Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored] • Hacker News Board

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#451

Post by Karawebnetwork » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:36 PM UTC

amrrs wrote: post #341

Automatic1111's comment >Github has responded to my ticket. They suspended the account because some links on wiki led to sites that contained pictures that didn't align with github's values. They reinstated the account asked me to remove the links.

Some models are used to generate nakes bodies (both of the sexual and artistic nature).

Apparently there were link(s) to page(s) that contained samples of the results one can create using those models.

Github does not allow for pornography, so this was an oversight to say the least.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#452

Post by dEnigma » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

huggingrear wrote: post #334

meowface wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be correct. The racism allegations are likely legitimate* but they don't appear to be involved with the account being taken down. * "WhiteOnly" Rimworld mod that removes all non-whites; "PeacefulProtests" mod "narrated by George Floyd"; "BlackOnly" mod that purportedly just disables technological progression, though this claim appears to be unverified; exclusively black or black-painting artists in da…

>"WhiteOnly" Rimworld mod that removes all non-whites This was in response to an already existing mod which removed all white people, which was deemed totally fine. AUTO1111 also made a all black MOD later, which you mentioned. >"BlacksOnly" mod that purportedly just disables technological progression This is false: https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/103vsm2/we... All it did was lock the available skin…

I think the fact that their Steam profile[1] was at some point called "Remember the six gorillion" speaks loud enough when it comes to their character, all other things aside.

[1]https://steamcommunity.com/id/no-sry (click the little down-arrow next to their name)

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#453

Post by _8j50 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

I am really surprised at the reaction on HN. So what's the state of things, open racism is fine so long as you are a really smart programmer? Please educate me on what I am missing here, it seems everyone is in agreement that this person is racist and hosted repos reflecting their views and not just HN but Github are ok with this. I am honestly asking here, my understanding has to be wrong right? If so what am I missing? My earlier comments praising GH were downvoted even though I included a link to the whitesonly rimworld mod repo. Has the makeup of the HN community changed that much?

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#454

Post by danuker » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #439

danuker wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and may carry individual consequences. Ah! Love the chilling effects you give off, dear shadowgovt! In seriousness, more instances of opaque censorship/cancellation will lead to more attrition of centralized platforms already collapsing under their own weight.

No doubt. But "the rats scurry into the dark" has never been sufficient justification to stop shining light. As a recent concrete (though anecdotal) example, there is rumor going around that folks on Mastodon are finding it much harder to do Twitter-style brigading and harassment, because the threat of node-level defederation provides incentive to keep clean houses. Admins who don't want to be defederated police thei…

I greatly prefer this distributed enforcement. I contrast this to Musk's banning of journalists.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#455

Post by forgotpwd16 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:47 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #412

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>making its codebase a tangled web of legal nightmares Perfectly suitable for a project about AI content generation. Every related submission also has at least one comment talking about the legality of it.

I guess? But that wasn't about the legality of "AI", or of training such against others copyrighted works, but merely the boring/old issue of establishing the copyright pedigree and usage rights of what is presumably (I haven't looked at it: I am just reading the comment <- edit: I have now checked, and while some third-party licenses are included in html/licenses.html, there in fact is no license on the code) a repo…

It was meant as a joke based on the "tangled web of legal nightmares" part and the often written questions/inquiries about the legality of AI generated content. That said, not sure what your point is. It's pretty straightforward from GP that the issue mentioned is about the code licensing rather the content.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#456

Post by dEnigma » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #332

hnfools wrote: post #310

Turns out the TOS violation had nothing whatsoever to do with racism, as so many commenters here were overly confident to proclaim, in typical HN style. It's because he'd linked to prohibited content in the wiki: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/wiki... Here's the issue discussing it: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/issu...

This appears to be correct. The racism allegations are likely legitimate* but they don't appear to be involved with the account being taken down. * "WhiteOnly" Rimworld mod that removes all non-whites; "PeacefulProtests" mod "narrated by George Floyd"; "BlackOnly" mod that purportedly just disables technological progression, though this claim appears to be unverified; exclusively black or black-painting artists in da…

While there are some other factors at play, and some inaccuracies in those claims, mentioned by sister comments, I agree with the conclusion. I've mentioned my observations in another comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34261198

That all is not to say that I would agree with a GitHub suspension; just that the author seems to be of questionable character.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#457

