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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 que
by mindcandy 4y ago
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 have from the sale of his previous company and now just wants to work on fun research projects. The goal of Midjourney is to bring creative power to as many people as possible.
Whenever politics or other controversial topics come up, the MJ teams tries to stay out of it. They just want a welcoming space for all sorts of people to collaborate and create. Lots of people complain that they don’t allow porn. But, as a result, a millions of people who are not just horny teenage boys enjoy hanging out on the server sharing and discussing art that is not just pics of sexy women all day every day. Looking at you, unending parade of unfathomly huge boobs on https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%23StableDiffusion https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%23StableDiffusion
David seems to think that since ridiculing politicians in China is taboo, having people ridicule Xi on MJ would make it unwelcoming to people in China. He wants them to feel comfortable collaborating with people all over the world on MJ. So, prompting Xi is blocked. That’s all there is to it.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago> David seems to think that since ridiculing politicians in China is taboo, having people ridicule Xi on MJ would make it unwelcoming to people in China. It's taboo because a dictator forbids it. The people have nothing to do with it
- toxicFork 4y agoBeing banned would make it quite unwelcome
- elevaet 4y agoBeing banned could give it subversive allure
- jpgvm 4y agoSimilar would also be illegal in Thailand under Lèse-majesté. Political satire of the old King in particular would be unwelcoming to many Thais which held him in an esteem above such things. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it wouldn't also be culturally unacceptable and alienating.
- fsloth 4y agoThe 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.
- jpgvm 4y agoI'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 a protected class in Western nations too. The idea of the head of state being immune to criticism however hits a political sore spot however and triggers these sorts of standoff views. I just feel this sort of nuance is lost on primarily American audiences. The world isn't homogenous and at least here in Thailand values are significantly different for better or worse.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoHere’s the difference: is Holz banning the production of images of the King?
- robertlagrant 4y ago> can never be exclusionary I think this isn't quite the right word. "Off-putting", perhaps? It doesn't exclude anyone.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoBowing to foreign authoritarian censorship is okay if it’s done for a rich man’s convenience? What a shitshow begging for regulation.
- suoduandao2 4y agoNot ridiculing xi is the regulation
- robertlagrant 4y agoIndeed. Regulation isn't a magical well-intentioned, well-executed, well-self-policed endeavour. It's incredibly varied, and has few genuine incentives to improve on any of those axes.
- andrewstuart 4y agoSo 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- skrebbel 4y agoWhat would you do? Remember, there’s really only two options: run a service in a country and abide by the law and norms of that country, or don’t run a service in that country (ie IP geoblock the entire place). I mean, sure, you can run a service that abides by the law but not the norms (eg Onlyfans is available in the US despite the US being a country founded by prudes), but it’s hard and you need your full focus to get it just right. And, worse yet, in China the border between law and norms is notoriously blurred. I’m for freedom of speech and against Chairman Xi, but I can’t really fault the Midjourney team for choosing to operate in China regardless. It’s a hard choice and there are no right answers.
- prepend 4y agoI could have a set of values I believe in and not run my service in countries that violate my values. Seems pretty simple. Not simple if you want to make money from a huge percentage of people in China. Also, it seems like the principle of giving into bullies isn’t just an immediate decision but a precedent for future decisions where the rule is to capitulate to authoritarian regime demands.
- FpUser 4y ago>"the rule is to capitulate to authoritarian regime demands" Western countries impose a crapload not so freedom loving laws / rulse / behavior / etc as well. Do you propose shutting down business in the West as well? Or you have a rule that says kill no more people than X or do not kill people in country Y and you're ethical?
- cryptoz 4y agoNot so simple. No ridiculing Xi makes the platform less comfortable for people in other countries like the US. We expect freedom to ridicule and if that’s not available on a platform because the owner prefers to cater to a specific dictator, then we may be less likely to use it. I might still use it , I might not. But bowing to a dictator who says you can’t say Winnie the Pooh anymore seems like a one-sided, pro-dictator decision. It has nothing to do with the CEO wanting to make people in China comfortable - surely he wants people in the US to feel comfortable too if that was the case? I suppose you can’t have both. So siding with the dictator was the choice made? Bold move cotton.
