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/r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

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Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#211

Post by caconym_ »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #151
caconym_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. The reality of moderation on Reddit is absolutely horrifying, like flipping over a rock and finding a pile of decomposing rat carcasses underneath. It's unbelievable, for instance, how often comments going against the grain are "shadow removed".

I find "throttling" or "shadow banning" to be far more objectionable than simply banning / removing comments. At least if my post is deleted I can tell. But when companies artificially limit the reach of content they do not like, you might never know. Facebook openly admits to doing this. They are playing god by curating which information is worthy / unworthy of being seen, as well as presenting a warped view of real…

I'm not talking about deleted comments, I'm talking about shadow deleted comments. The only way (without external tools, I guess) to know it's happened to you is to notice a suspicious lack of engagement with something you posted, then visit the same thread in a private window and see that your comment isn't there. If you look on the account that posted it, you will still see it.

You may not even have been aware that the above is a thing; most people aren't. But in my experience it accounts for a large fraction, if not the majority, of moderation actions against real human users on Reddit.

Shadowbanning is very similar but IMO less insidious since it's a lot easier for human users to notice. I'm not sure if per-subreddit shadowbans are a thing, but I lean toward no because it has not happened to me (that I'm aware of).

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#212

Post by ElevenLathe »

dahfizz wrote: post #143
yoz-y wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH in the 90's most of forums I visited were also moderated by teenagers. If you build your community then you should be able to moderate it, as simple as that.

The internet was very different 30 years ago. What works for a niche, small community often does not scale.

Why does this child's forum where people post silly AI-generated pictures need to "scale"?

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#213

Post by pnathan »

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #95
pnathan wrote: post #41

reddit mod management is a bit haywire. I am mod at a rather largish subreddit (> 750K subs/readers), and despite the top mod being gone from the subreddit for something like 6? years now and virtually inactive on reddit, I can't get him removed. I've gone through channels but, sigh.

When did you go through the process? Reddit recently updated its top mod removal process (recently as in 5 days ago) and dramatically weakened requirements for removing top mods. More information on that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/xwim7v/updates_to_...

months and months ago. Thanks for the heads up. I'll look into that.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#214

Post by pclmulqdq »

shadowgovt wrote: post #104
nullc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but the model weights themselves are currently understood to be uncopyrightable, and it's pretty inconceivable that the model could become copyrightable without becoming a derivative work of the training data. Unless these AI companies want google and facebook to be literally the only companies in the world that can train large scale machine learning (by using their TOS to get licenses from their users) they…

If anything, in the absence of copyrightability, the only protection is trade secrecy and I'd expect Emad to be even deeper in the opinion space of "We cut off the oxygen (systematically speaking) of those who would steal trained ML data." There's an interesting anecdote around how stand-up comedians protect jokes against theft, given how weak copyright is on jokes: it's keying cars, poisoning drinks (generally non-f…

This method only works when the people you are trying to attack and/or blackball from an industry actually want to be in that industry. Lots of people will just use these ML models without trying to participate in the "ML community" the same way my wife and I tell each other jokes from comedians without trying to be comedians ourselves.

The users of these models and the developers are fundamentally different.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#215

Post by MintsJohn »

avereveard wrote: post #4

It did seem a weird turn of event them restricting 1.5 weights. Seems instead it was just a piece of the puzzle.

Which they aren't intending to do, but it's just part of the fud currently spread around.

Rarely have I seen so much fud spread, while also systematically using the least charitable interpretation of anything stability.ai or emad said/announced. (the whole covid skeptics shit storm comes to mind).

I could understand where this would be coming from if it was aimed against the use of these AI models, but this seems to be from the proponents.

Of course, I can see the dissatisfaction, but not the escalation, does any one really think stability.ai should associate itself with software piracy?! Cause that's what this started about, enabling the use of a a stolen model and weights. The way I set it the only safe action for stability.ai was to distance themselves from this as much as possible.

