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Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

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Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#241

Post by notpushkin »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #60
cryptoz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? No mental gymnastics? Sure there are! “Use this tech” implies the same tech as everyone else, including satire, no? What else could it mean? Oh, it could mean, “use this tech in only ways that are allowed by a totalitarian dictator, continuing to spread china’s government’s racism and hatred of certain minorities, and also normalize self-censorship globally”. That’s really what it means-that it’s more important to…

Let's everyone pull out of doing business with all Chinese in China... and see how well that works in altering the course if history.

I see that worked pretty well for North Korea already :^)

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#242

Post by robertlagrant »

jpgvm wrote: post #158
fsloth wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the king of Thailand and Xi Jinping is that the former is basically a cultural institution, while the latter is a political figure who uses repression and censorship to consolidate power. Xi's power grab is not part of some Chinese cherished cultural tradition - it's just a power grab, and probably viewed as such even within the party.

I'm aware of the differences. I just wanted to provide an example of censorship that is more aligned with cultural values to provide a counter-example to the thread that violating such laws can never be exclusionary. There are are similar laws that involve depictions of The Buddha, monks etc here that would fall into the same category. I imagine this is less contentious for Western observers because religion is often…

> can never be exclusionary

I think this isn't quite the right word. "Off-putting", perhaps? It doesn't exclude anyone.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#243

Post by malaya_zemlya »

not-chatgpt wrote: post #131
mindcandy wrote: post #74

Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…

Is there an actual source for that or are you just here to complain about Stable Diffusion users flooding your Twitter with AI waifus? If David is such a "big dreamer hippie dork," he should: 1. either open source the model or at least make it cheaper ($8/month for just 200 images is ridiculous) and 2. not bow down to dictators, or just stay out of political subjects completely.

It's 200 fast mode images and an unlimited number of images in relax mode, which is only slightly slower.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#244

Post by SilverBirch »

basisword wrote: post #150
SilverBirch wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it remarkable?

I can understand (although don’t agree with) a decision to block these things based on respecting everyone’s religious beliefs. Blocking satire of a specific religion though points towards caving to fear rather than a rational policy choice.

It rather depends though doesn't it. It's very clear in Islam that images of the prophet are forbidden, they find it offensive. So out of respect it would seem reasonable to disable that. It's not then reasonable to disable generating images of jesus or the pope. Why? Because christians don't object to images of the pope or jesus. If there were specific things that christians found offensive, I think it's reasonable to disable those things too. It's not giving Muslims special treatment, it's about being respectful to all religions, it's just that being respectful means making reasonable adjustments for each of their concerns.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#245

Post by rodneyzeng »

Quick question: is avoid prompting Xi / disabling satire about Xi the sufficient condition that would make Midjourney accessible to the people in China?

The answer is: NO. That's the point.

Is satire on June 4th, 1989, the tiananmen square massacre allowed in China? No! Is satire on COVID and Wuhan allowed in China? No! ... This list is so long in China that, eventually, if any person wants satire on some forbidden topics using Midjourney, this tool will be blocked. And very likely it would happen. The demand is not smaller than the endless gallery of women with huge boobs. So this is a hard problem.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#246

Post by baybal2 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #86
mindcandy wrote: post #74

Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…

So it just happens that hippy values and western greed kowtowing to authoritarian regime values purely for the sake of money happen to be exactly the same thing. A story too convenient for my taste but everyone is free to believe whatever they want.

[dead]

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#247

Post by merlinran »

andrewstuart wrote: post #47

>> “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.

People don't automatically be free if every western company stops doing business in China. Withdrawing from the market can't really do anything about that unless it can put a lot of pressure on the power holders.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#248

Post by mrighele »

mindcandy wrote: post #74

Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…

> having people ridicule Xi on MJ would make it unwelcoming to people in China.

Having people depicting women with uncovered hair could make it unwelcoming to people in some Muslim countries, or at least their governments. Should we ban that too ?

What about gay couples kissing ? Should we ban that if (for example) the Russian or Hungarian government ask for that ?

I guess we are lucky that Iran or Russia are not a market as big as China.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#249

Post by rendall »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #143
heavyset_go wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, Tumblr, Imgur, and literally every other social network that allows NSFW content are frequently used in public, at work, etc.

Who downvotes the above? It's obvious allowing NSFW content is not a problem if you simply separate NSFW from SFW content. This "problem" of NSFW content seems so artificial to me, it has been solved decades ago.

Yes, and it's a FUDish distraction from the main point of political free expression.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#250

Post by skywal_l »

mindcandy wrote: post #74

Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…

> ridiculing politicians in China is taboo, having people ridicule Xi on MJ would make it unwelcoming to people in China

Your entire argument relies on this assumption that I have a hard time to believe. I know close to nothing of Chinese culture but the few Chinese people I know are not shy about criticizing their president or their political class in general. I mean, the "Winnie the pooh" meme comes from China!

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