Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcandy | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

View on HN

Lol. 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.

Such innocent hashtag as well, #StableDiffusion. Don't even need to clear the browsing history.

I recently got into CNC machining, so tried searching twitter to find some accounts to follow. boy was i surprised by that #cnc hashtag.

I just tried search for #cnc and mostly got machining content, with bits of non-English stuff I don't understand but looked innocent enough. What sort of content did you see?

They probably applied an NSFW filter since :)

Presumably this: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=CNC

Searching for coverage by the British Broadcasting Company on Twitter is kind of a pain.

I don't know if it's still the case but the default state of stable diffusion when creating women was to create huge boobs. Also all the men and women were lookalike with some difference like hair colors and skin colors (but it may well have improved a lot since)

Same here.

Although you say "slightly Manga-ish" women - I saw some quite realistic photos.

Your comment was posted 22 hours ago though. It's possible that the models (pun unintended) have gotten even better since you last looked.

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.

What 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.

I 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.

>"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?

Certainly if a western country demanded I kill people with my product, I would refuse.

I don’t propose limiting use in China because they are jerks. I just propose not accepting their bullying demands to change my product.

> drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762

The difference is that drunk driving objectively kills over ten thousand people every year. Meanwhile, the negative effects of 10 person company refusing to generate low-effort satire is less clear.

Bending the knee to a brutal ethnic cleansing regime is never a positive, regardless of the size of the entity capitulating.

At the end of the day, it's his company, so he can choose what services to supply. Freedom of speech means that he is allowed to have is own worldview that you disagree with, and you're free to use any other AI tools to make as much satire as you wish. If you're worried about China, worry about our incompetent Congress who is more interested in collecting sound bites than actually learn enough about technology to write meaningful regulation that protects us from China's influence on corporations.

Yes. No one doubts who's company it is. That does not make their actions free from criticism.

They're free to do what they want, others are free to say what they want to say (well, except when using Midjourney), the company can listen or not, and people can use Midjourney or not.

Saying "if you don't like it, shut up and find something else" doesn't seem particularly productive.

i mean no there's obviously a 3rd option. run the service anyway and don't geoblock. like the banning country might block your service but that's on them.

if i'm running something not illegal and some other country bans it i see no moral case for me doing work to enforce some foreign government's laws for them. i'm not magically "operating" in every country around the world just because someone from there pings my server.

Just to clarify, puritans were involved in the founding of the USA, but much of the country was not based on prudish norms

If you want to operate in that country and accept all of the downsides there's nothing preventing you from offering China an inferior version of your product, as many companies already do. That they're going to force feed the rest of the world this authoritarian, fascist, shit is downright deplorable and worthy of condemnation.

The right answer is not to operate your business in totalitarian states no matter how much you want to be rich.

China's legal system doesn't run on rule of law, it runs on threat of rule by law. In this case, it means anyone who wants to function in china must predict what the government will dislike, since there is no actual Chinese law against making fun of Xi Jinping (but they will shut you down anyways if you allow it).

Sure, if they want to operate in China they are taking the best course of action, but it will hardly be enough since it is an user produced content system.

There is a third and a fourth option.

3. Split the platform/user-base. Allow freedom of expression in western countries and censor it in China.

4. Censor prompts and images only in China, which still allows sharing non-political artwork between Chinese and western user.

All other platforms operating in China (of Chinese or western origin) have to do the same.

An authoritarian regime which takes people out of poverty instead of killing them or putting them in jails, what a joke!

Oh wait, is this the propaganda talking?

Yep. Midjourney is the exact reason why projects like Stable Diffusion are so important, anime distractions or not.

> 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

Being banned would make it quite unwelcome

Being banned could give it subversive allure

Similar 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.

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 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.

Here’s the difference: is Holz banning the production of images of the King?

> can never be exclusionary

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

> 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.

So why not reduce functionality in the foreign versions and allow the rest of the world to have this functionality?

I think it depends on if the output space is shared.

