this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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/0 Governance

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Ahoy me hearties!

To run alongside the discussion on the simplified Golden Rules for the instance, I decided to post a separate proposal for a single rule addition.

The proposed rule is: Off topic comments and downvote trolling to protest the use of genAI images is not permitted in our communities.

It would only apply to communities where GenAI art is not disallowed by the community rules, so mods can opt in or out.

Since the rule will likely attract some pushback from the anti-GenAI crowd, I wanted to run this proposal as a member vote to confirm we have broad support.

Exhibit 1 - dbzer0 Main Sidebar for context

Be Weird, Download a Car, Generate Art, Screw Copyrights

Communities about Anarchism, Generative AI, Copylefts, Neurodivergence, Filesharing, and Free Software.

Our instance has been associated with genAI art since its inception, because the founding admin, db0, has also spent years developing and maintaining FOSS Projects like AI Horde (a crowdsourced distributed cluster of image generation workers and text generation workers) and Haidra.

We have a number of popular genAI communities on our instance including:

Exhibit 2 - The Problem

This is the recent experience of one of our community mods:

"From the moment I started the [redacted] community here people have been brigading it trying to suppress it, and had I not had the sense to ban the droves of anti-AI trolls who come to downvote it into oblivion. They probably would be continuing to do so in insanely large volume. A lot of the users who come to downvote do so with empty no content accounts, but a lot are also trolls from the !fuck_AI@lemmy.world community. I’ve also received a fair amount of harassment including threats and bad faith accusations from it like people saying I’m a pedophile or saying I’m pretending to be nonbinary over the fact that I like and use genAI. Really awful behavior that has no place on this instance of this community."

This sort of thing is hateful and should not have to be tolerated by our users. Let's call it what it is: bullying and harassment.

Exhibit 3 - Escalating Problems

If you take look at this post from today in the lighthearted Lefty Memes community, it's a total shit show of offtopic comments. I'm not going to re-litigate the whole experience here since there is a YPTB post about it here.

This sort of brigading is completely unwarranted and I regard it as hostile bullying behaviour towards our community members and moderators. It completely derails the comments and goes way off topic for the community. Even after repeatedly asking these users to open a meta post about the issues they clearly wanted to talk about, instead of brigading the comments, I was mostly ignored and eventually pretty much gave up on trying to moderate the post.

Conclusion

In summary, as an admin on this instance I've noticed a significant uptick in the amount and volume of trolling in our communities by this group of users. I'd like to make sure we have this rule in place so that we can continue to effectively moderate the instance for the enjoyment of our community members, and to protect our moderators and admins from abuse.

Thank you for your consideration. If you have any suggestions to improve the rule, or thoughts on the topic you wish to share, then please do so in the comments.

Edit: for detailed voting information see this post. But in summary, please upvote if you support the rule addition or downvote if you are opposed.

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[–] div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 7 minutes ago) (1 children)

Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591 Early Bird: a parrot, orangered colors Jolly Roger: an icon of pirate jolly roger skull wearing a hat, in orange-red, black and white colors A book with a loaf of bread in the cover  in orange-red, black and white colors Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color

This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:

  • For: Vouched: a minimalist compass icon. Orangered color (7), First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color (5), Salty Dog: An icon of two crossed cutlasses with a skull in the center in orange-red, black and white colors (2), Powder Monkey: An icon of powder barrel in orange-red, black and white colors (1), Threadiverse Enjoyer: An icon of a doubloon with a black hole in the center in orange-red, black and white colors (1), Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors (2)
  • Against: Vouched: a minimalist compass icon. Orangered color Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors
  • Local Community: +0.3
  • Outsider sentiment: Positive
  • Total: +16.3
  • Percentage: 90.00%

This vote will complete in 5 days


Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.

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[–] MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 33 minutes ago (1 children)

I think this is an issue with the all feed. Controversial communities would be more peaceful if there was a tick box for "show posts on all feed"

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Harassing a gen AI instance should certainly be blocked, but calling out ai art in a non ai focused instance should be allowed as long as it’s following other rules of not being shitty.

[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think that should be up to the moderators of the community when they make that decision at the start of the community.

As it stands now, the anti AI crowd wants everything segregated. They whine and complain even if they happen to see AI used in communities they don't even belong to.

