Rose

Private use of the copyrighted works is pretty much a separate topic entirely.

And while the law isn’t settled on the topic, it’s wrong to argue AI training is something that happens entirely in a private setting, especially when that work is made available publicly in some form or another.

Sure, there’s a problem with the current copyright laws that has to be addressed. It’s quite similar to the “TiVo loophole” in OSS licenses. It was addressed, and certainly not in favour of the loophole exploiters. That one could be fixed on licence level because it was ultimately a licence question, but the AI training question, however, needs to be taken to the legislation level. Internationally, too.

Er, yes, my point was copyright very much concerns what you’re allowed to do with data. But that goes beyond distribution. Derivative works are a complicated topic.

My point stands, whether you technically can copy stuff has no bearing on whether you’re allowed to use it and for what purpose.

The way copyright law works, by default you don’t have any right to make use of anything, even if it’s posted publicly. Why do people allow Fediverse platforms to do the thing they do? Leniency on their part.

Gathering data from Mastodon for AI training is technically feasible, but that doesn’t mean it’s legally justified. Many people will object to that. Many already do!

Pinterest is mostly useful for saving images from the web, so you can keep all images from related topics together and have a handy backup too.

I mostly use it for saving all the cute turtle photos I found.

Unemployed people use LinkedIn mostly for the job board. The employed people use LinkedIn for the social media features, and oh boy

What do you like most about BookWyrm? Which features do you use most frequently?

Been using BookWyrm for a few months. I add books to my shelves and track reading progress, mostly.

I loved it when I realised that it just lets me add all random books and edit data from the get-go. The service may not have all of the books I have, but I can just add them.

Are there any features or interactions that you find frustrating or unintuitive? What features do you think are missing or could be improved?

BookWyrm absolutely needs far better abilities to split/merge/consolidate author and book information and do more of the Librarian Stuff. The current system of “you can bring in data and stuff just sits there on its own” is nice if you want to manage a personal library and track individual book progress, but a well-maintained book database is an entirely different beast, and pretty much mandatory for enabling more social stuff.

Also, the ability to import book information from sources is nice, but could use some more integration to a whole lot of other places. I really loved LibraryThing’s integration to bazillion different library services.

One minor quibble I have about BookWyrm is that there’s still the notion of “shelves” and that one book can be on one shelf and different editions of one book don’t count. This is good for casual use - “oh yeah I read this one” - but it’s not enough for true book nerdery. I may have a physical, ebook and audiobook edition of one work in multiple languages and the UI doesn’t show me that yes, I own/have borrowed these exact editions and I have reading activity on this and that and that one.

On that note, yeah, should also have some kind of labeling system for individual editions, along the lines of “I own a copy of this and I’ve stored this in the closet” vs “Borrowed this off the library” vs “I had this one, before the drama queen of an author removed it from Kindle”.

How do you feel about the interface (design, readability, navigation)?

It was a little bit confusing at first, but once I got over the initial weirdness I realised it wasn’t that much harder to use than, say, Goodreads. I don’t really have much complaints at this point. It’s good at what it does.

Do you mainly use BookWyrm on a mobile device or on a computer? And why?

Book nerdery is a big girl thing so I use computer for this. The mobile UI is adequate but could use a dedicated app.

Do you also use other platforms (e.g., Goodreads, StoryGraph, LibraryThing)? If yes, what makes you prefer one over the other?

I used LibraryThing long ago, and Goodreads more recently, both with librarian privileges (i.e. ability to edit data, which BookWyrm gives you from the get-go). I think Goodreads is pretty good at what it does, but it did have some mild jank, and of course, I always got the impression that I was doing unpaid labour for Bezos. So I think I’ll go with BookWyrm in the long run, thanks.

Mastodon is my go-to “shout in the void about my goings-on” platform.

Pixelfed is where I post my original photography and artwork.

Bookwyrm is for my book nerdery, mostly.

Edit: Oh and I have a Matrix account but despite the fact that I mentioned it to literally all of my friends, nobody uses it. I keep it around in case someone actually wants to send me private messages because Mastodon is kinda badly suited for that.

Speaking in general: Creating communities/instances is easy. Moderating them is hard.

In particular: I would love to create women’s spaces. But then I’d have to be on the lookout for the Knights of the True Fedora. They’re out there. Somewhere. Now now, I’m not suggesting it’d be a daily problem! …But the actual daily problems (regular spam and whatnot) would suck too.