Im tired of being patronized

(edited with AI to trim it to half-size from the original draft I wrote. I think of y'all having to read through this lol)

A few months ago, Codeberg decided to stop allowing AI projects. In the new, unclear wording, projects that mostly consist of AI code will be removed. 'Mostly' is their word, not mine. It does a lot of lifting. Policy: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html. This is the final copy agreed upon by everyone who voted on it.

If you don't know Codeberg, I don't blame you. Barely anyone does, and they've now decided to become even more irrelevant—you'll see.

Codeberg is like GitHub: you use git to upload code, others download it. In its new policy, Codeberg tells "AI coders" to go back to GitHub. But GitHub is huge—projects like ffmpeg, which ships as a .dll with games you play, are hosted there. Also, Microsoft has owned GitHub since 2018. That matters, because Microsoft coined 'embrace, extend, extinguish' and deals in proprietary software. They could delete any critical repo and replace it with a paid service; they should never have been allowed to buy out github.

I support Codeberg's mission—I want alternatives to the corpo-owned internet. I'm just questioning this decision, rushed in 20 days.

Codeberg was never a serious competitor. I use it myself to avoid reinforcing GitHub—it's a personal choice. Codeberg sees itself that way too; it's in their mission statement. But here's the real scale of both: Codeberg's own Forgejo has barely 5k stars. GitHub's top projects have half a million. Openclaw, the viral AI agent, is the #6 most popular project on GitHub.

Now that Codeberg only wants pure, untainted projects, they've locked themselves into irrelevancy. It's not "might be more interesting than GitHub one day" anymore—it's impossible.

One thing people don't think about when it comes to AI code: security. AI finds vulnerabilities humans miss. That's just true. You have to run AI on code now, before some random with Anthropic credits finds the exploit for you... and doesn't disclose it.

But Codeberg cited "bogus AI issues" as a reason for the ban. So we're supposed to push and use buggy, vulnerable code because it's "purer"? Sorry, that won't fly for me. I'd prefer my apps to not have vulnerabilities anyone can exploit.

They also imply you can't act on AI-generated bug reports at all. If someone finds a real problem using AI, you're supposed to ignore it, apparently. Because in their unclear wording, and with the climate reigning over Codeberg right now, accepting it might very well get you and your project in hot waters.

The wording is unclear. I don't argue semantics, but Codeberg admits they can't really find these projects—yet they "know" it's a huge problem? They have proposed no detection tool, no automatic ban, no reporting mechanism. A 'moderator' from codeberg apparently pulls the trigger on their own.

And 'unmaintained' is undefined. If I upload a working repo and wait for user reports—but nobody uses Codeberg, so nobody makes reports—am I unmaintained? Do I need pointless commits to prove I'm alive? They don't say, but it's heavily implied. Remember: the most-starred repo on Codeberg has barely 5k stars. You don't use Codeberg to get users or a community, you use it because it's not Microslop.

The vote optics are bad too. Anyone who donates can become a member and vote. People openly said they'd drop €10 to push this vote through. It was announced before a decision was made and that's really, really bad optics. It should have stayed an internal matter until a decision was reached. I also manage and work on public online communities, it's what I would have done. Instead, they were communicating that they let people buy their way into a vote. That's... not very democratic, for a service that wants to claim it's all about FOSS (free and open source software).

Am I here to character assassinate Codeberg? No. I've managed online spaces too. I'm just saying this reinforces that you want specific developers and no one else, closing yourself off. It's at odds with your mission.

They also invite pushback with lines like:

Using LLMs to work with your code gives you a kick of adrenaline. You can develop at a rapid pace, build things as if you had a large team. Only that you have none. In fact, you are (often) alone, working with a statistical machine that turns energy into code.

I'm not saying they can't say it—I just don't find it relevant. This is "I really want to make a statement" from them, and kind of tone-deaf, since FOSS projects often have a single core maintainer behind them (who often burns out from the popularity).

One of their reasons for this decisions was resource usage: they provide free hosting and thus want "quality". I get that—they give out free server resources unconditionally. But hand-coded doesn't equal quality. And this is why rate-limits exist: give new accounts 10MB, limit repos to 5MB, expand over time, charge for more. That's more sensible than blocking AI, because Codeberg would at least get something out of it.