Segregating gen AI to only being used in communities that are for gen AI is kind of unfair to those who like to use it, and while people who dislike it shouldn't be forced to interact with it, people who don't shouldn't be disallowed from using it at all times, either.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 59 minutes ago (1 children)

Counter point, allowing gen AI in non gen AI communities is unfair to the people who don’t want to see it. There isn’t a good way to filter out AI content other than blocking the community/posters.

Maybe if we had a gen AI tag like we do for NSFW content.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 35 minutes ago (1 children)

In that case, those people should go to instances that are not pro-AI, and ran by admins to run genAI sites besides this one.

[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 minutes ago

Or they can just downvote the low effort AI content that shows up on their feed?

[–] Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

I love dbzer0 because it’s a pro-piracy, leftist instance with great moderation and a sizable userbase. I just sort of try my best to ignore the whole AI thing, not my cup of tea with the whole power consumption and art theft stuff. I’m all for “fuck copyright” when it comes to big corporations but I become a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to independent creators’ works being used to train AI models without their permission. I dunno, all of this has been said before by a thousand other people, you get the gist.

The issue I have is similar to the Nazi bar problem; If you have an AI-friendly community, you have an AI community. You can keep ignoring and blocking AI-posting users as they show up, but it’s easier to generate an image than to assemble one manually, so they keep showing up more and more. It becomes nigh impossible to “just ignore AI posts.” It’s part of why people get so hostile towards them, if people don’t react negatively to AI posts when they see them, people will post more and more of them.

Of course, harassment and bullying is unjustifiable. It’s the internet; some folks are gonna take things too far. Makes me sad to see the effect being separated by screens can produce.

To summarize, I’m all for pro-AI users to have a space to exist (y’know, like, this instance. maybe I should start searching for a different instance? Like, dbzer0 sans AI?), but it is easier said than done to just “ignore AI” without more of it showing up.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 32 minutes ago

Comparing AI to nazis is definitely not an intellectually bankrupt argument to make. But yes, we do have an AI community in this instance, and the majority of us want to keep it that way.

[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Thanks for making the post! I know that this is something that would've been best if acted on fast, but I appreciate that you're trying to involve the community.

Yesterday I was very anti-this, but then I saw the brigade happen, and I realized I was wrong. I've changed my opinion. The fuck ai community on here is pretty big, regularly hits all, and there's nothing antis love quite like finding the people they feel morally superior to, and 'punishing' them. Combine that with liberals loving virtue signalling instead of actually helping people who need it, and it's a shitstorm.

For anybody reading this who believes, as I do, that censorship is the evil, please keep in mind that it isn't censorship to protect marginalized groups, and on lemmy, people who admit to using or supporting gen ai are very much the minority. They deserve a space to be able to talk about it without getting hammered by people looking to start a fight over it.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yesterday I was very anti-this, but then I saw the brigade happen, and I realized I was wrong. I’ve changed my opinion. The fuck ai community on here is pretty big, regularly hits all, and there’s nothing antis love quite like finding the people they feel morally superior to, and ‘punishing’ them. Combine that with liberals loving virtue signalling instead of actually helping people who need it, and it’s a shitstorm.

It's baffling to see people claim the moral high ground, but still violate the copyright they want to protect for the nebulous "indie artists." So much shit was flung yesterday because we dared to ignore copyright, like we do for corporations. People thought it was a Gotcha! that we don't like copyright like OpenAI does.

The difference is, we don't have a profit movie. We are ignoring the laws that the capitalists set up for capitalists. Copyright rarely helps the indie artists. Copyright is what enables Spotify to 0.0001 cents per stream. Copyright is what enables studios to prohibit fully finished shows and movies from being aired or put on media to archive it. Copyright hinders more art than it protects.

And all these people are just full of vitrol for having our own space, using our own computers, for dumb bullshit fun. They act like we're the evil guys when they jump down our throats, brigade our communities, and then call us the bad guys for having our own space.

[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I love your comment and agree with it wholesale.

I have gone into the fuck ai community multiple times when it hits the 'all' feed and stated that I have absolutely made a living selling art. That the people bitching about AI tend to be the people who aren't paying artists now, and that all the artists I know are fine with AI art.

