As always, there’s an xkcd for that.
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I will always eat the butter you leave out.
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Yet since declaring my affiliation for Rob Beschizza postings, he’s disappeared from the front page over there [gestures vaguely into the distance]. hmmm. perhaps 'e’s just rest’n.
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And, perhaps, enjoying the conversation over here. (You do know that the bestest BB author does lurk amongst us here?)
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That’s not very nice. He’s awesome!!
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Oh… I know… Rob rules! It’s just what I always put up whenever someone has up that elf pic of him… Just a sort of joke!
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When they announced the switch to Substack, I dutifully, immediately switched over - and missed both the discussion about Substack and the invite here. I only found those when I just happened to go back to BB to read the comments on an old article and saw the messages. Well, that rather explains why there’s mostly zero community activity on the new Boingboing… I was so depressed to find the community gone. But it’s not! (/happy tears)
(Though whenever I’m invited anywhere, I can never shake the feeling that it was done accidentally/contrary to the wishes of others, and if that’s the case, please do let me know, and I’ll slink off quietly. I don’t want to lower the tone here.)
Also much of the particular use of AI generated images on BB was bad (in addition to their inherent problems). A lot of BB articles amount to “hey, look at this thing/artist” and not only did those above-the-fold fake images require you to carefully read the article (or sometimes also follow a link) to realize they were actually unrelated to, and misleading about, the topic at hand, but BB got enough traffic that their inclusion in BB poisoned search results by associating the fake image with the topic. I’ve searched for artists mentioned in BB only to have one of the top image results be the fake image from the article, not their own work. BB use of Midjourney (or whatever) by itself is actively degrading the web as a whole with AI slop masking real things.
Commenting on the SuS version of BB is like shouting into a shoe box, in a closet, in an abandoned house. I can’t imagine it’s going to get better. It makes for a hell of a sell for the paid subscription - “pay for BB and you can access the community… which doesn’t exist!” Of course, hiding the (lack of) comments for non-subscribers means no one knows that until after they’ve signed up…
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Shuck made it! Another survivor!
I, for one, am quite pleased to have you around.
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I just went back to the old BB front page and it is no longer accessible without disabling one’s adblocker. One must do this or subscribe to Substack, apparently. I think this will reduce their viewership even further, even if their ads are seen by more people and raise more revenue.
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I remember the logic chain behind the AI images, as explained by Ken. (I am NOT saying I agree with the argument, but I think it’s useful to have that context.) BoingBoing couldn’t afford to license a ton of pics and artwork for their articles, and they were getting takedown notices for artists’ works that were part of years-old topics. They felt AI was a solution to that issue.
Did it work? I don’t know. 
I’m not fond of most AI, and I despise it when it’s stealing artists’ creations. I usually paid more attention to the text than the pix anyway (and the comments were the most interesting parts.)
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I’ve written off the site tbh, i think i’ve only looked at it once in the past week and wasn’t for too long. It’s a bummer but if i don’t feel welcomed why stick around? Ya know?
Would rather spend my mental energy and attention here. Contribute towards building something that matters.
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I’m trying to get reconciled to the idea that there will be no more wonderful things to see there (there were still a few in among the politics and non-wonderful things) but I think TOP may well slowly be becoming dead to me. I may pop by SS from time to time to see if anything wonderful has been posted but I will definitely not be renewing my (currently free) subscription when it expires.
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That didn’t happen to me. I can still read the front page with my adblocker enabled.
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Hmm - I’m using Brave Browser with its ‘shields’. May try a different browser at some point…
But the direction of travel is clear.
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uBlock Origin here.
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