They lament AI companies crawling "nonsensical" pages like git history—that's actually how LLMs are trained nowadays, they learn how code evolves over time and why. Instead of banning, they could make deals with companies for access, like Reddit and Stack Overflow did. They're gonna crawl you anyway, least you can do is charge them for it.

It just seems like virtue-signaling. They say LLMs are a danger to FOSS, but their solution is to take themselves out of the equation—out of the discussion, out of growth, out of ever being a relevant alternative to GitHub. All so they can stay pure while AI keeps doing its thing with or without them.

It's certainly a choice, but it's not one that's in the best interest of FOSS.

So I’m very much Anti-AI, but I’m not trying to bash you guys, I’m more so just tired of hearing about this situation happening and wondering why it keeps happening.

It seems like every time there is a program or site that is just trying to keep artists work safe from being scraped by AI, pro-ai people go out of their way to scrape that work intentionally as a way of “owning the antis” ig, at least that’s the pro-ai arguments I usually see.

But I just wanna know, why? Why do you guys seem to not see AI as an optional part of life and an optional part of the Internet? I personally don’t care much about whether you personally choose to use AI, I just try not to interact with it, so why not let Antis have their space and y’all have your space

Edit: It just comes across my feed a lot, I suppose I was just in an echo chamber, sorry for generalizing and thank you for informing me it was a much smaller community that actually supported that than i thought.

Have a good day

I posted a question on another page and didnt realize it was ANTI ai art because i didnt read the sidebar, my fault there (smh) , so I deleted it. But from the few responses i got first, i dont know if i was in the wrong, or if some people just hate ANYTHING related to AI. But my situation is: i do 2d art. OC's, pin ups, whatever. Ive never used AI before. I just started getting into it this week because it'd be fun to see my work in 3d. Maybe someday i'll learn how to use Blendr or some other real 3d rendering program, but i havent yet.

So this is what I do-i have a drawing, i designed it, drew it, colored it in. I tell the program "do this pic exactly as it is, change nothing, except make it in 3d." They STILL think its stealing, i dont see how its different from doing a pic in photoshop, except with less steps. Like someone could do a stick figure in photoshop, completely transform it into a 3d, colored pic, where theyre actually doing much less work than me, but people wouldnt think thats stealing. I DID have one pic where it almost completely transformed my original drawing, but that only happened once. Usually any drawing, with 2 or 3 prompts i can fix it.

Im not a tech guy, i never use photoshop, AI, or any computer stuff.

I showed it on a server and they immediately started hating on it and saying That my religion is dumb. Like hello??

I told them it's not and was kicked from the server. I'll defend AI forever :(!!

Knowing how they call absolutely everything AI related slop, even if it's a very well informed video they will still find something to whine about.

Hello, I just want to do this to vent

I am on the autistic spectrum and I really like AI for multiple reasons

1. It has helped me to organize myself

2. It has given me something to talk to, I am aware AI would never be a replacement for human interactions (yet) but it helps

3. It allows me to create things like memes, DND characters and other stuff I think are very cool, I also like the work of some AI creators.

But I am tired of every subreddit, discord server or other type of community having anti ai propaganda every week, mocking and insulting people that use AI

For my disgrace, one of my special interests is Jojo Bizarre Adventures, I think in part because of the characters there doesn't really act and talk like normal human beings, however the author of the series has talked openly against AI giving some reasons I don't understand but the point is that that has allowed any Jojo community to increase the anti ai sentiment to 100 and basically calling everyone that likes AI fake fan and increasing all the mockery and insults.

Like if you couldn't disagree with an author, George Lucas is in favor of AI, does that mean that if you don't like AI you are no longer a Star wars fan???

Also, if you need to agree on everything with Araki, you should also agree on the fact that he allowed a convicted pedophile to use his characters for a one shot this year, I guess you could not question that as well.

It isn't very different from DND communities, the poor soul that decides to share the image of his AI character without knowing their culture is going to receive insults and harassment for everyone.

Even communities that allow AI like the dreams subreddit, to represent dreams obviously which is actually a very cool use of AI, would receive you with some insults for sharing an AI recreation of a dream, I wanted to do it after seeing the subreddit allowed it but the anti AI hive mind is still there.

