Rock band Muse lose social media handles to Meta’s new AI tool
the-independent.com
the-independent.com
The exact circumstances are that they likely paid them a shitload of money.
I am not saying it stolen, merely asking if there is any proof it was bought. And no, “oCcAms rAZOr” is not evidence.
Since when was the default to assume malicious activity and victimization, and then to ask for proof otherwise? Obviously we should do the reverse. There should be evidence of theft rather than assuming theft as the baseline.
For starters, if the band's handles were taken non-consensually, then the least we should expect is a public complaint from said band.
This is doubly true in a world where social media handles are routinely bought, sold, and traded. And triply true where the supposed victim of this crime is an incredibly popular group of people with an extremely massive platform, and it's 99.9999% likely that Meta knew this going in.
They are pure unadulterated evil. They are guilty until proven innocent at this point.
The fact that one hates XYZ is not a good reason to turn one's brain off and lose the ability to think rationally about XYZ.
In fact, I would argue that there's never a good reason to turn one's brain off and lose the ability to think even moderately intelligently.
I hope all the non charitable assumptions they deserve snowball enough to hurt them.
May their stock price burn in hell.
Muse is a platinum album winning band that's got 10 albums over 20 years. If this was stolen, they (and their label) would be raising hell.
The problem is, it’s Meta. And like the scorpion said to the frog, “I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”
> An opportunity came up regarding the Muse name and trademarks. These have now been sold, so I need to move the app to a new name. Nothing else about the company, the app, your account, or your data has changed.
Nobody using Muse the tool knows or gives a fuck who Muse the band is, the band itself is twice their age.
At 32 years a band is reaching Spinal Tap stage and they could probably use the cash. Occam's razor and all that.
Muse is incredibly popular. They're in the middle of a tour right now, too. Just saw them live two weekends ago. I'm sure there are tons of people who both listen to Muse and will use Muse the AI tool. I'm sure that's true for many of the AI tool's creators, too.
I have younger relatives that love Muse (and Spinal Tap).
Before today, I'd never heard of the muse app that chanhed it's name.
It only launched two days ago, so.
I'm sure more people know the band than the tool - I've only heard of it through here and have no desire to learn more.
Makes sense they take the money, they can probably buy back the site in a few years.
Muse is pretty popular, 30 million album sales is not too bad.
> 4.2 How You Can't Use Instagram. [...]
> You can’t sell, license, or purchase any account or data obtained from us or our Service, regardless of whether such data was obtained while logged-in to an Instagram account.
> This includes attempts to buy, sell, or transfer any aspect of your account (including your username); solicit, collect, or use login credentials or badges of other users; or request or collect Instagram usernames, passwords, or misappropriate access tokens.
Seriously, look at that list of all the times Meta stole people's handles. Why would this time be any different?
Note that if this was done against the band's will it would be fantastic publicity for them to say so. Everyone would be on their side.
Meta probably reached out to them to remove any uncertainty around sharing the Muse trademark, and this was included in the deal. The band themselves didn't lose any followers, it was a rename. They might have asked for a clause not to talk about the deal.
Read the TOS for these services ... you don't own anything stored on their servers
The name changed happened across platforms including Twitter\X.
Meta doesn’t own X.
Is nobody reading the article? This comment section is crazy.
Not reading TFA (the fine article) has been a noble Internet tradition since (at least) the earliest days of Slashdot.
But the mating displays about every company being a conspiracy are about Reddit era, IIRC.
Everyone is reaching for pitchforks but all signs point to the band getting a huge payday.
The odds of X forcefully handing a handle over from a user to Meta for an AI product seem lower to me than them being paid for it, but that's not based on anything either.
Using "lost" in a headline is therefore misleading, as it implies a lack of consent where there is no actual knowledge that is the case.
I don't think so, because if it was involuntary from Muse the band, surely they would post something about it. They would get a ton of publicity and goodwill for shit talking Meta, and the fact that they aren't makes it much more likely that they were paid for it.
