alt Hacker NewsRoblox downloaded 145GB models from us (including adult content) without asking
Comments
How can you start an outcry like this, but host stuff like this, tagged with a permissive license:
https://open3dlab.com/project/e2a0830d-f166-4b1b-aabf-8ca735...
Just an example, there's plenty more on the frontpage.
I have nothing against these guys, but I just can't understand the moral high ground of the complaint.
Only tangentially related, but I've recently realized that unless you're some sort of business with a valid requirement of that, you can just block incoming traffic from all of AWS, DigitalOcean, Azure, etc.
I think the spark came from some other HN comment I saw? So thank you for that, whoever wrote that.
That alone is not a sufficient strategy of course, but you can get rid of a lot of bots by just refusing to talk to where they tend to live.
Of course, if everyone were to do that, they'd eventually pivot to residential proxies. But I don't see that happening.
I'm sympatic to open3dlab but I think the focus on adult-content is just trying to spark outcry for cheap.
It has been shown times and times against that removing adult content from the training source (at least for diffusion models), results in generally lower-quality output, even outside of adult-content, particularly in terms of representing human bodies.
Couldn't the adult file download just as well be used to train a model that rejects adult uploads to roblox? I don't see the outrage.
The entire article points the finger at "roblox" as an entity, but the behavior seems to indicate it's just an individual doing the scraping - possibly not for corp use.
Look at the timelines - this scraper was running on someone's laptop: it turns off when they shut down for the weekend and lunch.
if you put stuff available to download, dont be surprised that someone will download it
What is the actual news here, can anyone explain ????
Just clicked a random model on the site and it is licensed as beerware. If you like it and meet the author, you should buy them a beer.
Sounds like Roblox should open a open3dlab bar!
I love that the scraper took a break over lunch. Just someone hitting pause on scraping gb's of Zelda models to get a sandwich and then firing it back up.
maybe stupid question but how is it possible to not be protected against supercrawlers like this, when you own large amounts of data, specially if all requests are coming from the same server ? Aren't cyberprotection services like CloudFlare work against this kind of "attacks" ?
So, where is your security? After 145 gb of stealing you started your blocking? Rate limitation should be automatically enabled instead of waiting and inspecting the traffic.
These foundational models are just getting curious now that they are entering puberty.
Honestly I don't see the issue at all. So long as your infrastructure can handle it and there is no cost to you it should be fine.
The only proviso is that you should not be able to block distillation on your models you trained using others data.
I also don't appreciate the sensational framing of adult content here, it's purely meant to appeal to irrational emotions. We all know how models train, input and output are very different things here.
Scraping is legal, last I checked. If you don't want people downloading your content then don't host it.
If that data is at all important, why is is downloadable?
145GB is hardly small. How does something like this even happen? In more ways than one.
Fixating on the adult content is weird. Why make so many moral judgements about what Roblox is or isn't doing with the data? It is trivial to run a script to filter out stuff that doesn't meet your standard after you download it. You also need a ton of adult content to train classifiers that detect and remove adult content.
Farming outrage by implying "Roblox is downloading adult content to show to kids!!!" with zero proof is pathetic.
I wonder at what point the Roblox kids all reach 18 years old, and Roblox can pivot them all to a separate adult version thereof...
AI is industrial scale theft. Like if someone else did this we'd be looking to courts to sort this out.
The internet must understand one simple rule. What’s downloadable will always be downloaded. There are plenty of people who don’t give a flying fk about your LICENSE.md, robots.txt, ToS and whatnot. It’s like leaving your bike unlocked in the public. Even if there is a giant cardboard next to it saying: “please, don’t steal the bike” - nobody cares. Someone will strikethrough the “don’t” and grab the bike.
They don't have to ask, it's on the web, you (open3dlab) published it.
Who runs that site? A pre-schooler?
I assume they need the adult content in order to detect adult content generated by their users.
The great theft.
As an artist, there is the temptation to hoard my works like Smaug on his hill of treasure. But I got past that in a moment of weed-inspired revelation : I am the fruit-bearing tree. Therefore my wealth is infinite. In fact every fruit I bear is better than the last. So giving it away is not such a biggie. And clutching it to my breast like a boney vampire is in fact detrimental to my process. I put great faith in the process.
I know it is an unpopular opinion, but if you do not want your content to be scraped, you have to put it behind payment walls and copyright it. In Germany we have decisions from the highest courts that deemed websracping perfectly legal (it was in the context of a competitor scraping airline ticket fares).
It is so cool
I'm just to ignorant to this in context of how the reality just works.
Downloading content on the web is what the web is for. Using the data for training is something lawers need to figure out.
open3dlab should spend the time and energy, as unfortunate it is, to sue them to get this resolved.
Ablog post about this is basically 0 information. The stories about soooo many bots now crawling the internet and creating a lot more traffic is going through news and hn for month.
"oh no, not the creative commons resources we distribute freely even if they contain copyrighted material!"
I'm not even impressed..
Look, I'm usually pretty sympathetic when people complain about drive-by AI scraping like this, but the amount of pearl-clutching here is exhausting.
Yes, it's a game for kids. Yes, the company that makes it just scraped up a bunch of adult content. No, that does not mean they are going to give adult content to children.
Whoever wrote this was aiming to be as aggrieved as possible. It's performative, and I am having trouble taking it seriously.
So what? You made your content available and someone downloaded it. Why is this even notable?
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> Some examples include models of Eve from Stellar Blade, Mei from Overwatch, and a Horse cock dildo.
I don't know what's more wrong: that a dumb model started downloading "Horse cock dildo" 3D models (to which end? to stuff that virtual 3D "horse cock dildo" in its own virtual LLM ass?) ...
Or that there exist "horse cock dildo" 3D models.
Seriously in which world are we living?
And I should be thinking about the people who designed that horse cock dildo and care about them? And those viewing those/using those? 3D printing those maybe? And I should care about the retards who can't even prevent their crawler from downloading 145 GB full of horse cock 3D dildo models and the like?
Nah. Fuck that, I care about my family and you're all on your own.
Everyone should be hosting a poison fountain and pressing thumbs down on models when they provide really good answers.
Who actually cares? Isn't the whole premise of the AI revolution just gorging ourselves with other people's data so we can have AGI? I was under the impression that we have accepted this sacrifice with OAI and friends leading the way.
Scientists say this is the first occurance of the word "model" in the title of a post on HN that does not refer to a neural network of some sort since 2023