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This is far less controversial than their anti-AI stance which passed today. I have zero sympathies around crypto projects, generally. "Blockchain" feels to me
by cmrdporcupine 3mo ago
This is far less controversial than their anti-AI stance which passed today.
I have zero sympathies around crypto projects, generally. "Blockchain" feels to me like a venus fly trap that swallows distributed systems engineers and turns them into pseudo-libertarian apologists for money-laundering.
But I pulled my project off Codeberg today because of the anti-AI positioning. Not so much because of any specifics in their very vague wording, which they've left completely open to subjective interpretation. But because of the crazy toxic discourse on Mastodon and other places around it. People making analogies between people's LLM use and non-consensual sex, and accusing people seeking clarity on what "mostly AI" means of being like "creepy guys" etc. Just beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse and also being offensively trivializing of actual rape culture concerns without even realizing it.
I really thought I liked the codeberg community when I joined it. I'm a copyleft guy. My project is AGPL. I've been tilted pretty far over to the left my whole adult life. I liked not being on American infrastructure. It turns out I don't like these people though. Bye. I'd rather wade in slop than sanctimonious moralism.
- selfhoster1312 3mo agoI'm strongly anti-AI, but i upvoted your comment because it's the most reasonable one (in opposition to the AI ban) i've read so far. I haven't read those mastodon threads, but that sounds like a weird discourse. Are they from codeberg eV members or random passers-by (like me)? Would you mind sharing some links to some of those resources?
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoJust a sample, I'm still drinking my coffee. https://scholar.social/@silvermoon82@wandering.shop/11696402 https://scholar.social/@silvermoon82@wandering.shop/11696402... "I'm sorry you caught abuse off the slop fondlers. Consent and boundary issues are inbuilt in their community." Or here, when someone tried to ask for similar clarification: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116880003584050912 https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116880003584050912 "You're coming off similar to someone trying to probe the limits of consent instead of trying to honor the request in good faith. It's a bad look." "Opening your conversation with a group by saying "well I'll get to violate your group's values a _little_, right?" does not project the mentality of someone who wants to collaborate in good faith." Or making analogies to Claude Code users being NAZIs? "@piggo @tante I see such a rule as being similar to the "no Nazis" rule. It works by Nazi sympathizers self-identifying by arguing about the rule." Both those threads have other examples, and there are plenty more other threads like them. It has the smell of a smug in group that allows no dissent. I am also 80% certain there were comments on the PR (https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253 https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/1253) along similar lines that were removed but I have no backups or screenshots to backup that accusation.
- selfhoster1312 3mo agoThe first link has been removed (or may be private). The second link and quotes sound bad, but placed in context they actually sound more reasonable arguments to me. The "limits of consent" was somewhat misplaced, but in reply to someone arguing in bad faith about bad-faith interpretation of the rules. So it's not comparing LLMs use with rape, but comparing testing the limits/interpretations of rules with rape. The violating of group values (which in my understanding has semantically nothing to do with rape/consent) was in reply to someone saying if you violate the rules a little, "noone will say anything" (so it was on point). The nazi analogy was not an analogy at all. Noone implied LLM users are nazis. It's about how to interpret what is slop: the general rule of thumb that the only people worried that "anti-nazi" rules in communities are a slippery slope are the nazis themselves. The author was suggesting the same rule of thumb would apply to slop: those worried about the rule's interpretations are the ones making the slop. (a point i don't entirely agree with but more reasonable than the quote out of context) All in all, i must say i cringed a little reading some discussions on this topic. And maybe i've missed the worst you witnessed due to deleted posts. But maybe you were also having a strong emotional reaction and the comments taken from afar are not as dramatic as you suggested?
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoYou say yourself you didn't even see all the comments. Look you can be "anti-AI" all you want. I think this is a crude way to exist in the world -- positioning oneself morally on category rather than contingency -- but fine. But I expect basic decorum in a community. And what I got from those posts was: we decided people who used these tools are not part of our community -- are bad people who have "crossed a line" -- and anything goes in terms of how we respond to them. Despite that not being at all part of the terms of how Codeberg was initially defined or defined when I joined the organization. Putting a sham "democratic" discussion around it doesn't save it. When I was involved more heavily in activist politics I would have been disgusted if an organization I was working with behaved like this; it's in-group implicit consensus masquerading as formal process. Anyways, good riddance, I'm glad to be departing from such people, but no thanks for wasting my time.
- pamcake 3mo agoHey, this one wasnt a fit but i think there are still so many options to consider over doubling down on centralization. Maybe P2P is actually a better fit than federated for git and open source collaboration? nostr, radicle, reticulum? Self-hosting classic forge is great but does require domain name and infra with uptime. These p2p solutions are more like bittorrent where you can clone as long as someone is seeding and git already has commit signature as building block for trust.
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoI dunno, I just felt for the health of the project and getting contributors it made no sense. GH sucks but it comes with social amplifiers that tend to attract people. e.g. I had everthing over at Codeberg for 11 months but rarely had new "followers" over there, but still acquired "stars" on the read-only GH mirror of it. I was already hosting my own CI, I never used Codeberg's because I was trying to be responsible with their resources because I liked [past tense] them. Getting back on GH actually means I don't have to do that anymore, I will enjoy leaching from Microsoft. I do have my own self-hosted Gerrit I use for other somewhat more private things. But self-hosting has its own hassles (backups, security, etc). And in fact one of those other things is in fact my own project to make a "forge" type thing. Vaguely similar to what Dorsey announced the other day (integrated git, chat, code review, code browsing, llm agent interaction, etc into one dynamic r) but I started on it quite some time ago, it's built on my own bespoke runtime, and it's generally more ambitious ... but also I'm not a techbro billionaire so I don't have the resources to finish it right now and I have to work on other projects.