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by cmrdporcupine 9 days ago
Just a sample, I'm still drinking my coffee.

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 "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) along similar lines that were removed but I have no backups or screenshots to backup that accusation.

1 comments

The 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?

You 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.

> You say yourself you didn't even see all the comments.

Yes, and i'm not claiming you're wrong in your feeling that some people were excessive about this. Though i could argue that LLM deployment has been excessive too and this is a very minor comeback compared to the pressure people have faced to adopt LLM tools (eg. at work) or let new AI datacenters ruin their neighborhoods and electricity/water networks.

> it's in-group implicit consensus masquerading as formal process

That's indeed a problem in some circles. However, i fail to see what's the alternative. Letting a debate open for years before opening a formal vote sounds reasonable. That's far from the entryist tactics of building consensus behind closed doors in a secret affinity group then faking organicity and taking everyone by surprise with an "urgent" formal decision. I'm interested if you have feedback on how to organize more "democratically".

> I'm glad to be departing from such people, but no thanks for wasting my time.

I'm glad you feel relieved, and i'm sorry you lost time and energy in a collective where you don't fit in the end.

> I'm glad you feel relieved, and i'm sorry you lost time and energy in a collective where you don't fit in the end.

Grade school social behaviour.

Try to be a better person.

Well, i guess that's what i get for trying to sympathize with someone i disagree with. I have also been this person who doesn't fit in a group but only realizes too late. My bad for thinking we were having an interesting and honest conversation.
so.

I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical Christian community. I learned from a very young age what genuine empathy might look look vs the kind of "sympathy" whose goal is to buttress and support the pre-existing biases that the Church purveyed, and also all about in and out groups, and the application of abstract moralism over genuine personal relationships.

I don't think it's honest communication if the fundamental bias of one party is that the other party is "doing something wrong" and can never countenance any compromise, and defines that "wrong behaviour" as the foundation of exclusion from a community.

And that's what we have here with the section of the Codeberg community that took over there. Which you can see in the forum posts I referenced above. And they're now retroactively defining mores and values to make it seem like people like myself were always in the out-group.

We were not.