I still think the act itself is pretty gross but yeah, the harm is the important part for me - and I don’t mean that just in case of sexual images. It’s also a problem in terms of content created to affect people’s reputation in other ways or influence the sociopolitical situation (something that’s already happening around the world).

The harmful potential of generative AI is on a completely different scale than photoshopped images already mentioned in this thread by others. That doesn’t mean genAI can’t be used in fun and interesting ways but stuff like what’s described in the linked article is a big no no for me.

In my opinion absolutely. Whatever happens in your head stays in your head and doesn’t affect the other person unless you take active steps for that to happen. Images or videos on the other hand can not only be distributed far easier, even accidentally, but also have a way higher chance of affecting people’s lives (how can you disprove you didn’t take nude photos of yourself for example? let alone make people believe it). They can lead to loss of reputation, harassment, bullying and serious mental issues for the victims (trust issues, anxiety, depression, self-harm) - imagination can’t really do that on its own.

Perhaps distribution is the real problem but easy access to tools that can create convincing results quickly and without effort makes said distribution way more probable.

Photoshop requires at least some skill and doesn’t allow for mass production of fakes the way generative AI does. Same problem, different scale.

That’s a fair point but, as you already mentioned, deepfakes are a pretty universal problem unfortunately. The type of misogyny in Japan compared to say US or Europe doesn’t seem to affect that much (if at all). Either way, it’s a terrible practice without sufficient ways to combat it at the moment which makes me pretty worried about how things will evolve in the future - in terms of “content”, affecting lives of victims and laws that will come out of this (some probably made in the worst possible knee-jerk reactionary ways).

There’s still a difference between a piece of clothing that may or may not have been worn by anonymous women and creations using real people without their knowledge or consent. Not trying to defend those vending machines but these aren’t the same in terms of results and potential effects on the victims.

We can only hope they won’t screw up as well in the future.

I’ve been using Tuta for more than 8 years now and had one serious issue with their service during this time (longer outage, pretty early on). Other than that I have nothing but positive experience with them.
They’re also based in Germany if that makes any difference.

They didn’t forget, they simply became big enough they can act like every other corporation.

I’d say no, for two simple reasons.

One: Websites should be made to the web standards and not for a specific piece of tech. Would you ask people to rework everything if Firefox magically became the “new Chrome” in a few years? Isn’t the main idea of this place to be better than the corporate dystopia we’re all trying to avoid?

Two: Fediverse IS NOT big enough to purposefully screw up people’s experience in an attempt to force them into changing their browsing habits. This would do more harm than good in the eyes of many potential users. Do you really think they would be willing to switch browsers they used for years just so they can check out a platform that’s smaller and with less content than its corporate counterparts?

Don’t punish - explain, convince and (if you have the know how) work on making a switch easier for an average user. That’ll not only be more productive but also bring more willing and potentially active participants.
That’s how I feel about it at least.

I’m still on a legacy plan (which still feels like a really good deal despite some small concessions compared to the new plans) but yeah, even with the new prices it’s definitely worth it.

Also, while not strictly email focused but they have a blog with articles about various privacy related topics and news - it’s a pretty neat source of info, especially for those less knowledgeable about this stuff.

If you only care about email (and calendar, I guess) Tuta is a pretty good choice. I’ve been using it for years and had only one problem very early on. Additional aliases are only available with the paid plan (€3 a month) however, same as Proton I believe.