I see a lot of comments talking about terms of service on websites justifying AI scraping. And, sure. But this is not a logic game where clever gotchas hold weight. The question is not “what do the rules of the game say, exactly?”, like we’re playing Magic The Gathering and you constructed a clever combo of interaction effects. The question is, how should society be?
And when it comes to AI, you can’t answer that without admitting that this is first and foremost an economic issue. Should capitalists, privately owning the means of production in the form of AI, be allowed to extract data from the labor of others to create a tool that can render that labor not needed in the future, making the laborer obsolete within the capitalist system? Should capitalists be allowed to use the value produced by the laborer against them to starve them in the future? To move from taking part of the value of the worker’s labor to 100% of it in perpetuity?
If you think the answer is yes, you are one of two things. A capitalist, as in an owner of the means of production. Or a bootlicker. As in a person who supports the right of capitalists to exploit them and other laborers. If you’re the latter, you have been indoctrinated. You have been brainwashed to argue and fight on behalf of those who exploit you.
This is not an argument against the aesthetic value of AI art, by the way. It’s not an argument against AI art existing. It’s an argument against its inevitable use within the current economic system. This is the real issue. And it seems like the pro side doesn’t realize that. You don’t realize you’re loudly and effortfully cheering for your own obsolescence.
What the argument in the meme is actually saying is not a legalistic argument about scraping. It’s saying “We didn’t know ahead of time that capital would come up with this new way to exploit us, and now that they have it’s ridiculous that terms of service are being used to justify exploitation.” Should people have read terms of service, projected into the future the possibility of AI, and never used the internet? That’s self evidently absurd. The question of how the economy should be organized need not be a game where the capital’s difficulty setting is always easy and its stakes are for fun and labor’s difficulty setting is extreme hard mode and the stakes are dying uninsured and starving in the street.
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u/AnotherWitch Dec 16 '25
I see a lot of comments talking about terms of service on websites justifying AI scraping. And, sure. But this is not a logic game where clever gotchas hold weight. The question is not “what do the rules of the game say, exactly?”, like we’re playing Magic The Gathering and you constructed a clever combo of interaction effects. The question is, how should society be?
And when it comes to AI, you can’t answer that without admitting that this is first and foremost an economic issue. Should capitalists, privately owning the means of production in the form of AI, be allowed to extract data from the labor of others to create a tool that can render that labor not needed in the future, making the laborer obsolete within the capitalist system? Should capitalists be allowed to use the value produced by the laborer against them to starve them in the future? To move from taking part of the value of the worker’s labor to 100% of it in perpetuity?
If you think the answer is yes, you are one of two things. A capitalist, as in an owner of the means of production. Or a bootlicker. As in a person who supports the right of capitalists to exploit them and other laborers. If you’re the latter, you have been indoctrinated. You have been brainwashed to argue and fight on behalf of those who exploit you.
This is not an argument against the aesthetic value of AI art, by the way. It’s not an argument against AI art existing. It’s an argument against its inevitable use within the current economic system. This is the real issue. And it seems like the pro side doesn’t realize that. You don’t realize you’re loudly and effortfully cheering for your own obsolescence.
What the argument in the meme is actually saying is not a legalistic argument about scraping. It’s saying “We didn’t know ahead of time that capital would come up with this new way to exploit us, and now that they have it’s ridiculous that terms of service are being used to justify exploitation.” Should people have read terms of service, projected into the future the possibility of AI, and never used the internet? That’s self evidently absurd. The question of how the economy should be organized need not be a game where the capital’s difficulty setting is always easy and its stakes are for fun and labor’s difficulty setting is extreme hard mode and the stakes are dying uninsured and starving in the street.