- juanani 4y ago[dead]
- xboxnolifes 4y agoPeople in the US are plenty used to rules forbidding certain speech on basically every platform that I'm aware of. Slurs, personal attacks, politics, excess profanity, drug discussions, sexual discussions, excess arguing, etc, are all things that are frequently banned or discouraged in many communities.
- Shish2k 4y ago> in other countries like the US. We expect freedom to ridicule God forbid y’all see a nipple in a non-sexual context though :D
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- maest 4y ago> Lots of people complain that they don’t allow porn. But, as a result, a millions of people who are not just horny teenage boys enjoy hanging out on the server sharing and discussing art that is not just pics of sexy women all day every day. I don't think that follows - boobs being allowed doesn't stop people from creating SFW works as well.
- _xivi 4y agoIt kinda does? Enabling NSFW would discourage a lot of people from using the server if they have to keep looking over their shoulder or only use it in private
- heavyset_go 4y agoReddit, Tumblr, Imgur, and literally every other social network that allows NSFW content are frequently used in public, at work, etc.
- Etherlord87 4y agoWho 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.
- rendall 4y agoYes, and it's a FUDish distraction from the main point of political free expression.
- ModernMech 4y agoMidjourney is supposed to be used collaboratively in the open. I understand the first thing people need to use new tech for is always porn, but can you just wait? Not everyone is so eager to get to that future.
- speedgoose 4y ago
- fsloth 4y agoThanks for adding more context, but I think your framing of the motivation makes the situation far worse. "...That’s all there is to it." Regardless of motivation, bowing to authoritarian control is still bowing to authoritarian control. I would claim it's worse to censor ridiculing political figures out of politeness than out of profit seeking. Self censorship is one of the main methods by which authoritarian ideologies are maintained and spread. It's not secret police knocking on peoples doors. It's people thinking in their head "I want to remain polite...". I respect the intent to create forums for global collaboration. But this really is one of the areas where this is helping to spread the authoritarian ideology. Is the genocide in Xinjiang one of the impolite topics? What if China invades Taiwan, and the Taiwan war becomes one of the "impolite" topics for Chinese?
- junon 4y ago> Looking at you, unending parade of unfathomly huge boobs on ... Holy shit you weren't kidding.
- PutinPoopin 4y ago[dead]
- taylorius 4y agoLol. I clicked on the link, thinking "Oh come on, it can't be THAT bad", and was presented with a literal endless gallery of slightly Manga-ish women with unfathomably huge boobs. Maybe, instead of turning the whole world into paperclips, the AI apocalypse will consist of the filling of every last speck of hard disk storage space with a trillion boringly similar synthetic jpegs of such charming ladies.
- nirui 4y agoSuch innocent hashtag as well, #StableDiffusion. Don't even need to clear the browsing history.
- ricochet11 4y agoI recently got into CNC machining, so tried searching twitter to find some accounts to follow. boy was i surprised by that #cnc hashtag.
- not-chatgpt 4y agoIs 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.
- Aeolun 4y agoI dunno, you can generate as many images as you want in slow mode right?
- antiterra 4y agoI believe relaxed mode requires the standard tier, which is $30 at monthly rates.
- hutzlibu 4y agoI agree with 1. but how can you ever hope to achieve 2? Generating realistic images is a powerful tool, that is used for political reasons already, so politicians will get involved. So it is a hard question, but I hope if I am in such a position, I will not preemptively try to please the winni puhs. One solution would probably be, to not allow generating pictures with real persons at all. Whether they are Trump or Xi.
- alecst 4y ago4 cents an image is ridiculous?
- malaya_zemlya 4y agoIt's 200 fast mode images and an unlimited number of images in relax mode, which is only slightly slower.