In the case of MidJourney the output is in Discord for all to see. Setting community standards like no-porn is about creating a space where the most possible people will feel welcome. I would like to think a policy of "no disrespectful imagery" of legally-protected deities or figures wouldn't be that burdensome as a whole. It also helps to avoid drama. There is probably places that such drama would be a welcome addition but I get the feeling MidJourney is not one of those places.

I'm not saying we should bake such constraints into the models, that I think is in poor taste and unnecessary. If people can run the model on their own machine where the output is private to them they should be allowed to generate whatever they want and they can post that in venues where that sort of content is acceptable.

But when images are emitted into a public shared space I do think some rules on what is and isn't appropriate are fair game. At the end of the day it's meant to be an AI art community that is about the fusion of technology and creativity. It's not setup to be a place for political discourse.

Discord is banned in China. If any Chinese who agree with Chinese law are on Discord they are violated said law. So no, not this.

>"he former is basically a cultural institution"

Cultural my ass. It is as political as it gets. Just do a search on Lèse-majesté in Thailand. Here is one from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thai...

calling a political figure a "cultural tradition" sounds like a flimsy excuse to try to short-circuit any political debate about a monarch. makes me wanna start whistling yankee doodle...

Most Thais would quite happily satirize the current King, whose antics really satirize themselves (see below), but they can't because they would end up in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fufu_(dog)

I know, which is why I specifically said the old King. The two rulers are viewed very differently in Thailand but the laws apply equally to both.

> 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.

People 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.

> 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.

This 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-...

Somewhere 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.

To 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.

Yes but China appears to be sorting our shit too.

And very effectively.

You are going to blame China for trying? Last time I checked we have Government with CSIS and other agencies. They should get of their asses and do their job.

Also restoring ability to make staff here rather than getting it from China will not hurt but I am afraid that we have pissed this away permanently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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.

I 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.

I dunno, you can generate as many images as you want in slow mode right?

I believe relaxed mode requires the standard tier, which is $30 at monthly rates.

4 cents an image is ridiculous?

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

You do not get unlim relax mode on the cheapest plan, only standard or pro, which is 3x the cost.

> 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.

It'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.

> 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.

Or 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.

It has more to do with one side never missing a chance to appropriate your silence.

Yes. 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.

This 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.

"If you're not with us, you're against us" is a pretty reductive, American-centric way of approaching politics. There are plenty of topics which I'm happy to not hold a strong opinion on and I'll probably spend my entire life that way. Folks who feel strongly about _any_ issue will always tell moderates they're just shills for the other side, which is part of what makes the argument so tiresome.

> There are plenty of topics which I'm happy to not hold a strong opinion on and I'll probably spend my entire life that way.

My statement wasn't about opinions in any way. It was basically about the fact that some times an action is already an opinion in itself. You can't e.g. do business in Russia and claim that "we like to remain neutral and stay out of politics/wars (and keep our income from the business in Russia)".

You can of course just not do business in/with Russia and few would wonder whether you have any strong opinions on the conflict. This isn't about forcing anyone to have strong public opinions. It's about that you can't meaningfully separate such opinions from business (or sports, or...)

Which side are you on in the Liancourt Rocks/Takeshima/Dokdo dispute?

Remember, there's no remaining neutral in politics, so I expect a well-reasoned answer on this fundamental territorial rights dispute.

He doesn't know. Not sure what your point is though.

I have no idea what that is, and I hope I'm not passively taking a position in that dispute due to my business involvements (of which are none).

I'm not arguing that everyone have an opinion on everything. I'm arguing that when you do business, you might be taking a side in something whether you would like to or not.

Google does business in both Japan and Korea. What's Google's stance on the Takeshima/Dokdo dispute?

I don’t think it matters to their business or customers. So while they may well be taking a stance without even knowing - no one cares. Few are demanding they leave either country (which is the interesting threshold here).

> I don’t think it matters to their business or customers. So while they may well be taking a stance without even knowing - no one cares.