And why are we fine with it? Because no one wants to draw someone's Sonic OC. No one wants to have to draw some asshole's latex fetish to pay the bills. The problem isn't that AI art is stealing from artists, the problem is that capitalism makes it impossible to exclusively make the art you choose to make and survive.

But liberals hate hearing that the system is the problem, and love anything that tells them that they are "right" and "just" by simply clicking a downvote button.

I used to give away free art whenever I had the time because that's what got me into it- I was too poor to afford to commission someone, but everyone deserves a visual for the character they're playing or for their avatar on a forum. So I had to balance giving people who couldn't afford it, free things, with doing art for people who could pay, so I could live.

People who claim to support artists loooove to give zero dollars to an artist to fix this problem, but preach about how evil gen AI is.

Gen AI never cost me a single customer. People who do commissions, will continue doing commissions. Gen AI is a tool of the capitalist class to cut costs, and in that, it doesn't matter if some prick is abusing someone on a forum somewhere- the owner class doesn't care if you're making a poor kid feel bad about using AI instead of being bougie enough to pay. They'll cut that cost and ignore your outraged and there's nothing you can do about it.

So to me, it's just another way for the haves to fight the have-nots. Oh, you're too poor to have your own artist? We'll bully you off the internet!

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

I have gone into the fuck ai community multiple times when it hits the ‘all’ feed and stated that I have absolutely made a living selling art. That the people bitching about AI tend to be the people who aren’t paying artists now, and that all the artists I know are fine with AI art.

They don't pay artists, they don't pay for copyright when sharing memes featuring IP owned by companies/individuals, they don't do anything to help artists but claim they do. I've seen people flame actual digital artists because they made a mistake, and thought they were AI.

But liberals hate hearing that the system is the problem, and love anything that tells them that they are “right” and “just” by simply clicking a downvote button.

Yep. I believe a quote is "Each time we achieve a new bit of technology, we are handed a key, and are given two doors. The key can open either, it is up to us to decide which door we open." And the quote was about atomic energy.

Atomic energy can power entire cities. Atomic energy can level entire cities. A tool is neutral in its use. AI can be used to make people laugh, or it can be used to make people angry online with disinfo. A hammer can be used to drive a nail, or cave in a skull.

People who claim to support artists loooove to give zero dollars to an artist to fix this problem, but preach about how evil gen AI is.

I think inherently, the idea that it takes away from artists is somewhat valid, but the key issue is, if artists didn't have to sell art to make a living, and instead made art for art, then the conversation would be entirely different. Artists have to charge commission rates, and for a lot of them its worth the money.

My friends are talented artists, and I do not beg them for free art. I value their time spent on things. Some have given me free art, for birthdays or because I wrote something funny that made them inspired to draw or doodle. Those are inherently worth more to me than any AI piece. But I also don't ever see AI replacing any of them.

Gen AI never cost me a single customer. People who do commissions, will continue doing commissions. Gen AI is a tool of the capitalist class to cut costs, and in that, it doesn’t matter if some prick is abusing someone on a forum somewhere- the owner class doesn’t care if you’re making a poor kid feel bad about using AI instead of being bougie enough to pay. They’ll cut that cost and ignore your outraged and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The capitalists probably enjoy that people have weaponized their hatred for AI art being used by some random person online, it saves the owns of OpenAI or whatever the time of clearing their spam inbox. If they devoted the energy to hating I-Make-Memes-Using-AI-69420 into pressuring any meaningful change for artists' lives that they swear they care about, they'd probably push their reps to enable more money for the arts.

They won't, because being angry at people online to them is activism. Like how they think sharing a memes using homophobia as the punchline is a Gotcha! to Trump, like he somehow pays attention to reddit or lemmy. It does nothing to actually do anything meaningful on even the micro scale. It just makes them look like an asshole while rallying around a vaguely good cause.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

I'm not a huge fan of AI art, but seeing how people go out their way to harass (not just spam downvoting, outright DMing and telling people to commit suicide because of it) something needs to be done, i agree.

It should be a more general rule imo. i.e.: if you don't like it, ignore it; type of stuff (excluding fash-shit) if i don't like piracy for example, instead of downvoting each post and commenting "piracy is theft" under each post i'd just fucking block the community.