Post by kmeisthax » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #408

fpgaminer wrote: post #349

Surprise, surprise, GitHub took action because of "links on wiki led to sites that contained pictures that didn't align with github's values" and not because of Automatic1111's racist repos. That said, I hope this whole debacle has shown a light on the potentially problematic nature of having the Automatic1111/stable-diffusion-webui project be the go-to UI for using Stable Diffusion. Not just because of the viewpoint…

> not ideal to have such an important repo side by side with a "WhitesOnly" rimworld mod Or a "PeacefulProtests" rimworld mod that "adds George Floyd" as a storyteller. It also adds an all-black tribal faction called "peaceful protestors" (with a BLM reference in the source code) that has a high chance of addiction, adds a status effect called "socioeconomic status" that disables all work abilities and creates recurr…

Ugh. This is matching so many stereotypes I had about the AI art community.

This has been bugging me for a while. The AI community is morally and ethically bankrupt. Whether it be OpenAI scraping the shit out of FOSS code so they could sell it back to us, Clearview AI scraping people's Facebook photos to train law enforcement tools, or whatever. It's all a "someone else's data" play. At least Stability AI released their model weights to the public that they scraped data from.

The whole field is being coopted by grifters, too: you see plenty of videos on how to make "passive income" by reselling low-effort AI art on print-on-demand sites. Yes, it is possible to make actual art with AI, but you need to actually spend time with inpainting and prompt engineering to make it work. This grift is not that. It is literally just "type prompt, spam result, receive bacon". Think like how Amazon marketplace sellers turned Amazon into a shittier flea market.

The underlying technology is hilariously exclusionary, too. No we don't have training code for our "open" AI, and if you had it you couldn't use it because you need a rack full of A100s. Let us also not forget that neural networks are basically proprietary software's final form: perfectly functional piles of weights with no extant source code, no way to explain what they're calculating, and basically no reverse-engineering tools. Even in the Actually Libre AI case where we have model weights and reproducible training code, we still can't verify that an AI is doing what we told it to do[1].

I'm not exactly a believer that technology is cursed with the values of the people who created it. You can definitely wrestle good technology out of the hands of bad people. But the converse is definitely true: people who have terribly shit values will curse the technology that they use. Or, more specifically, they will gravitate to whatever they can bend to fit what they want. And it definitely feels like AI art is attracting exactly the kinds of people who don't create, only consume.

[1] AI safety experts call this the inner alignment problem.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#458

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:53 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #385

grumple wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really want Github regulating links in repos based purely on the moral instincts of random support employees? Seems weird. It's just a link, and not even to illegal content (AFAIK, I didn't actually follow them).

Do we really want GitHub to enforce its terms of service? Yes. Absolutely. If GitLab wants to be the site for projects that link to suspect anime porn, that's their prerogative. But so is GitHub's not to be that site. There are plenty of things that aren't illegal that a site might not want its users to link to. Appeal to legality is not just a red herring, it's also an incredibly weak argument.

> Do we really want GitHub to enforce its terms of service?

No we don't. That's why people are upset.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#459

Post by pelasaco » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

ilyt wrote: post #340

pelasaco wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i will never forget when in my interview process there, they wanted me to go through a 3 hours session with their diversity manager.. I just gave up from the process.

I'd go just for lols, would make for interesting post.

the whole thing was just a waste of time.. I had some technical test, then I was invited for some interviews, then I had some more rounds, including with the future manager, which approved me, but then they changed my process (from github us, to github uk) and they wanted to start again the whole set of interviews including the diversity one.. then I just found something better.

Re: Automatic1111's GitHub account suspended for "ToS violations" [restored]

#460

Post by im3w1l » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #451

amrrs wrote: post #341

Automatic1111's comment >Github has responded to my ticket. They suspended the account because some links on wiki led to sites that contained pictures that didn't align with github's values. They reinstated the account asked me to remove the links.

Some models are used to generate nakes bodies (both of the sexual and artistic nature). Apparently there were link(s) to page(s) that contained samples of the results one can create using those models. Github does not allow for pornography, so this was an oversight to say the least.

The way I would interpret such a rule if I read one, is that they want to (1) Prevent github itself from becoming a pornsite - as in people going to raw.github.com/something/ to rub one out (2) Prevent github from being used to promote onlyfans etc.

Links to a model that can be used to generate naked bodies is indirect enough that I wouldn't have figured it broke the rule.

Of course now we know straight from the horse's mouth how they intend to apply it.