Ask HN: I made an image watermarking tool. What are the issues open-sourcing it?
2 comments
Watermarking is for fools. Those doing the generation and watermarking will control what is perceived as false or true. Watermarks have historically been about proof of ownership or origin. Watermarking fake creations works in reverse, all of a sudden what's void of watermarking is true, but those that control the watermarking can either add them to truths to turn them into fakes or skip watermarking for certain people or organizations, making their fake creations become truths.
what are the use cases for it, and if its invisible, do the normal users care for it
I want to open-source it as there are very many legitimate uses for image watermarking. However, as of late there has been a lot of discourse about image watermarking on both sides, namely a) invisible image watermarks can be used to faciliate dystopian user tracking (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48198291 ) and b) tools to strip AI image watermarks are unethical/antisocial (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200569), so overall I'm confused on the ethics of working with watermarking tools and I am concerned there could be a negative externality I am missing by making it more causally accessible. At the least, having only closed-sourced options for image watermarking isn't a good outcome.