Let me start by saying that I am in favour of the rule. Going into topics-centered community and voicing against that topic is kind of stupid, and everybody should be able to feel safe in their own spaces. All my concerns (generality of the rule, downvote trolling and automating moderation) were already voiced by others and addressed one by one. Also, as a practical suggestion, maybe we can have sticky posts in each community where the rule will be applied? Not forever, but for a set period of time.

I waited longer to give my answer, as I am very skeptical about AI in general but in favour of many other instance topics, and I wanted to form my own opinion on the topic at hand before commenting. I am really happy at the level of the discussion here and how the feedback was received by OP. I didn’t agree with some comments on other posts leading to this one, but I am happy to see that the discussion was kept objective and on-point, so a huge thank to OP and everyone who participated for showing me how the instance governance and discussion works (I’m relatively new here).

In the end, while I don’t go specifically go searching for AI content and barely see it in my feed, I am happy that stuff like AI-horde exist, and I really think it’s a good way of doing things. And in general, the governance experiment here and the way this instance is managed is way more important for me than my own opinions on AI.

Disagree. Rule is too narrow- make it broader about brigading and not AI specific.

I am for the rule change.

Gen AI is a great invention. That doesn’t mean i cannot be critical of how it gets shoved into spaces where it doesn’t belong, because a shitton of money get injected in it by venture capitalists in their neverending search for the next big thing.

But that’s not what’s happening here, where people are using (local) models to create images to enjoy and to be creative and not data centers wrongly answering inane questions.

The current models are snapshots of the current human culture, and should belong to all of us. i don’t think it’s fair to come here and behave like a drunk in a dive bar because they suddendly became friendly with rights holders (who have tried to fuck over single users downloading some shitty pop songs with life destroying lawsuits)

P.S.: I am a big piracy advocate, since i have been strapped for cash for my whole life and i would have been excluded from a lot of society and culture if it weren’t for the pirate hat. I therefore understand that current models would have been prohibitively expensive to create when taking every single copyright claim into consideration. I also think that for future models there should be a mechanism to make sure that creators get their fair share and the possibility to opt out if they really do not want to be included.

Personally, as an artist and also in regards to sustainability for example, I’m very AI-sceptic, but I get that this instance is pro AI, so I think it’s a fair point. I can disagree but don’t need to shove my opinion into dedicated AI communites/instances.

I’m just in for the other topics like foss and copylefts to name a few, if anyone wonders why I’m even here with my account.

I fully support the sentiment, but as others have noted, calling out genai specifically is a bit limiting.

I would potentially propose something more to protect our other comms at the same time that might potentially get brigaded; IE: piracy

“Off topic comments and downvote trolling to protest the spirit of our communities for contentious topics will not be permitted.”

Just my thoughts. Cover butts here if a change is made anyway since many of the core vibes of db0 are fairly contentious to begin with.

I love dbzer0 because it’s a pro-piracy, leftist instance with great moderation and a sizable userbase. I just sort of try my best to ignore the whole AI thing, not my cup of tea with the whole power consumption and art theft stuff. I’m all for “fuck copyright” when it comes to big corporations but I become a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to independent creators’ works being used to train AI models without their permission. I dunno, all of this has been said before by a thousand other people, you get the gist.

The issue I have is similar to the Nazi bar problem; If you have an AI-friendly community, you have an AI community. You can keep ignoring and blocking AI-posting users as they show up, but it’s easier to generate an image than to assemble one manually, so they keep showing up more and more. It becomes nigh impossible to “just ignore AI posts.” It’s part of why people get so hostile towards them, if people don’t react negatively to AI posts when they see them, people will post more and more of them.

Of course, harassment and bullying is unjustifiable. It’s the internet; some folks are gonna take things too far. Makes me sad to see the effect being separated by screens can produce.

To summarize, I’m all for pro-AI users to have a space to exist (y’know, like, this instance. maybe I should start searching for a different instance? Like, dbzer0 sans AI?), but it is easier said than done to just “ignore AI” without more of it showing up.

I say yeah, it’s the most sanity-inducing option to have both communities coexist.

Harassing a gen AI instance should certainly be blocked, but calling out ai art in a non ai focused instance should be allowed as long as it’s following other rules of not being shitty.

I feel that this is already covered by the golden rules- namely “1. Don’t be shitty” and “6. When going to other communities, respect their and our rules” in the recent proposal.

The issue here is that certain comms affiliated with genai are being targeted by downvote brigades and trolls, yeah? I won’t pretend to have the technical knowledge to provide a solution, but I would rather see efforts to generally combat that happening on /0, rather than carving out rules for targeted groups each time the issue arises.

To be clear, I’m not saying that genai users don’t deserve a space where they can discuss their interest. I just don’t think that carving out special protections is an actual solution to the problem.

How are we defining downvote trolling? This is starting to sound like the rule changes at Reddit.

downvote trolling

I think this needs some clarification about what does and does not warrant mod actions.

Comments are free-form, so are easy to determine as off topic and unlikely to hit bystanders, but downvotes don’t communicate intent.

Anecdotally I have come across a post in a sub I like, found it glaringly annoying/ugly/wrong etc. downvoted, then seen another one and actually gone into the sub to see if it is a wider trend and specifically downvoted a bunch of these.
Lemmy is a rating system, I think this behavior is acceptable.

I would draw the line at coming back repeatedly to keep “filtering” in this way, while not otherwise being active in the community and while not being subscribed to it. (Not that being subscribed is even visible)

Is it possible to tell apart a lurker superhumanly good at finding genai really ugly, from the 15 downvote bots of an anti-genai brigadier?

I’m not a huge fan of AI art, but seeing how people go out their way to harass (not just spam downvoting, outright DMing and telling people to commit suicide because of it) something needs to be done, i agree.

It should be a more general rule imo. i.e.: if you don’t like it, ignore it; type of stuff (excluding fash-shit) if i don’t like piracy for example, instead of downvoting each post and commenting “piracy is theft” under each post i’d just fucking block the community.

Anyways, i think GenAI criticism should be allowed, and even healthy; but just saying “Don’ like it.” and contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation is just useless.

Anti-GenAI users have plenty of platforms to share their views. Derailing discussions and brigading in other communities serves no purpose but to foster an adversarial relationship between communities.

I generally don’t like making a rule banning a viewpoint, but I don’t see what positive contribution that viewpoint adds in this specific context, especially when asserted so aggressively and off-topic.

I’m nota stranger to holding wildly unpopular opinions. I’m an egoist, it’s in my nature. Personally, I think genAI is dumb. Harassing and abusing people for liking something is unacceptable behavior, though. I’ve been noticing most of my comments have been vote brigaded recently, especially my comment shitting on Dessalines.

I vote yea.