1y ago

RULES UPDATE: MOLDY POSTING AND AI POSTING

Sorry for two new pinned posts within the span of 24 hours. after coming back I figured some of the rules needed some updating, and it is policy to put any rule change up to vote for the members.

The two changes I currently would like to make, is increased enforcement of the moldy posting rule, and a new rule banning AI generated content.

moldy posting is when you post a meme that you would find on your aunt's Facebook page or Elon musk's Twitter account. I'm talking properly old, moldy, watermarked, painfully irrelevant posts. I think we should remove them simply because they kind of suck, and removing them would raise the level of quality of 196.

I believe we should ban AI generated content because it is exploitative by nature, and I don't think we should be feeding it.

please discuss in the comments, and vote on whether or not you think these changes should be made. vote on each change separately. if there are any other rule changes that you would like to suggest, now is the time.

65 comments

I disagree with the anti-AI bandwagon.
I am indifferent to moldy memes.

I'm in favor of the anti AI rule but against the anti moldy posts rule.
Also, could you remove that image from the post, I almost reported the post for "unflagged NSFW" because of it.
Edit: Reported it after an hour for the "unflagged NSFW" maybe that will get their attention on removing the image from the post because there's literally no reason for it to be there.
- gormadt I would like to remind you of our NSFW rules. skimpy clothing is not considered NSFW, and neither are breasts. maybe if it was just the woman on the left, it would count as softcore porn, but in the context of my macaroni is a lesbian by Chuck tingle it is obviously more funny than "sexy"
- Also agree entirely. The moldy posting is funny because it's not and it deserves to be here.
- Agreed on removing the image. I upvoted because I thought it was a regular post and not a rule change
  
  I only visited this post because of the image & now I’m performing cunnilingus on a bowl of Mac & Cheese.
  Please remove the image.

Totally in favor in banning AI content.
Sometimes moldy content is funny, often times it just doesn't land. Part of my concern with a moldy ban is that it seems a bit vaguely defined as is.
- Agreed. One man's mold is another man's psychedelic substance. It's a subjective line that varies for everyone.
  AI is easy because the line is clear.

I don't like the idea of increasing enforcement against moldy posts, just because I'm not super plugged in to things and I don't always know if something is moldy when I post it. Over enforcement of those kind of subjective rules tends to make it difficult for newbies to post.
Completely on board with a no AI art rule though. Fuck AI.

What if there were like a "moldy Monday" thing instead of an outright ban? I agree with others that they're fun ironically.
Absolutely in favor of banning AI generated content though.
- Moldy Mondays & Fermenting Fridays for all!

i'm not here to contribute to the discussion
i just wanted to say that chuck tingle is treasure to humanity

Moldy Mondays as another has mentioned is my vote. Ban ai posts though

I am painfully unaware if a post might be moldy because I don’t social media much and I like stupid things, so let me know if something I post is moldy and I’ll machete it.
Edit oh and these rules are reasonable I’d say

I'm in favor of "Moldy Mondays" as some people have mentioned.
And I support banning AI images, but not when it's like a Twitter screenshot that says something about the image.
- I really disliked this feature of many reddit subs where they'd have day of the week themes and posts. This idea in itself is moldy, its just reminds me of a smelly office atmosphere.

Not sure about the first change, but I absolutely support the second one. Fuck AI "art"!

I'm indifferent to outdated and AI content.
Personally I don't think it's worth adding more to the rules than needed, especially when there are already people confused about what counts and what doesn't.

I've Chuck Tingle posted in the past, so I was concerned that this was going to be an anti-Tingle policy, but fortunately it seems like it's about other things
- anti-tingle policy
  I'd rather die
  
  You are the best mod <3

I feel like both rules suffer from the same problem of spectrum. We can all point to a bad moldy/ai post and point to a good moldy/ai post. The issue is going to be those ones in the grey space between. It’s like the threshold test for obscenity.
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." -Justice Potter Stewart
I agree ai generation can be exploitative, but I don’t believe it’s only exploitative. I’m sure there are fine artists out there who can use it responsibly to make genuine art. I think it’s like the Unity game engine. There are plenty of games pumped out that are just trash trying to make quick money, but there’s also gems being made by people with passion.

Maybe instead of banning mouldy memes, there could be restrictions for when they can be posted. Mouldy Monday or something.
- This is good

Moldyposts were fun ironically, but i'm fine moving past them. I'm also on board with giving toaster generated posts the boot. Also, this comment counts as my post before i leave, see you all next sticky

Most of my contributions are moldy memes so obviously I don't agree with this rule. This would impact the already little effort I put into my posts. And I know effort isn't something we put into 196 but that's my observation. I'm willing to revisit this later.
I support banning AI memes because those require less than zero effort already.

