Wow, amazing detail, and nailed the DoF!

Borb

Ah gotcha.

Personally I can see value to the community in raising awareness of certain tools or resources. But there is obviously a blurry line between recommendation and advertising which I think we need to stay away from defining too closely, and focus instead on net community benefit, which yourself/the community can determine case by case.

For this one, others may disagree but on the surface at least I reckon it’s probably ok, just the way it was approached set off the alarms in my ad-weary brain.

Two approaches more broadly, in order of preference:

• A separate community for tips, tricks, and tools - leave this one for posting pictures and general discussions. (This separate community would need a rule like the below regardless.)
• Otherwise if it’s to all stay in the one place, which might make sense given we’re not huge - for anyone spruiking a product, theirs or not, they must include a clear description of what it is, who it’s aimed at, and what their interest is in it. Obviously common sense applies, eg we don’t need to explain what LightRoom is or who Canon are every time they’re mentioned.

Yeah quite clearly an ad. But it is at least photography-related and could be useful to some.

Personally I’m ok with AI being used this way, it’s not generating the pictures or anything, just providing advice. That said, it’s advice on a very subjective topic - I can see some value in it for helping beginners pick up basic mistakes, but it otherwise won’t know what the photographer was trying to capture with a picture, or what look they were going for. What if they were going for a silhouette look here for example?

On the AI though, and I could be wrong, but it kinda feels like it’s just a front end for a mainstream model, in which case there’s the ethical questions around what pictures it was trained on and where the critiques of those images came from.

As far as the ad goes, I get that the whole “I found this tool and it helped me” thing is to get people to identify with the post, but the messaging is confusing. Software that tells you how to take better photos, but its creator couldn’t tell they exposed for the sky? Either that didn’t happen, or you shouldn’t be offering advice. Or it’s an advertising tactic that you need to be really careful with :)

I can’t open the sidebar for some stupid reason atm but is there a stance on ads here in general?

The latter :) I took this one a couple of weeks ago in my front garden.

Having seen some of your photos that is very flattering, ty!

Canon R7, RF 70-200 f2.8 Z with 2x TC. I love this setup.

This particular shot was at 400mm, 1/640, f/5.6, ISO 1250.

Yup, this is on form for them. This isn’t the first product they’ve done it to and surely won’t be the last.

Shame, I liked VMware.

You’re spot on, however the pervasiveness of this kind of data collection and analysis seems to have really picked up in recent years.

Don’t forget too that this is just monitoring chats, there are plenty of other sources of data that could be used against you if so desired.

IMHO the issue isn’t so much that people are using work-controlled platforms to say things that workplace doesn’t like (though that is an issue), it’s more the shift in the employer mindset that tools like this enable, and the huge imbalance it can create when it comes to salary negotiations, constructive dismissal, mass layoffs, union busting, etc.