Hitting a Nerve and Presenting at IETF

25 Jul 2024 - Robert W. Gehl

Nothing major this month, but I do want to note two things. First, I wrote a post on the fediverse that must have hit a nerve. It’s about corporations selling off academic work to AI companies. Second, I presented research to a panel at the IETF, talking about the development of ActivityPub by the W3C’s Social Web Working Group. The presentation is based on my forthcoming book.

Hitting a Nerve

A colleague of mine shared an article from The Bookseller that reports that Taylor and Francis – which is a major publisher of academic articles and books – is selling access to its catalog to Microsoft to train AI. [Note that The Bookseller provides free access to one article per month.]

I got a bit upset and posted this to the fediverse:

After 15+ years of hustling to publish #academic journal articles and books, a significant proportion of my work is now being sold off to #Microsoft to train #LLMs. I never consented to this, and of course when I started my career, I never predicted this. That whoosh you’re hearing is me rushing to sign on to whatever class action lawsuit is in the offing.

This hit a bit of a nerve on the fediverse, with quite a few folks boosting the post. That tells me I’m not alone in being angry about this.

It turns out that the Microsoft deal isn’t the only one. Taylor and Francis has announced another. According to The Bookseller, “the business said it plans to reinvest a third of its AI-related profit into ‘accelerated technology, open research and AI product development… based on our unique content.’”

There’s that word. Content. For years I’ve resisted the appelation “content creator.” I find it to be insulting, frankly. I don’t spend my days filling containers. People who operate machines that deposit food into cans are content creators. (No insult meant to people who work in factories!)

But now my “unique content” is going to feed shitty AI bots that no doubt will help write bad journal articles or provide “expertise” via some chat or search applications.

This isn’t what I signed up for. This isn’t what being an open academic who publishes work for others to build on meant to me when I started.

I don’t know if there is any legal recourse. I’ll leave that to lawyers – and if there is a class action suit, sign me up!

But I do know that we academics really ought to withhold our work from massively profitable corporations who view us as content creators. That means no reviewing for T&F, no submissions to T&F journals, and no publishing books with Routledge.

Unfortunately, that means we’ll have to likely boycott SAGE and Elsevier, as well.

IETF Presentation

In happier news, I presented research to the IETF. I’ve never been to an IETF meeting and I think by and large it went well.

I presented a version of what will be the second chapter of my book, which focuses on the intertwined histories of ActivityPub and Mastodon. The presentation was part of a panel of folks studying standardization processes. I was especially impressed by the work of Diane Liao and Michelle Parkouda (as presented by Liao) on ways in which standards bodies could consider differential impacts of standards based on gender.

The panel was recorded – you can see it here.

Post Tags

• Goal 1
• Goal 2
• ActivityPub