I am in favor of both of these changes. I always feel lowkey like ive been tricked when i realize im looking at AI art, and the moldy posts just feel like mud to slog through sometimes.

I'm against banning moldy posting, I agree with banning AI

As someone who accidently posted AI generated crap before here without realising it was AI generated:
I'm all for the ban

I don't think this sub should have any more rules.
Ai images can be very funny. And who cares about moldy images? Just downvote.
- we don't have downvotes
  
  Forgot about that, lol.
  So stupid.
  I wonder what happens if I downvote you.

I’m in favor of both.
Moldy posting can be fun in sarcastic contexts, but I’m not opposed to a full ban since lots of moldy posts makes the sub overall moldy, too.
Gen ai is plagiarism and discourages creativity.

- real and valid
- Oh my, are you not familiar with… chuck tingle? With his numerous works of ground breaking fiction? Such as, “space raptor butt invasion”, “Pounded in the butt by my own butt”, “Absolutely No Thoughts Of Pounding During My Fun Day With This Kind T-Rex Because I'm Aromantic And Asexual And That's A Wonderfully Valid Way Of Proving Love Is Real”, “ Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus” and of course who could forget “Oppressed In The Butt By My Inclusive Holiday Coffee Cups”

I'm fine with banning both of these.

I'm curious what the discussions regarding what is or isn't considered moldy is going to look like.

What do you mean by 'increased enforcement of the moldy posting rule'? I thought we only had one rule? /srs
- The rules are pinned to the community homepage. think of it like one rule, but lots of regulations
  
  This is all I see pinned on the homepage:
  And the sidebar:

don't really care either way about the ai thing but deffo ban moldy posts. we already have !funny@lemmy.world or !memes@lemmy.world for that kinda stuff

water is sick and gross and chocolate milk is better
- I see someone has chosen violence today
- Blocked and reported. Unless you’re drinking chocolate milk with your spaghetti, as Chuck Tingle intended.

Put a chick in it and make her gay

this is me voicing my dissent against the moldy posts rule, including restricting them to mondays. unless presented with a very clear set of examples that we can all (or majority) agree on, i think there’s no real utility to the rule and it just makes me afraid to post an image that i find genuinely funny.
on a level of pure aesthetics, it also just has a gross feel and i don’t want to log in on mondays to the word ‘moldy’ all over my feed ☹️
@moss@lemmy.blahaj.zone please reconsider this rule or provide more information on the kind of content you intend on removing. i believe this choice to be contra to the spirit of 196.
good choice banning AI tho, thanks for that. 👍

Eh, yah, think those sound like good rules but I wouldn’t worry about enforcing them to hard unless there’s someone flaunting them repeatedly.

Here here!
Also is your lawyer accepting new clients?
- I'm sorry I'm afraid I don't understand. what do you mean by that?
  
  While I'm not good at impersonation, let's just say that Mac and cheese rules. And once my true intentions are exposed, I'm going to need that lawyer... Lesbians are cool so I'm doing that thing now where I'm stalling and I'm searching for an answer...

NGL the thing that will improve the quality of c/196 is getting me to follow the rule and encouraging original posts rather than sharing content. What makes a community great is understanding those who are in it.

I think AI isnt exploitative by nature. The companies that own it of course are. AI is better as a technology if you are anti-copyright, as copyright almost universally protects profits of publishers and the owning class rather than creative laborers. However, AI also rarely makes interesting images or posts. Its kinda shit.
My take is I'm play with banning AI, but if someone in our community had the skills to use it to make quality posts I would be very open to it.
AI: ban it. Keep an eye open for quality AI posts though. Moldy: Ban it.

I disagree with the rule banning AI content. Especially the dumb original imgflip AI can just generate super funny dumb captions to classical meme templates, and there is no harm in doing this (you cannot even decide with 100% certainty whether a human or an AI has generated it).
I also used to generate dumb nonsense jokes with the early open source LLMs (long before ChatGPT got released).
I think saying AI content is exploitative in nature is a bit short-sighted and just generalizing about all the different types of AI. If I, e.g. program my own AI to e.g. play a game, and make a meme about that, that's not exploitative. Imitating people's art without their consent is something different though.
I think it would be good to revisit this rule and maybe specify what exact content are not allowed or think about this, since generally there can be good AI meme content (also on a meta-layer, e.g. about people who take obvious fake AI pictures as something real) and just outright banning all of them is a bad idea in my opinion.

I agree to both rule changes. Thanks for modding!!! And Thanks everyone in m/196 for keeping me laughing!

i have no aunt and i dont follow the loner, i am (not really) looking forward to learn what moldy memes are...
oh and fuck ai from the orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

65 comments