- nickthegreek 4y agoYou do not get unlim relax mode on the cheapest plan, only standard or pro, which is 3x the cost.
- irjustin 4y agoI can sympathize. It can be personal too, and I wouldn't blame him. Getting denied a Visa to China would be the the easiest problem. The worst would be getting arrested (Chinese friendly airport), possibly extradited because you ran a satire generation service? If he just wants satire and his goals aren't to fight political battles, this stance makes perfect sense. I'd like to be able to visit China without fear, too. Even simply transiting would bring up anxiety.
- secondcoming 4y agoIt really perplexes me that there isn't any Internet Outrage about fetishisation of young Japanese girls; cartoons or otherwise. As far as I can see it's the one area of DEI that gets a free pass. It's really creepy.
- madeofpalk 4y agowhat does anime waitfus have to do with DEI? There's no DEI initiative to help the disadvantaged weeaboos
- suoduandao2 4y agoThey’ll be adding ‘minor attracted persons’ to the kiriarchy rubric any day now…
- pjc50 4y agoYou occasionally see some discourse, but generally that's fairly far down the list of priorities of Asian or Asian-American women themselves. There was more discourse in the Anglosphere about the anti-Asian mass shootings. Tends to get subsumed into generic pro/anti porn discourse. I suspect the discourse from Japanese women themselves is conducted in Japanese and therefore invisible to us. I don't think in a professional DEI environment you'd get a pass for having a fetishy anime desktop background.
- numpad0 4y agoI’ve heard generative porns don’t seem to be as popular in Japanese male/boys market(for-women categories). Nor cats, strangely, considering the Internet is supposed to be obsessed with cute cats doing cute things.
- swader999 4y agoThe internet was invented for cats and pictures of them. I don't understand why everyone doesn't know this.
- 4y ago
- madeofpalk 4y ago> Whenever politics or other controversial topics come up, the MJ teams tries to stay out of it > [...] > So, [ridiculing] Xi is blocked These two points are not congruent.
- pjc50 4y agoPeople keep talking about "AI alignment" when they haven't solved the "CEO alignment" problem, or the question "alignment with what, exactly?" > The goal of Midjourney is to bring creative power to as many people as possible. AI is unarguably powerful, even if we're still struggling to quantify that in terms of how "intelligent" it is, to what extent it's plagiarism, or reliability, etc. The consequence of power is necessarily interacting with real-world political power structures. There is no "neutral" option; AI will empower some and disempower others, who are going to object to that. As we're seeing in this thread, if you empower or disempower one side of a political dispute (making Xi art or not), there's going to be one side that gets mad at you. Make cultural products, get culture war. I do wonder if this is going to be regarded as the "Thomas Midgely" era of AI, where scientists from the 2050s struggle with the legacy of widespread AI "contamination" of everything in the data record by people who didn't acknowledge downsides.
- pell 4y ago>David seems to think that since ridiculing politicians in China is taboo, having people ridicule Xi on MJ would make it unwelcoming to people in China. He wants them to feel comfortable collaborating with people all over the world on MJ. So, prompting Xi is blocked. That’s all there is to it. Under Xi's dictatorship hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been imprisoned. There's plenty of evidence of forced labor, mass internment and forced sterilization. I don't know how a "hippie" attitude would support this? Blocking prompts of Xi seems like bowing down to a terrible dictatorship to ensure that this giant market stays open to them. I can easily create prompts for various other dictators that don't allow ridicule in their countries. Try everything from al-Sisi to Museveni to Putin. All of those work easily. Plenty of companies are adjusting their businesses so they can operate in China. At least they openly admit why they do so.
- happytiger 4y agoDon’t you think it’s a tad wrong to ban the chairman but not every other leader? Like China is especially sensitive? The fact that the treatment is “special” leaves questions about the argument for inclusivity, at least in my book.