If Google came out and said "Dokdo is Korea territory" I absolutely guarantee there would be a complete shitstorm in Japan, probably ending with Google getting banned from Japan. You have absolutely no clue what a hot-button issue that is between those countries.

Your initial assertion is just wrong. Businesses stay out of politics all the time.

Another example of how these two countries get pissy about naming things:

We were using Agile Client as our Common Operational Picture tool during a joint exercise with the ROK Marine Corps. The default map layer in Agile has labels on bodies of water in white text built into the imagery. The body of water between Korea and Japan was labeled "Sea of Japan". The Koreans were ADAMANT that we either remove the text or change it to "East Sea". I think we dropped a blue rectangle layer over the text and then another text layer with "East Sea" on top of that. But they repeatedly pestered us about this seemingly-small detail. We're about to get our asses chewed by flag officers for not executing the Commander's Update Brief in timely manner, while also struggling to manage the info flow about the battlespace, but the #1 issue to you is the damn text label on the map mentioning Japan?!?!

> There is no "staying out of" politics or just "remaining neutral" on topics.

How would one determine if this statement is true or not? If true, is the truth universal or contextual?

The context here is "when doing business".

How would one determine if this statement is true or not "when doing business?"

> 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.

It 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

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.

Midjourney 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.

It's becoming difficult to find good content among the tons of waifu with various degrees of anatomy realism. The most popular stable diffusion resources website is a mess right now: https://civitai.com

You can just filter out anime in account settings.

I may have to create an account, but it should have some weights by default.

Why 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

> 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!

People 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.

Ya, it shouldn't be very surprising that most of the people interested in satirizing the Chinese government are Chinese.

That 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?

Bowing to foreign authoritarian censorship is okay if it’s done for a rich man’s convenience? What a shitshow begging for regulation.

Not ridiculing xi is the regulation

Indeed. 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.

You 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?

Currently, 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?

If 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.

Hi. 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.

Quite 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.

>> 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

I handle most of the moderation of violence and gore. That painting would get a user a message about the violence and gore guidelines, but that’s all. The guidelines are all about avoiding visceral reaction from the viewer. Not visceral like “The war my people endured was horrible”. Visceral like “oh god my face is torn off”, “me punching my girlfriend” or “politician I don’t like not just in hell, but explicitly burning and screaming and suffering painfully in hell.”

We get a lot of death metal fans, 80’s schlock movie fans and a few horror artists that I get to talk to regularly. Pretty much everyone is pretty chill and agrees the guidelines are a good thing for the community. And, the few that don’t agree with MJ’s terms of service are free to do whatever they want elsewhere using Stable Diffusion.

> 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.

I 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.

Not 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.

People 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.

> 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

> Looking at you, unending parade of unfathomly huge boobs on ...

Holy shit you weren't kidding.

Don’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.

>"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.

That's so many words for censorship

Being 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.

>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.

I 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.

Thanks 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?

So, 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.

Holz 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.

Can you guess why "horny teenage boys" aren't as common in Midjourney's space as they are in Stable Diffusion's?

Expedience&censorship and accommodating dictatorships are slippery slopes.

Knowing David personally, I would agree with taking him at face value here.

Ah, a pro-dictator fascist that just uses more words to describe their Xi circle jerk.

It 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.

what does anime waitfus have to do with DEI?

There's no DEI initiative to help the disadvantaged weeaboos

They’ll be adding ‘minor attracted persons’ to the kiriarchy rubric any day now…

You 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.

I’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.

The internet was invented for cats and pictures of them. I don't understand why everyone doesn't know this.

My point is, if same applied for AI, there should be cargo ships worth of generated cats - but no, all generative image AI is used for is to generate young (anime) Japanese girls, and absolutely nothing else. Which is okay for me, but curious.

Not all anime girls are Japanese. Almost all the generated ones don't even have a nation of origin.

Tells you something about the seriousness about the whole DEI thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com