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Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

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Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#61
I think this is a time for people to realize that political satire has absolutely no influence whatsoever on the political regimes it aims to satirize. The amount of satire levied against Donald Trump, measured in tweets, art, comedy routines, scathing op-eds and every thought or public expression of ill will surpasses that of every other leader in human history by a large margin.

And all in all it had little to no effect. You can't topple a regime by laughing at it. There's a reason kings in the middle ages hired jesters to make fun of them.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment sounds clever but makes no sense. The CEO can and must apply his principles to the company if he wants to consider himself moral under his own code. Just think it through; is he morally bound to actively pump out lies and propaganda if that increases profits?

Either you make money in China until the Chinese clone your tech and undercut you, or you don't make that money and they eventually clone and undercut anyway. Might as well enjoy the boost for a few months. I don't like that we're self-censoring in the West in a way that furthers the ends and whims of authoritarian regimes, but hey, it's only business...

> you make money in China until the Chinese clone your tech and undercut you, or you don't make that money and they eventually clone and undercut anyway

Or you stand by something and innovate, while using Beijing trying to clone your tech as reason for Congress giving you an unfair advantage. Holz has chosen his side. I’m now in favour of unfairly advantaging his competition.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#64

I think this is a time for people to realize that political satire has absolutely no influence whatsoever on the political regimes it aims to satirize. The amount of satire levied against Donald Trump, measured in tweets, art, comedy routines, scathing op-eds and every thought or public expression of ill will surpasses that of every other leader in human history by a large margin. And all in all it had little to no e…

He failed in his bid for reelection though. I guess you could criticise comedians, satirists, cartoonists for failing to mobilise a revolutionary movement to oust him from office by force before any election, but I don't think that was ever their aim.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#65

You can make satire on Biden and Putin, but for Xi Jingping: > We just want to minimize drama,” the company’s founder and CEO, David Holz, said last year in a post on the chat service Discord. “Political satire in china is pretty not-okay,” he added, and “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.

The only reason Putin is not off limit is because Russia's GDP is smaller than Canada's GDP.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#67
post #12

> It turns out authoritarian power and capital markets can be scary effective. I don't think authoritarian systems are as dynamic and innovative as democratic ones, but a gigantic authoritarian regime can utilize external democracies for innovation and then leverage their market power to silence criticism both home and abroad. Creative tools that impede free speech are harbingers of Orwellian future. "Sorry, you are…

These new models could be the downfall of authoritarian regimes. These regimes rely on suppressing access to information but soon we'll have an LLM that can answer any questions about the world and fit on a USB stick that can be passed from person to person. No more great firewall of China.

Ok, and whoever is caught with one of those will disappear, and so will all their family/friends. Are you willing to risk your life for information? Proxies that bypass the great firewall already exist, but most people avoid them because they're not worth the risk

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#68
post #21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principles are pretty important to some people, too.

Companies are not people. The CEO might have principles, but he cannot apply his own principles to the company. The only principle for a company is to maximise profit within the legal restrictions.

While this may be true in a general sense in that most companies have bylaws that does not set out another purpose, and that in theory shareholders could go after a board, and so indirectly a CEO, that does not seek to maximise profit, this is overly simplistic.

The CEO is beholden to the directions of the board. The board has wide latitude to act within the rather wide remit of acting within the best interests of the shareholders (as a group, not individual shareholders). It's generally difficult to go after a board for setting direction that does not outright maximise profit other than by simply voting them out as long as there's some reasoning to justify why it is beneficial to the mission of the company to do something. That might e.g. be to ensure the reputation of the company.

So as long as the CEO acts within what the board wants of them, and as long as the board maintains the trust of a majority of shareholders and aren't outright and blatantly violating the corporate bylaws (which can also specify other priorities than just profit), they can - and often do - decide that other things than profit matters.

As such, blaming the CEO in isolation may not be justified. Maybe the board made him. But the company certainly has principles in the form of its bylaws and the AGM and boards interpretation of them. The just might not be nice ones.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#69

>> “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.” How about "the ability for people to be free and have free systems and society is more important than the money we hope to get from doing business in China". But here we are in Silicon Valley where business and money rise above all else including national sovereignty.

As long as western companies can’t do unrestricted business in China, neither should Chinese companies be able here. The earlier we break the toxic relationship, the better.

But yeah, money over everything.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#70
post #69

>> “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.” How about "the ability for people to be free and have free systems and society is more important than the money we hope to get from doing business in China". But here we are in Silicon Valley where business and money rise above all else including national sovereignty.

As long as western companies can’t do unrestricted business in China, neither should Chinese companies be able here. The earlier we break the toxic relationship, the better. But yeah, money over everything.

> As long as western companies can’t do unrestricted business in China, neither should Chinese companies be able here.

Well, they can't and they don't. They have to follow the local laws.

Facebook, for example, doesn't operate in China because Facebook made the deliberate decision that they don't want to follow the same laws Chinese companies have to follow. Their comment was this: “We need to figure out a solution that is in line with our principles and what we want to do, and in line with the laws there, or else it’s not going to happen. Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”

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