[NietTim]

Clippy was never open source or "good" in any way, it not selling your data was a result of its time, not a conscious choice by its creators. The entire forced clippy "movement" is incredibly poorly thought out

[smallmancontrov]

Quite the opposite: clippy was useless but not hostile which is a sobering contrast to software that is hostile and therefore worse than useless.

It's a cute nostalgic way to say "the bar was on the floor and you blew it anyway."

[throwaway150]

Clippy was definitely hostile. It would constantly monitor user actions just so that it could interrupt us. Wasted CPU cycles and our time when CPUs weren't very fast. Clippy was hated by everyone. It was not just useless. It was intrusive, wasteful, and hostile. I can't believe my eyes that anyone could think that Clippy is an appropriate mascot for anything good. If anything, Clippy would be a perfect mascot for the trillion dollar companies that exploit our data.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

Popping up on my screen was hostile to me.

Your comment leaves me unsure: were you actually alive when clippy was a thing, or do you only know about it from stuff you read? Because I was alive at the time and remember clearly that it was disliked even at the time.

[captainkirk95]

Clippy was bothersome to me, but somehow some people liked it or had fond memories. This effort may not make a difference, but whatever- it’s fun for someone.

And AI taking your data is not the biggest problem. Many sites and devices have been taking your data. LLMs can’t use that much data currently to do anything. Thumbprinting people, business server side data collection, and lack of laws around that is a bigger threat to privacy, but it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do about that.

Want to be an activist? Let people know AI will always be imperfect and support moral and ethical behavior in respect of all perspectives and abilities for the betterment of humanity.

[shevy-java]

I agree clippy was useless. Whether it was hostile or not - I think it actually was hostile. It jumped out of nowhere and stole my time. So I actually group clippy into neutral but slightly evil category.

[vanschelven]

more like choosing an assault rifle as your logo if your movement is to ban nuclear weapons.

[bdhcuidbebe]

You have a very revisionistic take. Clippy was pure terror and it still angers me to see that smug paper clip.

[mastazi]

Clippy was chosen precisely because it was so famously bad.

The point of choosing Clippy is to imply that much of what we have now is more anti-user than one of the most anti-user pieces of software of the 90's.

[jrowen]

Exactly, it hearkens to the halcyon days when Microsoft was the biggest evil in tech.

[NietTim]

Learned a bit more about this initiative since then. I guess this is a great example of why I heavily dislike creator initiatives like this. In their world getting more people to comment is a good thing, no matter what the comment says. In the real world this mostly benefits the creator and harms the initiative, since the first interaction people have with it is about the initiative being dishonest.

[canyp]

Yes, I see the same flaw in the argument. Retrospectively looking back and saying it was good because it didn't do any of the shit companies do today; but, really, it wasn't as bad as it could be because the technology just wasn't there to begin with. Counter-factual either way, but calling it "good" is a stretch.

Not to take away from the movement, though. I think it's great.

[a2128]

The technology was certainly there, BonziBuddy existed around the same time and was widely condemned as a spyware and adware ultimately resulting in its demise. Today Microsoft officially does many of the things BonziBuddy used to do and people just see it as normal.

[ashu1461]

Yes if Clippy was released in 2025, it would surely be stealing your data without thinking twice.

[TeMPOraL]

Ironically, the only thing Clippy was missing for it to be genuinely useful was... LLMs. Hooked up to GPT-4 + bunch of tool calls, it would've delivered far beyond what originally promised.

Which is why I'm both dismayed and impressed with how badly Microsoft keeps screwing up Copilot. This stuff isn't hard, unless you want to make it hard.

[PunchyHamster]

He knows. We know. The joke is that even the cute but useless failure at UI/UX design is better than the things we have to tolerate now

[ferfumarma]

You are obviously correct, but I don't know that it really matters.

As I see it, the movement is about pointing out that the most useless dumbest biggest failure of a mega corporation is actually great in light of their current practices.

Why does it matter whether they would have messed it up if they implemented it today?

Restated: the point is not that clippy is great. The point is that he sucked, and that he is great relative to what kinds of products Microsoft is creating today.

[notatoad]

yeah clippy absolutely would have sold your data if he'd been clever enough to do that.

[Davidzheng]

reminds me of the Taleb quote "Many are virtuous for lack of opportunity"

[DuperPower]

this clippywashing is paid by Bill gates? remember when everyone hated him for Windows 95 crashing every 10 minutes and he had to donate his whole Fortune to compensate

[amelius]

The point is that the internet brought us a lot of bad things.

Clippy refers to a time before the internet.

[NaomiLehman]

very 1 dimensional thinking: open-source good, closed-source bad

[matheusmoreira]

A modern day Clippy would no doubt be like Friend Computer.

  It looks like you're a communist traitor.

  Would you like help?

  * Here are the names of my co-conspirators

  * Just terminate me now

[wombatpm]

* Are you sure you don’t want to name any friends? Only a communist traitor wants to die