They were probably under an agreement not to reveal the buyer or amount.
Meta in turn probably wouldn’t have wanted news to get out and people forerunning them to claim other online properties just to sell them back.
I guess they could've, I dunno, said so then?
Now that, obviously, everyone knows what happened...
LLMs are equalizing this. They use curl and Instagram has dark patterns to stop this. So if you ask a question in a specific niche, LLMs will prefer and refer to users who have their own website.
It’s the same reason popular YouTubers move to Patreon and Nebula once they get established. You never want to solely depend on a platform that can demonetize, or in this situation, take your handle.
Muse might’ve just sold it to them, TBH. I don’t see FB stripping them of it outright. This is not a small band afterall.
Sure, you can claim it was a dick move, and maybe it is (although why is a handle so valuable? "muse instagram" now links to the @museband and their followers were transferred). This is just some phony outrage.
It's also ironic that the overlap of people that find this offensive but were fine with social media censorship since "it's a private company" is > 0%
I'd count this as "strong-armed into this".
The giants want all the benefits of being public spaces with none of the responsibilities. To use their (US) constitutional right to free speech to sell any ad they want, while using their power (as a private corporation) to ban (or algorithmically censor) unwanted speech. To decide what counts as a "legitimate" name. And if they can manage it, to be so important its use is defacto mandatory, without democratic oversight.
I am not a fan of this.
First I've heard of this, in what case was free speech used to justify a right to show a specific ad?
>while using their power (as a private corporation) to ban (or algorithmically censor) unwanted speech
It's actually the opposite, they justify being a public forum for free spech in order NOT to be liable for vetting and publishing the content, they want to be considered a neutral intermediary, not a publisher liable in any way for whatever is published.
All of them? This is pretty much the default case. If Meta or Google or whoever say "we don't want to show this ad", they're allowed to, it's fine, they're not a public (/government) space who has to follow the 1st's requirement to not-censor.
My point is Meta and Google (I assume others but they're the big ones), want to be treated as an entity with first amendment rights, rather than one with first amendment responsibilities, even though they're also trying to position themselves as mandatory or the only space (that matters).
> It's actually the opposite, they justify being a public forum for free spech in order NOT to be liable for vetting and publishing the content, they want to be considered a neutral intermediary, not a publisher liable in any way for whatever is published.
Sounds like you're talking about section 230; I read there's a lot of misinformation about that. Apparently what it really does is protect (at least some subset of) "good faith" filtering like spam filters. However, what a lot of people today object to is under the (painfully vague to all us software nerds) title of "the algorithm", which is basically editorialising for maximum user engagement/addiction.
Anywho, here's a quick search result of one example where they were found to be "that's fine" for terminating ad campaigns:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/tulsi-gabbard-google-free-...
And here's one where the courts say, if my understanding of the summary is correct, "Meta is not a state actor normally but sometimes can be": https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/21...
I would not want the potential fallout of the when the AI tool goes sideways. Or stupid requests. Etc
Let meta handle redirecting band questions to the proper account.
Curiously low signal.
Kind of like if the Example Community is in an uproar because Alice took a baseball-bat an "murdered" her neighbor Bob's dog. Carol's "helpful" note that it isn't homicide may not be received the way she expects.
> "it's not technically a crime so the quotes should be there"
Not only is it not a crime, but it's not even a civil breach of contract.
Get some perspective
Me: "The relationship moving between the pair $A->$B has similarities to the relationship moving between pair $X-->$Y."
You: "OMG WTF how dare you say that single thing $X is just as bad as single thing $A!!!"
> Get some perspective
"Get" analogies.
The namespace belongs strictly to the service operator and they shuffle names around based on any arbitrary process and it's mostly vibes driven.
People using Instagram usernames as identity is so insane to me. Why does everyone love sharecropping?
Like it or lump it. People use these sites to sell their things because that's where everyone is. You can scream into a void or you can go about making it.
I guess the question is, how much are your principles worth on this issue?