VerticalScope Inc Headed toward Bankruptcy?

GCT2007 said:
VS has been around for over 20 years. Finding their way no longer applies.
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Let us wait for the next c-levels at their team then :) .. or some share owner demanding more :) never underestimate the pressure share owners apply on businesses asking them to grow and perform ;)

.. I am panicky afraid of having owners :D :D .. wouldn't be able to take the stress :) .. my money is on VS - they will experiment, invest money in growth and will make it :) let us wish them all the success!! :)
 
bzcomputers said:
So while VS explicitly allowing forum content to be used for AI training may be a new policy issue, the idea that our publicly posted forum content has somehow remained untouched until now is almost certainly unrealistic.
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My intention was more that they made it clear they are grabbing our content for their own use. We block AI crawlers as much as we can and I still know some content will get out there, but the gall of VS to just use this as part of their money grab is what gets on my nerves. AI is so harmful to society, the environment, and global economics that our forums want as little to do with it as possible.
 
They've been training their Fora Frank on user posts long before they put it in their terms. And I can almost guarantee they have bots posting under the guise of members now too.
 
GCT2007 said:
They've been training their Fora Frank on user posts long before they put it in their terms.
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Yes it is in their terms now so anyone who signed up before that may not realise the terms changed. But many companies have a T&C to cover that, ie it’s up to you to keep reading them to see if they changed.
 
Wildcat Media said:
AI is so harmful to society, the environment, and global economics that our forums want as little to do with it as possible.
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Tom Cruise What GIF
 
@Wildcat Media let us not talk about life-changing technologies before understanding dangers of simple ones.. I would love to check your qr code, but don't allow myself to...

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best of success in whatever you do!! Helmuts

p.s. I really don't care what people believe in.. Putin believes Russians can rape and rob Ukrainians, some believe money is evil and worship botcoin, have a friend who believes the earth is flat and EU is evil.. we all have rights to believe in different things :) .. beauty of human species.. peace
 
Helmuts said:
Tom Cruise What GIF
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Studies being done on AI are showing evidence to be bad for cognitive and mental health, and has close similarities with findings of screen time and social media use by children and young adults.

The hyperscale data centers going up are also purposely focusing on cost cutting rather than more environmentally sound build outs, and are often being put in areas that are affecting the local communities (either with air/water pollution or noise pollution). There are also cases of some data centers illegally tapping into water systems that they were not given permission to use. They are also being extreme load on electrical grids that already struggled to meet demand and there are whole counties in the US who are experiencing loss of power (forget the state, but one region has been without power for over a month).

And the economy is is propped up by AI due to vendor financing and larger investments that are not showing large profits.
 
all the businesses focus on profit :D .. some are better than others.. and small businesses mostly suck at this.. also, my case :D :D .. take a chill pill :) .. this is already in the realm of a flat-earth :(

want to find evil businesses? .. tobacco, gambling, loan-sharks = payday loans, companies that use slavery (human-traffic buyers) and child labour.. these are the ones that destroy lives...

don't go crazy :) .. datacentres are not there :D :D .. and power consumption? guess what = electricity is also produced by other businesses :) .. the world is becoming greener and greener all the time.

LLMs (let us skip the word "ai".. there isn't really an artificial intelligence, yet) allow us all being more efficient and is 100x-ing (at least) development of technologies, academic and medical research and more. This is creating the base of waves that will influence the near future of economies and cultures...

there were also people who argued that internet is evil.. that emails are evil.. that radio is evil.. and that allowing women to vote is the single biggest threat to the human civilization.

the issue is the bad side inside all of us - human beings.. and, generation after generation we are becoming more humane.. it is us that use technology to hurt others for our financial gains or some degenerate joy of hurting a fellow human being..

now this thread is going really south..

And, please.. the economy stands on shoulders of brick and mortar businesses :) just google it.. I am no economist, of course :) .. and sometimes wondering what will be effects of all the bright minds going in other more sexy niches than old good non-sexy ones.. probably non-sexy ones will be the best for the economic well-being of a cynical business owner :) .. totally different topic :)

Happy weekend all :)
 
JosephDavidsona said:
I’ve seen several communities struggle after VerticalScope acquisitions; it’s tough watching the focus shift from community to profit
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I keep also seeing many communities continuing losing traffic and comments.. month by month.. quite a normal landscape specifically for informational forums (previously used to ask experts questions). ... even huge ones like stackoverflow..

;)
 
JosephDavidsona said:
I’ve seen several communities struggle after VerticalScope acquisitions; it’s tough watching the focus shift from community to profit
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It's the whole 'forum ecosystem', if anything it's falling into this process of events, based on ebbs and flows to how I've seen it over the decades...

  1. Basic Web pages of information (1990s).
  2. Instant Messenger and IRC 'era' (mid to late 1990s into the early 2000s)
  3. Corporations uptake (early 2000s) [aka the .com boom and bust]
  4. Basic 'fan sites' and 'micro sites' scattered about the web begin to take place (mid 2000s).
  5. The discussion board/forum era (early 2000s into the mid 2010s).
  6. The exploratory-website era, starts of Social Media 'mass uptake', general content aggregation sites come to rise (Early 2010s).
  7. Social media 'explosion' (2010s).
  8. Social Media consolidation and 'core' with real-time sharing of content (2020s to today). (Meta Platforms, X/Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, etc.)
  9. Large Language Models / AI (2022-ish to today).
So to me, forums still are around, but the prime for forums just aren't there any more. Social Media has pulled people away from niche forums. And today, AI has largely replaced a forums/discussion board, primarily when people "want to find answers, quickly" rather "ask a question, get 20 different answers." Unfortunately, most of those AI based answers were sourced from those very discussion boards where people once were in mass.

But that's my 2c in the whole ordeal of forums, not just a single corporation issue.
 
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Looks like VS is starting to allow video uploads on sites (not just the app). Attempt at more AI training?
 
GCT2007 said:
Looks like VS is starting to allow video uploads on sites (not just the app). Attempt at more AI training?
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Allowing video and audio is asking for copyright trouble. YouTube (for example) has agreements with all major rights holders so that copyright material is checked on upload and either disallowed or monetised as per rights holders’ preference so is not a problem. However I don’t think VS has such agreements.
 
GCT2007 said:
Looks like VS is starting to allow video uploads on sites (not just the app). Attempt at more AI training?
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That would be a little ironic in that they are currently in litigation with OpenAI for allegedly scraping their copyright content without consent.
 
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