"Bard is an experimental technology and may sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate information that doesn’t represent Google’s views.
Don’t rely on Bard’s responses as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice."

That should be moved up to the first page IMO, but right after you agree to that, a popup comes up that says right at the top:
"Bard is an experiment
As you try Bard, please remember:
Bard will not always get it right
Bard may give inaccurate or offensive responses. When in doubt, use the Google button to double-check Bard's responses."

Finally, under every prompt input field, there is the following text: "Bard may display inaccurate info, including about people, so double-check its responses."

And we're talking about an attorney who ignored or clicked through all three of these clearly-worded warnings and still didn't even think to double-check the results? At some point, the user does have to take responsibility.

@lauren *That* I wholeheartedly agree with. The tech is not ready for mass deployment in established search systems.

But were Cohen's mistakes just provided to him via search, or did he actively seek out an LLM to do his work for him?

@lauren I get that perspective, and it's totally valid, but there's got to be a limit. If a user writes their resume in Microsoft Paint, that's got to be their own fault.

@mentallyalex @joeinwynnewood @buttondown @TonyStark The best option for an independent writer is self-hosting a wordpress site with an RSS feed. That can be done for tens of dollars a month, and gives full control and full access to the userbase.

The question of how to make them discoverable, however, seems to plague many industries, not just writing...

The issue isn't finding the great voices... the issue is wading through the crap to get to them. But an open platform and curation are diametrically opposed concepts, and crowdsourced curation tends to lead to blowhards getting the spotlight.

Maybe there's room for a federated service where each author can recommend other authors so users can use that web of recommendations to discover new content...

@lauren > "In particular, the world has been trained for decades to trust Google as a source of good information. Having Google-branded services that mix accurate and totally fictitious information into well written and convincing toxic responses is devaluing Google's core brand. This is very sad."

I mean, YouTube has existed for *a while* now.

At some point, the user has to accept responsibility for trying to drive a screw with a hammer.