- walkhour 4y ago> ridiculing politicians in China is taboo You mean the Chinese politicians that are in power right? Chinese propaganda ridicules constantly politicians from other countries. Obviously this is just a well calculated move. It's acceptable to mock certain kind of people/groups. That's all there is to it. We don't need to go into Chinese psychology.
- FpUser 4y agoThis is what can happen when you ridicule Macron in France: "She currently stands accused of "insulting the president of the republic" and will stand trial on 20 June in Saint Omer, the prosecutor said. She risks a prison sentence and a fine of €15,000 if convicted at the trial." - [0] Looks like they are learning from the best. [0] - https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/03/30/heres-the-story-behind-the-trending-hashtag-macronordure-macrongarbage https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/03/30/heres-the-story-...
- Steltek 4y agoSomewhere out there is a good copy-pasta dismissal of these boring reflexive "But look! A Western country did something similar that one time so that makes it okay for us to do!" responses.
- FpUser 4y agoTo mind reader: >"that one time so that makes it okay for us to do" I am not "us". I live in Canada. And I am way more concerned with what we and the West in general are doing in human rights department then what China does. When I see the case dismissed and prosecutor loosing the job I'll be celebrating. I'll live it to China to sort their own shit.
- lazyeye 4y agoYes but China appears to be sorting our shit too. And very effectively.
- sneak 4y ago> Whenever politics or other controversial topics come up, the MJ teams tries to stay out of it. Actively engaging in censorship is the opposite of staying out of politics. It's engaging with a political system actively.
- pmoriarty 4y agoCurrently, Midjourney lets users invite the Midjourney bot to their own private Discord server/channel, where no one else can see the images they generate using that bot. There's no reason that Midjourney couldn't allow whatever content the user wants to be generated there, as other Midjourney users would not be able to see it. But they insist on censoring Midjourney even in channels/servers inaccessible to the wider Midjourney audience. Why?
- marcinzm 4y agoIf they did this then they would likely be legally liable for generating child porn in certain countries including the US. And even if it's just regular porn then their credit card processors would ban them and so would any corporate clients. So in the end it's a question of what you censor and not if you censor things.
- aenvoker 4y agoHi. I’m a volunteer Midjourney content moderator. They don’t pay me. I’m under no obligation to make them look good. The team behind MJ are a bunch of overly-nice people. The work very hard night and day to help people bring art into the world. When they see their hard work resulting in porn, gore, gross-out or hate material, it is very discouraging. It’s not material they want to collaborate on. It’s not what they want to work so hard to help bring into the world. Someone else can work to create communities for that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lostmsu 4y agoQuite a lot of blood in the world was spilled by people with "nice" intentions. Limiting art is one of the worst things one could do, IMHO.
- CapricornNoble 3y ago>> When they see their hard work resulting in porn, gore, gross-out or hate material, it is very discouraging. It’s not material they want to collaborate on. This seems like a fundamental failure to understand humans. One of my favorite Renaissance artists arguably produced gore/gross-out material for his time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death
- eynsham 4y agoBeing uninformed enough to think that ridiculing politicians in China simpliciter is taboo is embarrassing. If he is this ignorant of China, he should let someone else decide, or read a book.
- rendall 4y agoWhy would you conflate the rights of free political expression (about an authoritarian dictator, no less) with the regrettable compulsions of anime porn obsessives? David Holz should be criticized for this decision not to allow satire of Xi Jinping, and harshly. Xi Jinping at pride parade, by the way: https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1642326687751733251?s=20 https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1642326687751733251?s=20
- ArchD 4y agoIt's not taboo, just politically sensitive and dangerous for Chinese citizens because it can get them in trouble. Some like the Chairman but not all of them do. Today the objection is with jokes about the Chairman. Tomorrow it'll be content about Tiananmen. The day after it'll be about the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, etc. If it were that simple, perhaps Google would have done it long ago. The demands of the Party are never clear and never end.