Anyways, i think GenAI criticism should be allowed, and even healthy; but just saying "Don' like it." and contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation is just useless.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 hours ago

I’m not a huge fan of AI art, but seeing how people go out their way to harass (not just spam downvoting, outright DMing and telling people to commit suicide because of it) something needs to be done, i agree.

Anti-AI people are way, way more annoying and policing than any AI person I've ever seen. On discords where its tolerated, no one bats an eyes. On ones where its not part of whats allowed to be shared, they remove and berate users. Even mods for those places get caught placing images that use AI because literally who cares, and then have to apologize publicly to the place they moderate.

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[–] vina@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

I would prefer that rule apply to all communities about any topic-- trolling and screeching about something you disagree with that happens to be the subject of the community should not be tolerated. The subscribers of that community should not have to put up with it. Regardless of community.

I would agree to that.

Edit: clarifying that communities and topics don't break instance rules

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 14 hours ago

I agree, we really shouldn't have people trolling, screeching, and harassing other people in any of our communities. It's toxic as fuck to allow that on an insurance. Like people doing this consistently should be an easy sign to give them the boot.

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[–] cogitase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

had I not had the sense to ban the droves of anti-AI trolls who come to downvote it into oblivion. They probably would be continuing to do so in insanely large volume.

Moderators have to deal with brigaders, trolls and other ne'er-do-wells on all sorts of communities, particularly communities dedicated to controversial subjects. If the moderators are banning these accounts, then the only remaining issue is downvotes. Downvotes are not your "score" in the game of social media. It's just a number. Why should admins be stepping in to try and dictate the meaningless numbers next to comments and submissions? This is an issue that should remain in the hands of the moderators.

If people don't support reddit warning people for upvoting Luigi posts, why should they support policing downvotes on this instance?

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 9 hours ago

Downvotes are not your "score" in the game of social media. It's just a number. Why should admins be stepping in to try and dictate the meaningless numbers next to comments and submissions? This is an issue that should remain in the hands of the moderators.

The problem is that they do downrank communities and when people brigade communities it is an suppression technique. That's the whole reason why there are people brigading communities with multiple accounts. And it's why mods are fighting back against it.

[–] msgraves@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I agree with this rule. People who disagree with the usage of GenAI can do that, but they need to stop brigading and harassing unrelated content and communities. It’s also often seen on other websites, where Anti-AI posts (often very loosely related to the actual topic) get moved to the top of the community. I don’t accuse people of intentionally organizing and brigading, but websites with algorithms are just more likely to show these posts to anti-ai people if they interact with that type of content, even if the community is unrelated and they have literally never posted in it before.

We don’t need that here.

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[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

downvote trolling

I think this needs some clarification about what does and does not warrant mod actions.

Comments are free-form, so are easy to determine as off topic and unlikely to hit bystanders, but downvotes don't communicate intent.

Anecdotally I have come across a post in a sub I like, found it glaringly annoying/ugly/wrong etc. downvoted, then seen another one and actually gone into the sub to see if it is a wider trend and specifically downvoted a bunch of these.
Lemmy is a rating system, I think this behavior is acceptable.

I would draw the line at coming back repeatedly to keep "filtering" in this way, while not otherwise being active in the community and while not being subscribed to it. (Not that being subscribed is even visible)

Is it possible to tell apart a lurker superhumanly good at finding genai really ugly, from the 15 downvote bots of an anti-genai brigadier?

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If someone is systematically downvoting every post in a community, then that is not organic voting imo, it's an attempt to suppress the community. And it is usually pretty apparent. That's what the block community feature is for. I think it's legit for the mods to community ban those folks. I know some folks argue "votes don't matter" but it can be upsetting to have trolls shit all over your community every day. There's nothing to be gained from allowing it. We also have an appeals channel if anyone feels the rule was unfairly applied, to help make sure it's not abused.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Downvoting all posts is problematic, yes. It does not accomplish anything but downrank the entire sub. But that isn't the matter at hand as I see it.
What if you downvote all ai posts and don't touch other posts or upvote them?
In an attempt to discourage ai pots and encourage other posts on that sublemmy for example.

Some of the examples given are about generic subs like !leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com, where you see both ai and non-ai posts.