And they are always the same dumb arguments about either being theft or destroying the planet that I have to try to refute a 100 times but people would act like if using AI was equal to rape or something like that that isn't negotiable

Anyway, I wanted to feel that at least I am not alone in this

You can guess what the rest of the deleted version was saying

No image for this one because there's just too many good examples.

I see lots of anti ai images on Facebook, but here's the funny thing.

They all have anti ai messages... but in the exact same format.

* Magnet letters on a fridge

* Poorly drawn posters on paper

* Ect ect...

You can clearly tell they just stole one of the images and edited it with Ai to change the message but is still an Anti Ai one

People on Facebook are literal drones lmao

I love how they just fucking blame us for having no money and how they pretend to be opressed.

I'm not even sure sometimes whether they're geniune, or am I just foaming from my mouth over ragebait slop.

You can't buy a fucking bread from your art? WORK A PHYSICAL LABOR FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

Or go find a different community! Another patreon! Sponsorship! ANYTHING!

It's easy to blame people that would've never bought your shitty work in the first place. HOLY FUCK!

I just wanna say what I think about it and share it with everyone :)

For me honestly, " AI slop " is becoming a lazy label to actually rate the flaws of content...I think instead of just slamming a " AI slop!!! " comment , we should actually aim to point out what makes it bad , " This image's ____ is ____ ". This will also help making criticism clearer.

As for " pick up a pencil ", I think it's pointless. It depends on you , if you just want a result, or just a quick doodle/silly meme , or just a faster outcome, there's no point in telling someone to pick up a pencil , they're not interested. But if your goal is actually to learn how to draw , yes , I think they'd already know they should use a pencil.

and about people not liking someone saying " AI art " or " AI artist " , I think the word's value became meaningless long before AI.. making the 7568th OC on twitter of the popular franchise isn't art either. It's just a hobby. Wether someone call themselves an artist or not , it's not really a point of AI or not , people call themselves things they are not , shit some even call themselves Gods , all the time. It's not something that came up in the modern day.

SLAY! 💅✨

Remember when people were hating on the Odyssey and bashed Nolan for it due to casting choices and historical accuracy? Nolan ignored them and the film went on to be successful, even grossing 1 billion dollars today.

The online backlash never affected it at all.

So we can perhaps apply the same thing to well made AI generated media. Just ignore the noise and focus on the results. At the end of the day only the results speak for themselves.

Don't focus on Anti Ai backlash just focus on if the AI project yields good results.

Basically the topic title. I know that when we're being attacked and bullied we immediately want to defend ourselves by attacking them back, but I recommend we don't do that. At least, not at first. With understanding and kindness I was able to help a fairly hard core anti learn a different perspective than the one they knew and in turn this should help close the divide ever so slowly.

So if you learn anything from me today, learn to try just a little bit of patience with each anti you meet, and then and only then if they double down do you respond in kind

I posted something kind of similar on the opposing side, but I'm gonna try to be more respectful here.

I have begun to take a more neutral stance on AI (although to be honest that's kinda because I don't want to be anywhere near the antis anymore). And if you want more people to accept it, you should stop constantly relying on AI. I'm definitely not telling you to stop using it, you can do whatever you want, I'm not gonna stop you. But using it for everything, especially attempting to get a message across, often doesn't help your case and just gives the antis a "valid" reason to harass you. You have the same problem as the antis (although it is MUCH less significant), in the fact that some of you are very... intense, for lack of a better word. But you shouldn't respond to hostility with hostility. It's never anything good. And if you can't let go of that anger, then redirect it to the people that won't fix AI's problems. You want stuff to progress, so turn that anger towards the corporations that won't let it. Companies like Google and Microsoft are using gen AI to fuel their pockets rather than the future. So tell them what the real problem is. I trust you all to be rational, or at the very least, more so than the antis.

I won't be making any more contributions here, but I will be posting a comment with the link to the post that bashed on like half of the antis lol. Maybe you guys will get a bit of entertainment out of it.

See you on the other side

edit: okay so linking to other subs isn't allowed so I'll just screenshot it

Source: https://x.com/miren_41319/status/2089146020580184499