- TechSquidTV 4y agoThat's so many words for censorship
- tootie 4y agoI didn't realize he was the guy who founded Leap Motion. I've worked with those devices and the Ultrahaptics that he sold too. It was a very nifty little device that was ahead of it's time and didn't really catch on until competitors had similar capabilities. I think they sold way, way below their peak valuation.
- mrighele 4y ago> 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.
- skywal_l 4y ago> 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!
- lobocinza 4y agoPeople under censorship hates it even if they scared to say so publicly because they are affected by it. Ridiculing politicians in China is only a taboo because those politicians will make people disappear overnight regardless of what the Chinese people think.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoYa, it shouldn't be very surprising that most of the people interested in satirizing the Chinese government are Chinese.
- ihateyouall123 4y agoAh, a pro-dictator fascist that just uses more words to describe their Xi circle jerk.
- alkonaut 4y ago> teams tries to stay out of it. There is no "staying out of" politics or just "remaining neutral" on topics (edit: the context here is "when doing business with the one of the belligerents of a conflict, an oppressive regime and so on. Not universally). Not taking a stand for one side in a two sided topic means taking the other side. Either you are pro gay rights or against it. Or you are pro democracy or against it. Or you are openly against the Russian invasion of Ukraine or you are against it - whether you are silent or not. so long as you do business with or in dictatorships. This applies to any tech company as much as it applies to FIFA or anyone else.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoOr you can legitimately not know what to think about any particular issue. Some people don't have a favorite color. Expecting everyone to have a considered opinion about every political topic is just unrealistic.
- akaij 4y agoIt has more to do with one side never missing a chance to appropriate your silence.
- alkonaut 4y agoYes. And then you probably don't do business in or with a foreign country. The point is that you should know and likely do know, for example, what Qatar thinks about minority rights when you award them a World Cup.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThis is an impossible standard to hold people to even on issues in their domestic country. If you're from the USA, I'm sure that as a well-informed citizen, you know about how the relationship between tribal law and federal law were recently challenged at the Supreme Court (Haaland vs Brackeen), and can provide a reasoned position on the status of Native American tribes and how they should be addressed. After all, it was big news in Native American circles, and silence on that issue is violence towards Native Americans.
- haneul 4y agoKnowing David personally, I would agree with taking him at face value here.
- anotherman554 4y ago>"AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork." I'm trying to figure out the functional difference between a "hippie CEO" and a "slick CEO". The HBO show Silicon Valley has a satirical business owner who hires a "spiritual adviser" that tells him the most spiritual thing to do is whatever makes him the most money in every situation.
- littlestymaar 4y agoThat sounds great, but this is bllsht. They refuse porn explicitly (and stable diffusion as well btw, it's blocked by default but being opensource means that anyone can remove the nsfw filter) whereas there's no such policy about politics, and you can in fact generate political satires for pretty much everyone but Xi, and even the CEO acknowledge that this is done to keep access to the Chinese market (or to preserve “the ability for people in China to use this tech” as he says it). I don't know why some people wants to keep defending the indefensible, is being a contrarian some kind of addiction?
- silverlake 4y agoHolz sold Leap for $30M, which is less than all the funding they raised. I’m assuming his common stock went to 0. So he’s still motivated to make money on MJ, as he should be.
- flerovium 4y agoYou seem to misunderstand that this is the purpose of censorship by China. It makes political opposition "taboo". To criticize the leader is to seem "dirty", "sus", and "rude". The rest is done by the desire for social acceptance. Midjourney is playing directly into China's censorship. If homosexuality makes people uncomfortable in the Middle East, should Midjourney ban non-sexual depictions of same-sex couples?
- lisasays 4y agoSo, prompting Xi is blocked. That’s all there is to it. What's with the dreamer hippie dork façade, then? Other than as a foil, of course.
- raducu 4y agoExpedience&censorship and accommodating dictatorships are slippery slopes.
- iamsaitam 4y agoCan you guess why "horny teenage boys" aren't as common in Midjourney's space as they are in Stable Diffusion's?