Someone downvoting every single post in an ai-specific sub is not the edge case I am worried about.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I think I understand what your saying. To clarify are you saying that in lefty memes, for example, if someone went through a bunch of posts and just downvoted the genAI ones would they get a community ban? Probably not, and I doubt I'd even notice or care unless the comments were getting dogpiled again, or there was some obvious use of dodgy downvote accounts that needed to be addressed. The rule is intended more for the GenAI specific communities, like the Stable Diffusion ones, which are all GenAI, where the community wants to be able to enjoy their interests in relative peace and safety.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago

Ok yeah, that does address my main concern.
If this could somehow be communicated in the rule that would be great.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah when we talk about downvote trolling it's always about systematically downloading all or most content from that Community or user. It's an attempt to suppress that Community or user instead of choosing to block or ignore them.

It's a form of vote brigating, you might even go far enough to say vote manipulation.

Is it possible to tell apart a lurker superhumanly good at finding genai really ugly, from the 15 downvote bots of an anti-genai brigadier?

I think that if that lurker has chosen to downvote every single post systematically in that community that's already an act of aggression against the community. Whether they know it or not these types of voting patterns are used to suppress communities and content. It's literally the reason why Blahaj opted to just exclude Downvotes as a whole.

I don't think that we need to go that far but we definitely need to address the problem and action people who do it. Especially since as I've said it can be very demotivating to have this happening to your own fresh new community that you're trying to start. And that's on purpose, that's why down vote trolls and brigaders do what they do. That's just not acceptable.

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[–] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I fully support the sentiment, but as others have noted, calling out genai specifically is a bit limiting.

I would potentially propose something more to protect our other comms at the same time that might potentially get brigaded; IE: piracy

"Off topic comments and downvote trolling to protest the spirit of our communities for contentious topics will not be permitted."

Just my thoughts. Cover butts here if a change is made anyway since many of the core vibes of db0 are fairly contentious to begin with.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 16 hours ago

Yeah I could get on board with that.

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[–] Astertheprince@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I don't really care about genAI or have any strong opinions but damn, that behavior is not okay at all... I really hope we go through with this change. I wouldn't want to see people like this continuing to behave in such a way here, makes it feel very unsafe or unwelcoming. God forbid I accidentally crosspost an AI meme from Reddit without knowing and get swarmed with hate and anger. That doesn't seem like something that should happen here, or anywhere at all really.

[–] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 18 hours ago

While it wasn't a genai image, this reminds me of a similar but wonderfully handled situation I ran into that is an example of what we SHOULD see:

I'd posted a meme on response to a comment that contained a laptop held by the critter in the image. The content of the screen was generic and irrelevant to my current intended reply.

Another user commented to me about the content on the screen being associated with some niche racism group I'd never heard of... But the comment was very much "you should be made aware" and not antagonizing.

I was able to edit that part out of the image and update my comment, and thanked the user. They in turn replied with appreciation for the attention to the issue.

This interaction set a gold standard for my expectation on discussions here. If the posting of a genai image somehow is controversial for some reason, I'd expect at least a chance to explain or correct if it is received inappropriately, vs just attacking what may have just been the first image chosen to convey a thought.

Anything less just reeks of attempts to just be an ass.

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[–] nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I'm nota stranger to holding wildly unpopular opinions. I'm an egoist, it's in my nature. Personally, I think genAI is dumb. Harassing and abusing people for liking something is unacceptable behavior, though. I've been noticing most of my comments have been vote brigaded recently, especially my comment shitting on Dessalines.

I vote yea.

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[–] finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I feel that this is already covered by the golden rules- namely "1. Don’t be shitty" and "6. When going to other communities, respect their and our rules" in the recent proposal.

The issue here is that certain comms affiliated with genai are being targeted by downvote brigades and trolls, yeah? I won't pretend to have the technical knowledge to provide a solution, but I would rather see efforts to generally combat that happening on /0, rather than carving out rules for targeted groups each time the issue arises.

To be clear, I'm not saying that genai users don't deserve a space where they can discuss their interest. I just don't think that carving out special protections is an actual solution to the problem.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, a few folks have made a similar suggestion to make it more of a general rule. Thanks for your feedback. I'll update the wording with a v2 soon.

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