Of course the reddit “takeover“ happened a week before these events, the active mod, the one that started the linked topic, kept his moderation rights. One issue was that SD wanted to disclose private information to the modaal that required an NDA, not all ex mods wanted to sign. Either way the situation is more complex, not handled ideally, but again, using words life tricked is the least charitable interpretation. And for better or worse with stability.ai controlling the subreddit, in order to put distance between them and the tools that enable the use of pirated models (and in that repo there is an explicit discussion topic on how to use the pirated model to get the same results as novelai (the source of that model)) of course the link to the github repo that enabled the use of these was removed from the stickied topic listing blessed UIs and other things.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#216

Post by jimmygrapes »

masklinn wrote: post #209
tommek4077 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always sounds strange when someone is talking about a "server" after creating a chat channel on a glorified IRC-fork.

TBF server is what discord calls it. And a discord server can contain a multitude of channels with fairly extensive individual customisation. So it goes quite a bit further than “a chat channel”.

As far as I know they still stick to "guild" as the official term, but virtually everybody calls a guild a "server"

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#217

Post by paganel »

holoduke wrote: post #159
c7DJTLrn wrote: post #14

When you realise Reddit is moderated by unpaid megalomaniacs and teenagers, everything starts to fall into place. In some ways Reddit is worse than Facebook because it is influenced by anonymous entities with zero checks and balances.

I got banned on /r/world news supposedly because I said something negative about Ukraine. The only thing I wanted was a healthy dialog without picking a side. I asked for clearification. Didn't hear anything. Got fed up with reddit anyway.

That sub has been long gone, unfortunately. The same goes for /r/europe, even though in this latter case I think the hive-mind is at least a little bit more genuine, as in there are real people holding those views, unlike what happens on /r/worldnews.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#218

Post by kbenson »

wsb_mod wrote: post #87
codeflo wrote: post #44

So, to summarize: Both Reddit and Discord force transfered seemingly officially named communities to the trademark owning entity. That sucks, but it’s also something that social media companies have been doing 10 times a week since forever. Is there something special about this instance that makes it news?

Reddit did not "force transfer" the community, the top moderator was convinced to hand it over. Reddit, for all its faults, goes to great lengths to give its moderators latitude and discretion to operate their communities, and only steps in as an absolute last resort.

The top moderator was changed at the request if stability to someone they had more trust in (but was still a community member and not an employee), and then they convinced that person to transfer. That person identified themselves as a minor.

I wonder if Stability fucked up by using a minor in this case. They seem to still view Stability in high regard, mostly it seems because they are hoping for future gain from the relationship, but I doubt they'll feel that way forever. Probably they won't feel that way for much longer given Stability's heavy handed approach. It might be a lot easier to reverse some of this once it's made obvious they took advantage of a minor.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#219

Post by NathanielK »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #216
masklinn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF server is what discord calls it. And a discord server can contain a multitude of channels with fairly extensive individual customisation. So it goes quite a bit further than “a chat channel”.

As far as I know they still stick to "guild" as the official term, but virtually everybody calls a guild a "server"

They changed all the user facing docs to "server" a while back. Internally the code might still say "guild", but officially they've embraced calling them servers.

Re: /r/StableDiffusion – Mod here – My side of the story

#220

Post by manifoldgeo »

I think Discord's use of the word server is misleading, and it leads people to think they own something when they don't. Discord owns it and can pull the rug out from under you at any time, regardless of how much hard work you put into building a community, and that hurts.

I understand that "server" is an abstract term and just means "something which provides a service", but most other uses of the word relate to something owned by the person operating it. E.g., if I run a Matrix server instance, it's mine to administer, manage, destroy, etc. If I start a Discord "server" it's a glorified chat room or set of chat rooms owned and maintained by the company.

Language is powerful and helps shape our world, and by redefining "server" to mean a segmented part of someone else's website, it's another nail in the coffin for the concept of real ownership.

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